The Columbia History of British Poetry (35 page)

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Authors: Carl Woodring,James Shapiro

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an outstanding example, while we have already seen Coleridge at work at the end of the century. That there is a division between poetry and prosefor both author and readerseems reasonably clear. As Oliver Simon put it, when thinking of preparing texts for readers: "Poetry is more slowly and deliberately read than prose, which means that the reader is more than usually aware of typographical qualities."
Each generation has discovered its own conventions respecting the format and size of booksfor all subjects, not just for poetry. To choose a larger or smaller volume is to make a statement even before the book's title can be seen, or the volume taken from the shelf. It is a statement that expresses relationships with similar literature; aspirations that may run counter to the expected; and above all, a statement of directiontoward particular readers and their particular cultural, social, and economic needs.
By far the most celebrated examplealbeit posthumous, and therefore expressing the aspirations, standards and opinions not of the author, but of his editors and publisheris the Shakespeare First Folio: a volume standing in stark contrast with the smaller quarto editions of individual plays and yet expressing at the same time, in its cramped typography, a compromise between literary status and economic practicalities. Among living authors of the time, Ben Jonson was ridiculed for presuming to call his plays
Works
, and to see them published in folio. In 1630 John Taylor, "the water-poet" and a versifier of some wit, much industry, and great tediousness, guyed such aspirations in his title to his own large folio,
All the Workes of John Taylor the Water-Poet. Being sixty and three in number
. To publish such volumes was to invite comparisons with classical authors, and in England especially with Chaucer, whose
Canterbury Tales
had been published in folio since 1477, and whose works had been most recently edited anew by Thomas Speght in 1598.
Indeed, in the pocket duodecimo format chosen for Herbert's
Temple
(1633) there are to be seen not only the reflection of a man as retiring and modest in his life as in his (posthumous) book, but also allusions to other booksin this case devotional works, published in the same format. Small type and narrow margins on a small crowded page make for economy; but they also serve the convenience of the reader and the circumstances of reading for which books such as
The Temple
were intended. Thus Humphrey Moseley, one of the most successful of all publishers of English poetry in the mid-seventeenth century, wrote of the small octavo edition of Cartwright's poems that he offered in
 
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1651: "If you ask, why its crowded in so scant a Volume? 'tis for your own sakes; we see it is such weather that the most ingenious have least money; else the Lines are as long as in Folio, and would equall those of trebble its price." Both the format and the type size, Moseley later explained, had been chosen purposely so as to bring down the volume's bulk. Here the publisher was able, after Cartwright's death, to act as seemed most appropriate in a trade environmentno compromise with the author needed to be sought.
For readers, bulk and appearance were crucial, even if they did not always express this directly. Andrew Marvell, for example, responding to
Paradise Lost
first published as a small quarto of 344 pages in 1667wrote of Milton's unfolding his "vast design" in a "slender book." Tensions between Milton's concept and the material characteristics of the volume containing it were, for Marvell, an essential part of reading. His remarks in verse were thought sufficiently pertinent to be added to several later editions.
Inevitably, as in the case of Matthew Prior's great folio collected edition of 1718issued with the encouragement of his friend and publisher, Jacob Tonson, and under the eye of Lord Harley, of whose household Prior was a partit is the exception to convention that is most noticeable. In such projects as his collected Dryden (1701), in a series of large quarto editions of Latin poets, and most of all, in an ambitious large folio edition of Julius Caesar (1712), Tonson had already shown himself to be a publisher of imagination and enterprise. His edition of Prior, printed on three different sizes of paper so as to challenge or meet the aspirations of his readers, stood also as a statement of authorial authorityand was both a consummation of earlier editions in smaller formats and a corrective to them. But even as a folio, it was produced by Tonson on a scalewith typography to match the paper sizethat set it apart from the quite recent habit of printing much poetry, on its first appearance, in folio. Dryden's
Absalom and Achitophel
(1681), a political piece, and
Alexander's Feast
(1697), composed for St. Cecilia's Day, were examples of this trend (especially noticeable in occasional poetry for royal or other occasions) which Prior and Tonson now took to extravagance.
Indeed, if one looks at the edition of Prior in the context of contemporary poetry publishing other than by Tonson, one of its closest challengers for magnificence is not a contemporary author, but a past: John Urry's edition of Chaucer, published by Bernard Lintot in 1721 on both
 
