In the years immediately following Hogg’s
death late in 1835, the Glasgow firm of Blackie & Son
brought out two collected sets of his writing, Tales and
Sketches by the Ettrick Shepherd, in six volumes, which
was shortly followed by The Poetical Works of the Ettrick
Shepherd in five volumes. Passing through various recycled
forms, the sets together provided the main record of his literary
output throughout the later nineteenth century. However, the
texts in these sets can differ substantially from what was
originally authorised by Hogg. Furthermore, as this article
will attempt to demonstrate, such changes sometimes occurred
for reasons which are inextricably connected with their mode
of production.
A number of
apparent inconsistencies within and between different copies
of the two collections have had a confusing effect in some
library catalogues. In the case of what is apparently the
first issue of Tales and Sketches there is a disparity
between on the one hand the dates of the engraved title pages,
which have 1836 in the first two volumes and 1837 in the remainder,
and, on the other, the imprints on the title pages proper
which are all dated 1837—some libraries consequently
list the set as 1836–37 and others as 1837. Further
difficulties have been caused by what is generally taken to
be a subsequent issue of the same set, in which both the titles
are normally undated, and which has been speculatively catalogued
with a variety of dates around 1850 (such conjectures possibly
being guided by the advertisement lists which are commonly
found in copies). In the case of the Poetical Works
the printed titles of the first issue are usually dated 1838
(volumes 1–3), 1839 (volume 4), and 1840 (volume 5),
but again there are inconsistencies with the engraved titles,
and the apparent ‘second’ issue is to be found
in either dated or undated forms. [1]
Surviving copies
of both sets which have not been rebound indicate that they
first appeared in maroon cloth, [2]
and this, together with a similar (18mo) format, invites comparison
with the Magnum Opus edition of Walter Scott’s Waverley
Novels, whose single volumes in crimson cloth-covered boards
at five shillings were issued monthly starting June 1829.
In fact, the relative sizes of the different collections in
a complete state might be taken as a physical measure of the
significance of the two writers at the onset of the Victorian
period, with Hogg seemingly a pale imitator. (In Scott’s
case the forty-eight volumes of the Magnum, completed in 1833,
went on to combine with physically similar editions of his
poetry and prose and then with J. G. Lockhart’s Memoirs,
making in all nearly a hundred volumes in testimony to his
work and life.) [3]
Yet, in spite of his image as the naive ‘Ettrick Shepherd’,
a rustic intruder on the polite literary culture of the city,
Hogg was interested in and well informed about the latest
developments in publishing and printing and keen to make use
of them in the dissemination of his own work. Examination
of the actual circumstances underlying the planning and production
of the Tales and Sketches, the one set in which Hogg
can be said to have played some part, has made it possible
to put together a more complete picture, one which shows a
Scottish author attempting to operate positively at a significant
moment in publishing history. The same investigations have
also helped uncover a number of hitherto unrecognised bibliographical
factors about the Blackie sets.
The idea for
a collection of Tales, founded on rural stories but finding
circulation among a new and expanding audience, can be traced
back to an early point in Hogg’s literary career, the
first manifestation in several respects being his weekly serial
The Spy (1810–11), which includes prototype versions
of stories expanded in his later works. It is evident, for
example, in his proposal to Archibald Constable in 1813, a
year before the appearance of Scott’s Waverley,
to publish ‘Rural and Traditionary Tales of Scotland’,
under the pseudonym of ‘J. H. Craig of Douglas, Esq’:
[4]
an abortive scheme which later found partial expression in
Winter Evening Tales (1820), his second and in terms
of sales most successful single work of fiction, published
from Edinburgh by Oliver & Boyd. [5]
Another (unexpected) sighting appears in the Longman Letter
Books, in August 1823, at the point when the project which
was to become Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified
Sinner was being mooted, the firm offering to consider
Hogg’s ‘Tales of the Scottish Peasantry’
once revisions had been made, though advising compression.
[6]
In fact, in some respects it might be claimed that Hogg in
the early 1820s was being forced into the channel of polite
conventional three-decker style fiction, when his true instincts
attracted him to more diverse and broadly popular forms of
story-telling in print.
