The Columbia History of British Poetry (33 page)

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Authors: Carl Woodring,James Shapiro

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Page 134
the more usual place for encomia was at the beginning, "where perhaps there is need of it, to prepare men to digest such stuffe as follows after. . . . you shall finde them in the end, for whosoever reades the rest so farre, shall perceive that there is no occasion to use them to that purpose."
This ordering and framing of a printed book, although in several respects derived from manuscript practices, was different in one essential respect. Whereas each separate copy of a manuscript may be ordered, selected, and manipulated in the course of transcription so as to reflect the particular interests of copyist or commissioner, no such choice is available to the purchaser and reader of a normally printed book. The author, editor, publisher, and printer control presentation in a way that ensures uniformity, and hence, to a much greater degree, controls the act of reading and the means to understanding. But printing also offers both a defense and authorityqualities no less important than the often cited ones of wider dissemination and circulation of a particular work.
Another and very practical attitude, more positive to printing, was expressed by Michael Drayton in his
Polyolbion
(1612). Drayton seems to have entertained no doubts as to how his work should be published, replete with engraved maps (which would have been impossible to copy consistently in manuscript). He sought a large publicas befitted his subject, the history of Britainand could not therefore countenance those restrictions of audience which circulation in manuscript implied: "Verses," as he put it, "wholly deduc't to Chambers, and nothing esteem'd in this lunatique Age, but what is kept in Cabinets, and must only passe by Transcription."
It is qualities such as these, of textual control and presentation, that vitalized the movement in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries away from the circulation of poetry in manuscript and toward its circulation in print. By the eighteenth century, circulation in print was normal. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries printing has itself been used to control circulation (for example by very short print runs, feasible with the drastic reduction in the cost of printing during the nineteenth centuryor by more or less private publication), while the application of unconventional techniques such as lithography (at least in the nineteenth century) and the use of the duplicating stencil and the photocopier have produced further means to economy or control. But, for most poetry the major transition from manuscript to print took
 
Page 135
place notably late in the history of printingeven two hundred years and more after Gutenberg's inventionwhen it was realized that printing frequently offered yet greater convenience than manuscript, new discipline, and an audience that could in any case, even in a manuscript culture, never be wholly controlled.
Moreover, the removal of poetry from a primarily manuscript culture to one that was by convention a printed one, was accompanied also by a new attention to the status and identity of the author as creator of a particular text, with a continuing interest in the accuracy of that text. In 1600 the preface to the anthology
England's Helicon
both drew attention to the attributions placed after each contribution and also sought to reassure reader and author alike that these names had been added in good faith.
The early seventeenth-century manuscript collection of poetry was most frequently an anthology or miscellany drawn from many authors according to taste, and frequently providing no attributions of authorship. Indeed, and much to the distress of many authors, where attributions were provided, they might be merely the result of hearsay or casual opinion, or even wishful thinking. Poem and author were not necessarily, in a manuscript tradition, to be regarded as inseparable and mutually supportive of the words on the page before the reader. By contrast, the printed book, with its own conventions of title-page authority, offered either anonymity or a clear statement claiming authorship. These new conventions were supported by, and dependent upon, stationers (or publishers) working within the constraints of the book trade and the conventions and legal particularities of copyright. Authorship and text were inseparable unless positive steps were taken to concealment. So, not surprisingly, printing became an act of self-identification as well as self-organization. "The Presse hath gathered into one, what fancie had scattered in many loose papers," wrote William Habington, on introducing his
Castara
in 1635. It was a grudging admission; and a similar reluctance to see one's poems put into print is evident in poets of the first half of the seventeenth century whose work was published only after their death; John Donne and George Herbert are but the best-known examples.
Printing, then, offered several advantages. Yet there were drawbacks as well. In particular, unauthorized printing posed a threat on a scale of a quite different order from the whims, wishes, and mistakes of manuscript transmission. Not only were mistakes multiplied a thousandfold
 