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large and ordinary sized paper, and likewise decorated with engravings. Although much poetry in the early eighteenth century was published in octavo or quarto for the first time, this was to change as, after these comparatively few years, folios fell out of fashion save where a brief or comparatively brief text could be matched with the cost of paper to produce a publication whose price seemed commensurate with a poem's probable market. David Foxon has linked this change in mood to the decision in 1715 to publish Pope's translation of the
Iliad
in quarto. The contrast of such a book with Nicholas Rowe's verse translation of Lucan in 1718, one of Tonson's most ambitious efforts, made the point at once. Quarto became more fashionable for collected editions, particularly in the classics and those English writers considered to have some claim to classic status. It has been suggested that this transition was especially encouraged by the publisher James Dodsley, who dominated publishing in poetry during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Publication of new poetry in folio was feasible not simply when it was fashionable or (as in the case of occasional pieces, whether celebratory or satirical) of current public interest. Its format also suggested a market that presupposed both the money to buy and the space to keep such books.
Not surprisingly, there were many exceptions to such trends. By first publishing
The Dunciad
as a duodecimo, Pope may have deliberately guyed, in bibliographical form, some of the same Grub Street assumptions and productions that he was attacking in his verse. An octavo edition followed quickly in the same year, 1728. Swift, no less ingeniously, exploited the broadside ballad tradition by having several of his poems published as broadsides, sometimes even with woodcuts. Both made a simple point in a bibliographical way, in alluding to an existing form so as to draw attention to their own critical voice.
Such exceptions, manipulating bibliographical expectations, serve simply to emphasize the otherwise widely established practice for poetry not intended for the casual hawker, of proceeding from larger to smaller formats and paper sizes as a poem's popularity was gradually proved. Although this pattern was perhaps at its most extreme in the first decades of the eighteenth century, its principles had been long established. They are still to be found, at the end of the twentieth century, in the relationship of first publication in hardback to secondary publication in paperbacka relationship that in recent years has been steadily whittled away for poetry and fiction alike. For poetry, it has
 
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become less well defined as the proportion of the reading public willing to buy relatively expensive hardback books (often of no great length) has declined. But in this the reading public has changed less than is sometimes supposed. ''The bulk of readers are those who purchase octavos: the rich only can afford quartos, and they read nothing," commented the bookseller-publisher Joseph Johnson in 1793.
Such practices led to assumptions. The common practice of issuing serious poetry in quarto, a comparatively sumptuous and expensive format, also suggested claims to an audience limited by wealth, and thereby implied some claim to respectability. Southey, Thomas Campbell, and Thomas Moore were among those whose work appeared in quarto in the first decades of the nineteenth century, though this was the case for neither Wordsworth from 1793 to 1815 nor Coleridge after 1798and never for Keats. Instead, octavo became more common and familiar thanks especially to the enormously popular works of Sir Walter Scott and of Byron. But with the first cantos of
Don Juan
(18191821), Byron's publisher John Murray, torn between admiration and disgust, deliberately varied his policyfirst publishing them anonymously, in quarto, in order to restrict sales (initially at least) to those who could afford so expensive a work (the first volume cost £1.11.6, or about three weeks' wages for an agricultural worker of the time). Thus Murray ensured that the work could not be easily dismissed as vulgar or dangerousfor, in the words of one reviewer (possibly Southey), readers "who would have turned with disgust from its indecencies, and remembered only its poetry and its wit." Cheaper editions rapidly followed, and the poem was much pirated; but Murray's reputation had been protected and Byron's work could be safely published without further fear of prosecution.
The smaller octavo format established by the mid-nineteenth century, in which were published most of the works of Browning, Tennyson and Swinburne, was itself challenged by authors, and more generally by publishers seeking a fresh typographical voice. By adopting a somewhat squarer shape for volumes, or increasing their dimensions slightly, a new voice might be signaled by the book itself. Coventry Patmore's first major work,
The Angel in the House
(1854+), was published as a pott octavo, more than an inch shorter than his
The Unknown Eros
(1877), in the rather more unusual format of square octavo.
The later years of the nineteenth century witnessed many experiments, a trend made possible by developments in papermaking, type design, illustration, and bookbinding techniques. But the birth of these
 