Of particular
interest here, indicating as it does a shift towards a new
outlet, is a letter to William Blackwood of 19 March 1826:
‘I think the whole of my select Scottish tales should
be published in Numbers one every month with the Magazine
[i.e. Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine] to be packed
with it and a part of the first No sent gratis to some of
your principal readers’. [7]
This indicates that Hogg entertained possibilities for a popular
monthly issue before the full conception of Scott’s
Magnum (earlier plans for an annotated edition of Scott had
envisaged expensive volumes), [8]
and much at the same time as Constable’s ground-breaking
Miscellany idea, the first volume of which was in print
(though not published) in December 1825. [9]
Hogg continued to press the idea of an extensive collection
on Blackwood, with the Magnum in turn becoming the offered
model, most notably in a letter of 26 May 1830: ‘There
is another [i.e. plan] which I think might raise me a supply[.]
It is to publish all my tales in numbers like Sir W Scott’s
to re-write and sub divide them and they being all written
off hand and published without either reading or correction
I see I could improve them prodigiously’. [10]
Blackwood nevertheless remained unmoved, even as Hogg in desperation
claimed to have procured Lockhart as an editor and Scott as
a patron, [11]
and after the breakdown of their relationship in December
1831 Hogg turned to the alternative publishing option of London.
The result
was his Altrive Tales (1832), published by James Cochrane,
whom Hogg evidently had met near the start of a three-month
visit to the metropolis, guided it would seem by a recommendation
from the Edinburgh publisher, John Anderson. [12]
Shortly before leaving for home in March, Hogg left a list
outlining contents for the first seven volumes, this comprising
a mixture of old, new, and revamped materials. [13]
An opening leaf found in some copies of the first (and only)
volume of Altrive Tales, dated 31 March 1832, announces
the series as ‘Just Published, price 6s a volume, handsomely
bound in cloth’, and ‘to be completed in twelve
volumes, one every month, printed uniformly with the Waverley
Novels’. While this last detail might again invite the
idea of a Scott spin-off, it is worth bearing in mind that
there were now other models for what was then an innovative
attempt to break the mould in the marketing of fiction, by
producing cheaper volumes for an extended audience, and in
particular there are signs that Cochrane used the volumes
of ‘Roscoe’s Novelist’s Library’ as
a template. [14]
There can be no certainty as to how the venture might have
fared without Cochrane’s financial failure, which Hogg
first heard about late in April shortly after his return,
but in view of Hogg’s lionisation during his London
visit, linking no doubt as this did with the new ‘populist’
atmosphere of Britain in the months leading up to the passing
of the Reform Bill, the prognostications were surely reasonably
good. Hogg was devastated by the series’ collapse, and
immediately set about investigating alternative outlets, with
Smith, Elder, & Co., the publishers of the annual Friendship’s
Offering, being one of the earliest nominated. [15]
Nearer to home,
Hogg evidently had on his list Archibald Fullarton, who was
based in Glasgow and Edinburgh, and with whom Hogg had very
recently contracted to provide materials for an edition of
the works of Robert Burns with an original memoir. [16]
Fullarton’s main trade involved the sale of books in
numbers or parts, issued in paper covers, and through which
customers of limited means were enabled to purchase in instalments
family bibles and other standard and literary works that otherwise
would have been beyond their pockets. Fullarton had previously
been in partnership with John Blackie in Glasgow under a variety
of arrangements, until 1831, when the stock and plant were
divided into two equal portions and the agencies shared out.
Hogg cannot have mistaken the nature of Fullarton’s
trade—the first volume of the edition of Burns was eventually
published in three parts, beginning 1 April 1834—and
this factor must have been at least partly in his mind when
making an awkward-seeming salvage attempt in a letter of 14
September 1832 (‘By the by will you take my Altrive
Tales?’), the same letter showing a willingness to accept
terms of a sixth rather than a fifth part of the retail price
as author. Clearly refusal rankled: in another letter, a month
later, Hogg calls Fullarton a ‘d—d fool not to
proceed with the Altrive tales’. [17]
Yet it was
through Fullarton, albeit by mistake, that Hogg found an unexpected
solution. The rough gist of what happened is given in Agnes
Blackie’s concise history of the firm, according to
which a letter of Hogg’s addressed to Fullarton’s
office was delivered to the house of Mr [Alexander] Martin,
the Blackies agent in Edinburgh, and inadvertently opened
by Martin’s wife, Martin then hastening to Hogg’s
Edinburgh lodgings to apologise, and soon finding himself
discussing a possible publication of Hogg’s Tales. [18]
The rediscovery of Alexander Martin’s letters to his
employers, in the Blackie Archive, together with the survival
of Hogg’s letters to the firm during these manoeuvrings,
makes it possible to trace in greater detail what kind of
negotiations took place. The first of Martin’s three
letters, headed 6 February 1833, in addition to outlining
the circumstances of Mrs Martin’s mistake, reports Hogg
as saying that he had wanted to be ‘connected’
with Blackies, but that he was ‘not fond of selling
Copyrights’; and ends with Martin stating that he had
suggested a meeting of parties ‘either by letter or
otherwise’. Martin’s suggestion that ‘Mr
J. B. Jr.’ [John Blackie, son of John Blackie the firm’s
founder] might make a meeting in Edinburgh in fact comes from
his following letter of 7 February, fixing this at 1 p.m.