Page 136
with a printed edition. No less seriously, the temptations of reward by deliberate misattribution were also commensurately greater. In the "advertisement" to readers of his
Poems
(1645), Edmund Waller remarked that "this parcell of exquisit poems, have pass'd up and downe through many hands amongst persons of the best quallity, in loose imperfect Manuscripts, and there is lately obtruded to the world an adulterate Copy, surruptitiously and illegally imprinted, to the derogation of the Author, and the abuse of the Buyer."
The preface to later editions spoke of Waller's being "troubled to find his name in Print, but somewhat satisfied to see his Lines so ill rendered that he might justly disown them." From such a position it was easy to move to the business of promoting the edition now in hand, with assurance in 1645 from Waller himself. "in this booke they [the lines] appeare in their pure originalls and true genuine colours." Matthew Prior, writing in the preface to his great folio edition of his
Poems
in 1718, alluded to a collection of poems that ''has lately appeared under my Name, tho' without my Knowledge, in which the Publisher has given me the Honor of some things that did not belong to Me; and has Transcribed others so imperfectly, that I hardly know them to be Mine. This has obliged Me, in my own Defence . . . to Publish an indifferent Collection of Poems, for fear of being thought the Author of a worse."
One of the most celebrated reflections on such dangers and misattributions (deliberate, malicious, or simply mistaken) was by Abraham Cowley in 1656. For the previous few years Cowley had been in France, keeping abroad following the execution of King Charles in 1649. Now, on his return, he found attributed to him a volume of verses, inspired by the civil war, in which he claimed he had had no hand:
The Four Ages of England
(1648). In the preface to his volume of
Poems
he not only disowned the 1648 volume. He also went on to reflect on the fortunes of other writers, especially poets, whose works were often not published until after their deaths. As a consequence, authorial control was absent, the opportunities for error abundant, and the temptation to take advantage of a reputation sometimes too much. Such collections, he complained, "we finde stuffed out, either with
counterfeit pieces
, like
false Money
put in to fill up the
Bag
, although it add nothing to the
sum
." This might be merely the indiscretion of friends, "who think a vast
heap
of Stones or Rubbish a better
Monument
, then a little
Tomb
of
Marble
; or by the unworthy avarice of some
Stationers
, who are content to diminish the value of the
Author
, so they may encrease the price of the
 
Page 137
Book
; and like
Vintners
with sophisticate mixtures, spoil the whole vessel of wine to make it yield more
profit
."
The greater the reputation, therefore, the greater the danger; Cowley named Shakespeare, John Fletcher and Ben Jonson as having suffered in this particular way. The 1656 volume was an act of self-defense in several ways. But for Cowley, as an author still living, it also seemed to require some justificationa justification that he could only find by appealing to the experiences of the dead. He announced that with this volume it was his intention to make himself "absolutely dead in a
Poetical
capacity." Publication of his verses was, again, self-defense"not as a thing that I approved of in it self, but as a lesser evil, which I chose rather then to stay till it were done for me by some body else, either surreptitiously before, or avowedly after my death." The author, in other words, retained a measure of control over his own identityin what he had written, what he chose to preserve, and the manner in which he chose to present it to the world.
As those involved in political or religious comment in the seventeenth century well knew, the circulating of work in manuscript avoided the need for licensinglegally an essential preliminary to publication for most of the century, though one enforced with widely varying rigor by the different authorities charged with the task. In the period between the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and the flight of James II in 1688, under the Licensing Act of 1662 or its successors, political satire in verse was far more frequent in manuscript than in print, and its copying and circulation became a specialized and sophisticated business. As a result, many of these poems survive only in manuscript; others were printed for the first time only in 1689 or later, their popularity remaining until well into the eighteenth century.
But the act of printing and, following that, of publication brought also the necessity to translate the written into the mechanical word. Conventions in the manufacturing processes, the need to reconcile the requirements of a printing house with those of the author, the extent to which an author, rather than publisher, might be able to influence format, page layout, binding, quality of materials, and ultimately, costeach required compromise. Not surprisingly, not all authors have taken a detailed interest in every stage, even when they have had the opportunity to do so. Setting aside those who have worked with private presses, there have been few poets of major stature who, like T. S. Eliot as director of Faber and Faber, have been able to supervise the translation
 