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many changes is to be found in the middle years of the century. Fresh attention to earlier type designspioneered by the publisher and bookseller William Pickering and used in several of his editions of seventeenth-century poetsheralded a widespread fashion for older type-faces and allusive period design even for contemporary work. But parallel with this, and drawing on new techniques and skills in wood engraving, a taste for illustrated books arose: William Allingham's
The Music Master
, with designs by Arthur Hughes, D. G. Rossetti, and John Millais, appeared in 1855. This was published by George Rout-ledge, whose sometimes lavishly illustrated books formed a substantial and important part of his business.
Edward Moxon, publisher of Tennyson since 1842, issued an illustrated edition of his poems in 1857 that rapidly became a byword for the successful illustration of poetry; Millais, Rossetti, and William Holman Hunt were among the artists who contributed. Bindings, too, offered the opportunity for originality in decoration as well as a means of attracting readers with an eye-catching exterior. The drab paper-covered boards that had characterized the first editions of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Keats, and Shelley had by the mid-nineteenth century given way to elaborately printed paper covers, or to cloth of various colors, frequently gilt, and for the more lavish books intended especially for presentation, sometimes printed with further color. The gaily decorated cloth gilt bindings of these newer editions were for display, particularly on the parlor or drawing room table. And although they were introduced for most kinds of general reading (with the notable exception of the majority of popular novels), poetry was particularly privileged in this manner.
The old distinction of the book tradebetween the lightweight paper or cheap leather binding and the lavishly tooled binding in more expensive leathergave way to a much greater diversity of materials and invention. Author and reader were thus brought into an even more closely defined relationshipnot simply on the page, but even from the very binding. W. M. Rossetti and William Morris both designed the covers to their own poetry, while the last years of the century also saw the increasing use of well-known artists such as Beardsley, Charles Ricketts, Laurence Housman, and T. Sturge Moore to decorate both the pages and the covers of new publications. Thus, poetry was provided with yet a further frame of reference, which dust jackets and the cover decorations of paperbacks have since developed further.
 
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Such developments made questions about the illustration of poetry seem the more urgent. Following a successful illustrated collection of Keats, Moxon prepared an ambitious series of illustrations for Tennyson's volume of 1857. Although both publisher and author benefitted from increased sales, Tennyson was reluctant to accept the illustrations. When in 1874 another publisher, Kegan Paul, suggested that the new collected edition be illustrated by pictures of the poet's homes and neighborhoodinspirations for Tennyson's poetry and a sop to his readers' curiosity as to the private life of the poet laureateTennyson was adamant in his opposition. Kegan Paul's idea was by no means new. In the early years of the nineteenth century there had been highly successful series of engraved views of the landscapes associated with Burns, Byron, William Cowper, and Robert Bloomfield. But the question was not simply one of intrusion. This difficult subject has been most clearly summed upas a principle and not for Tennyson onlyby Walter de la Mare in a lecture published in 1931: "The question of illustration is scarcely an issue at all, and if it be an issue it is a desperately controversial one. Mere pictorial representations, however admirable, in a volume devoted to poetry, seem to be a definite mistake." But then de la Mare went on to make exceptions of the book illustrations of the 1850s and 1860s, and to continue:
But every poem is everyman's poem, and any illustration of a poem is only the illustration of one man's conception of it. The two things therefore cannot but to some extent clash and overlap, except when the men of genius concerned are in such accord as were Carroll and Tenniel when gryphons and walruses were about.
The particularity implied in illustration, although it may indeed (as in the case of many eighteenth-century books) add a measure of luxury or (as in the case of Tennyson) encourage greater sales, intervenes as yet another intrusion between author and reader. The meeting of two imaginationsauthor's and reader'sis distracted by the intrusive insistence of illustration not inspired by, created by, or at least executed in the closest consultation with, the author. The enduring associative powers of a pictorial image, or a particular series of images, is well reflected in the continuing popularity, for example, of John Baptista Medina's engravings for
Paradise Lost
, first published in 1688 and followed or imitated many times thereafterfor long after the original engraved plates had been worn away. Such posthumous intrusion, how-

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