on Saturday [9 February] at 5 South College Street. [19]
Perhaps unbeknown to the eager Martin, Hogg had already sent
a letter on 5 February to Blackie & Son in Glasgow, offering
them a much-expanded ‘Winter Evening Tales’, capable
of being drawn out to twenty volumes ‘if the subscription
went on successfully’. The same additionally states
‘one sixth part of the retail price’ to be his
terms as author, and also floats as a suggestion that the
printers be Oliver & Boyd in Edinburgh, this no doubt
reflecting a desire to keep some control over his text. A
further letter of Hogg’s to the firm, 11 February, records
his response to the actual meeting, where he had found ‘Martin
at his post and your letter to me’. While vaunting his
own popularity especially in England, he intimates a preparedness
to take less in profits, especially ‘if there are to
be plates’; he also holds out an invitation to the firm’s
principals to visit him at Altrive Lake (see Figure 1), his
home in Selkirkshire, and proposes the ‘beginning of
Novr’ (i.e. the start of the ‘reading
season’) as an appropriate start-up time. [20]
| |
Fig
1. Vignette Title Page Illustration to Vol. 5 of Tales
and Sketches by the Ettrick Shepherd, Showing ‘Altrive’.
The figures in the foreground are possibly meant to
represent Hogg and his family. |
The last of
Martin’s letters in this sequence, headed 13 February,
is interesting in casting a rather different light on the
meeting—one which no doubt partly accounts for Hogg’s
somewhat strident tone in selling himself in his letter of
11 February. While accepting that a deal should be done, Martin
states himself to have been suitably insistent: i) that the
MSS should be delivered before publication commenced (see
also below); ii) that it would not be possible to allow a
sixth share each to two Edinburgh publishers, Oliver &
Boyd and John Anderson; iii) that an author ‘could not
expect to receive as much for the 2d Ed. of any work
as for the first’. Blackies, while clearly attracted
by the proposal, appear to have been keen to show that they
ran their business their own way, were not prepared pay large
percentages to authors for repackaged materials, and didn’t
collaborate with other publishers. [21]
Agnes Blackie
in her house history intimates that the visit to Altrive proposed
by Hogg soon followed, but there is no record of such a meeting
until November 1833. [22]
In fact, for much of the remaining year the bulk of Hogg’s
effort went into trying to activate other possibilities, the
re-established Cochrane again coming into the frame with plans
for an extended Altrive Tales, and Fullarton in September
once more having the ‘Winter Evening Tales’ brought
to his attention. [23]
The main sticking point over Blackies, at least the one Hogg
was prepared to acknowledge, was their halving of author’s
profits from Hogg’s proposed sixth to a twelfth. Reading
between the lines, however, it is possible to discern other
negative factors for Hogg, among them the loss of control
over printing, the absence of a familiar link with the Edinburgh
or London trade, and the apparent desire of Blackie and his
son to keep negotiations at arm’s length. Another factor
about which Hogg might have had more ambivalent feelings was
the Glasgow firm’s reputation as out-and-out number
specialists, serving a largely religious and partly artisan
readership. On one level, the prospect of enlarged sales was
no doubt tantalising, not just as a way of realising larger
profits, but also as a means of making contact with that wider
audience Hogg seems to have thought to have been at last on
the point of materialising. This newly-kindled enthusiasm
can be sensed in a letter to Cochrane’s new partner,
John M‘Crone, in August 1833 on the subject of an enlarged
Altrive Tales: ‘Why not employ a set of poor
honest fellows for a per-centage through all the three kingdoms
to take in subscriptions like Blackie and Fullerton [sic]?