Page 138
of their work from manuscript to finished book at every stage. But even Eliot did not have the same immediate access to the means of printing as William Blake, working directly on his own etched plates, or William Morris, overseeing the design, illustration, and printing of his work at his own Kelmscott Press.
In Britain the first poets to see their work in print included John Skelton, in print by at least 1499, though most of his surviving editions date from somewhat later; Stephen Hawes, much printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the early years of the sixteenth century; and Alexander Barclay, whose eclogues were printed by Wynkyn de Worde and others from about 1518. In view of the rarity of most editions of these poets, it must be doubted whether examples of all printed editions have survived. But in some respects the procedures established at least by the late sixteenth century (the earliest period about which we have any detailed knowledge), remained much the same until the advent of machine printing in the early nineteenth century. Edition sizes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries usually remained quite small, certainly no more than about twelve hundred copies in the case of virtually all books other than Bibles, schoolbooks, and some official printing. Opportunities for proofreading were circumscribed by printers' needs to keep their equipment in constant use. In practice, for a small printing house with a barely adequate supply of type, this offered little time for proofreading.
We know considerably more about eighteenth-century edition sizes, thanks to the survival of major archival sources in manuscript from some London printers, most notably William Bowyer and William Strahan. Fifteen or sixteen hundred copies was the usual maximum for editions, and many books were printed in only about half that number. With machine printing and, still more important, the continuing growth of the reading and book-buying population, these figures increased dramatically. Poetry was to be found among the most popular books of all. Some ten thousand copies of Byron's
Corsair
(1814) were said to have been sold on the day of publication, and by the mid-century sales for some books soared. The first five editions of Tennyson's
In Memoriam
, all published in 1850, are thought to have numbered five thousand copies each. Nine years later, the first edition of Tennyson's
Idylls of the King
consisted of forty thousand copies, and
Enoch Arden
(1864) was first published in an edition of sixty thousand. One of the greatest long-term successes in the century was R. H.
 
Page 139
Barham's
Ingoldsby Legends
, originally published in
Bentley's Miscellany
and the
New Monthly Magazine
from 1837. A new sixpenny People's edition in 1881 consisted of 100,000 copies.
In the twentieth century sales have been generally much smaller in relation to the size of the literate population. Eliot's
Selected Poems
, originally published in 1948, was reprinted in 1961in a paperback edition of 26,120 copies. His
Collected Poems, 19091962
was published by Faber and Faber in an edition of 15,090; an additional eight thousand copies were published in the United States by Harcourt, Brace. Something of Philip Larkin's career may be followed in the gradual increase of edition sizes, from seven hundred copies for the first edition of
The Less Deceived
, published in 1955 by the Marvell Press, Yorkshire, to almost seven thousand copies for the first edition of
The Whitsun Weddings
, published in 1964 by Faber and Faber; in 19711973 paperback editions accounted for 18,500 copies. The effect of paperback publication on sales has led some firms to publish in this form from the outset, and to ignore the dwindling market for hardback copies.
The emergence of the literary journal in the eighteenth centuryand perhaps above all the
Gentleman's Magazine
(1731-)for the first time provided a suitable vehicle for the publication of poetry outside the ordinary confines of a book, yet without the overtones of the street broadside. Such publication did not need to imply that a book was envisaged. No less importantly, it had the advantage of immediacyas in the celebrated case of Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade," first published in
The Examiner
in December 1854, less than a month after the event had been first reported in the newspapers.
Such publication also ensured a wider readership than could otherwise be expected. This was especially so in general periodicals such as (in the twentieth century)
The Listener,
The New Statesman,
Punch,
The Times Literary Supplement
, or
Encounter
. Further, the appearance of periodicals primarily intended for the publication and discussion of poetry, such as
Poetry Review
(1912-),
Outposts
(1944-), and
Agenda
(1959-), has provided outlets on a more generous scale. The so-called little magazines, developed especially in the United States, have both provided an alternative to book publication and extended definitions of literary or social contexts. The idea of an alternative press has proved appealing in an environment dominated by Establishment houses. Since 1945 in particular, these little magazines have provided both a

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