I assure you their sales are immense amounting in some instances
to 25,000 copies of very ordinary works.’ [24]
It can be sensed likewise in a letter to Lockhart, 17 September
1833, which appears to indicate that Hogg is on the point
of acceptance: ‘I have got an offer from a Glasgow subscribing
Co. for a dozen vol’s of tales of which they calculate
they can sell 20,000!! in numbers’. [25]
‘Numbers’ is somewhat ambiguous, since Hogg had
used the term earlier to denote a series of volumes, but in
conjunction with ‘subscribing Co.’ there is a
good chance that Hogg is entertaining the prospect of an issue
initially in parts, themselves forming volumes as they unfolded.
If so, as an author, he was facing new and hazardous territory.
Hogg sent the
first instalment of copy for his collected prose tales to
Blackie & Son, a marked copy of The Brownie of Bodsbeck,
with an accompanying letter to the firm dated 11 November
1833, two full years before his death (thus implying that
an agreement had then been reached), although the publication
was in the event a posthumous one. Its ambiguous status has
always posed particular problems for editors of Hogg’s
fiction: on the one hand there is evidence that Hogg himself
shaped his work for the publication, adding a substantial
amount of material, for example, to The Brownie of Bodsbeck,
[26]
but on the other the fact that the published collection demonstrates
drastic bowdlerising and censorship of some of Hogg’s
finest writing, such as Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
[27]
A brief account of the Blackie publishing firm and an examination
of the circumstances surrounding the eventual publication
of Tales and Sketches by the Ettrick Shepherd will
shed further light on it.
John Blackie had been born in 1782 in Glasgow, and become
an employee of the firm of W. D. & A. Brownlie, pioneers
in the number trade. A work was printed, divided into sections
of so many sheets, and a sample prepared to show to potential
customers. Travelling was an essential part of the business,
canvassing for orders on the basis of the sample, delivering
the sections to customers at regular intervals, and collecting
payments. The Brownlie business appears to have been relatively
modest, and Blackie’s recollections of his youth included
driving a cart from place to place himself, delivering orders.
[28]
Technical innovations in book production clearly favoured
expansion and development of the number trade in the first
third of the nineteenth century. Stereotype plates, for example,
allowed the number publisher to print his copies in instalments
according to indications of current sales rather than having
to risk the printing of a large impression that might have
to be expensively warehoused for some time before it was exhausted.
The development of steel-plate engraving (which allowed the
London Annuals to flourish in the 1820s and 1830s) also stimulated
the number trade: in permitting many copies of engravings
to be printed from the same hard-wearing plate the cost per
unit was lowered, and high-quality illustrations could be
included in relatively inexpensive publications, adding greatly
to their attraction for the purchaser. Since the invention
of the fly-embossing press in the mid-1820s mechanical embossing
provided the opportunity of creating a cheap but showy standard
binding. [29]
John Blackie
seems to have quickly realised the implications of these developments,
and by the time Tales and Sketches was published he
was the head of a rapidly expanding Glasgow-based empire,
tightly controlled and organised with the help of members
of his own immediate family, his days of going out with a
cart long behind him. By 1816 the business occupied a purpose-built
five-storey block at 8 East Clyde Street in Glasgow, and in
1826 Blackie’s eldest son (also John Blackie) became
a partner in the publishing firm at the age of twenty-one,
the name changing to Blackie & Son when the partnership
with Archibald Fullarton was dissolved in 1831. Up to 1836
the printing had been undertaken by George Brookman, Blackie’s
salaried partner in what was effectively an in-house printing
establishment. By 1837, however, Blackie’s second son,
Walter Graham Blackie, had also reached the age of twenty-one
and was then made the head of the family printing enterprise,
now called W. G. Blackie & Co. In 1829 John Blackie had
bought the eastern part of a printing premises at Villafield,
taking over the western part as well in 1845 and erecting
additional buildings on the site in subsequent years. The
printing of engraved plates for the publications was also
effectively a family business: William Duncan, a relative
of John Blackie’s wife, had trained in London and then
been brought to Glasgow to act as manager of that department.
By 1836 the five-storey building at East Clyde Street was
proving inadequate for the publishing side of the business
even with the space created by the removal of the printing
works to Villafield, and was transferred to larger and more
central premises in Queen Street.
Agencies had
been opened in different towns, with a network of men employed
as ‘canvassers’ to show samples of publications
to potential customers and take their orders, and as ‘deliverers’
to supply customers with the numbers as they were issued:
Of these Canvassers many are constantly
employed in the city of Glasgow, and in the surrounding
districts, all of them reporting success at the Office in
Glasgow. […] Each Deliverer has a given district round
which it is his duty to go once each month. In some
instances, as in the city of Glasgow, the district is gone
round once every two weeks; and in some other few instances,
in distant and thinly populated localities, the districts
are only gone round once each two months, or once a quarter.
Usually, however, the deliveries are monthly.
| |
Fig
2. Stock Edition Book, 1813–64, Blackie Archive,
Archives & Business Records Centre, University of
Glasgow, UGD61/4/1/1, Opening 88. |
A system of local offices had also been established
to control activity in areas at a distance. A circular letter
to employees of 4 October 1842 explains that the business
of the Deliverer was also ‘to try and ingratiate himself
so into the good graces of his Subscribers that they may be
ready to support us by a continuance of their favours when
they finish their present works’, taking notice of the
reader’s taste and bringing suitable works to the attention
of theological readers, clergymen, weavers, schoolmasters,
farmers, and so on. Readers of a literary inclination should
have their attention drawn to ‘Burns, the Book of Scottish
Song, the Casquet and Republic, Hogg & Goldsmiths works,
&c.’ [30]
Tales and
Sketches as first published reflects the status, aims
and ambitions of the Blackie enterprise in 1837. ‘Hogg’s
Tales’ is entered on opening 88 of the firm’s
Stock Edition Book, 1813–1864 (see Figure 2), as consisting
initially of thirty ‘Parts @ 1/-’, five to each
of the six volumes making up the work. Initially 2,000 copies
were produced of parts 1–5 (volume 1) in December 1836,
of parts 6–10 (volume 2) in January 1837, of parts 11–15
(volume 3) in March, of parts 16–20 (volume 4) in June,
and of parts 21–25 in September (volume 5), while 3,000
copies of parts 26–30 (the final volume) were produced
in November. The Stock Edition Book also records new printings
of each part at intervals in numbers varying from 2,000 down
to 250 copies according to demand. [31]
These entries certainly suggest that Tales and Sketches
was envisaged as a work published in numbers, a notion reinforced
by physical examination of the work, the volumes being similar
in size, each consisting of gatherings A–2G in sixes,
representing ten Royal sheets in 18mo. [32]
Each part, then, would appear to consist of two sheets of
the work or 72 pages of text, a calculation seemingly confirmed
by a surviving publisher’s sample of Tales and Sketches
in Stirling University Library, containing this amount of
text, and probably representing the stock-in-trade of one
of Blackie’s canvassers on the hunt for orders. [33]
An obvious
objection to this theory is that the part calculated often
ends in mid-sentence, but clearly the early-nineteenth-century
purchaser accepted this peculiar feature of the work with
equanimity, since it occurs in other Blackie publications
of the time, such as Thomas Stackhouse’s A History
of the Holy Bible […], published in twelve two-shilling
parts in 1836. [34]
More seriously, however, there is no suggestion of an initial
publication of Tales and Sketches in numbers in surviving
advertising material, contemporary reviews, or the Stirling
publisher’s sample, each of which refer only to volume
publication at five shillings, a volume appearing at intervals
between December 1836 and December 1837. [35]
A prefatory advertising leaf in the second volume of what
is clearly a set of Tales and Sketches as originally
issued in the Bodleian Library (at 37.137–42) compares
the forthcoming work to ‘the admired editions of Scott,
Byron, Crabbe, Burns’ (and, above, all Scott’s
Magnum Opus edition of the Waverley Novels was clearly the
model here). [36]
On balance it would seem probable that Blackie & Son published
the work volume by volume, but that it was carefully constructed
to leave the way open for a subsequent number publication
and designed to be marketed in the context of their various
part-works, with customers taking volume one probably being
expected to purchase subsequent volumes as they appeared.
The firm’s Stock Edition Book demonstrates that it is
comparatively meaningless to discuss the work in the conventional
terms of first and subsequent editions since sheets were produced
at intervals to meet the demand for fresh copies, clearly
from the same stereotype plates. Minor changes were made to
the stereotype plates from time to time, while some later
sets substitute a number of tales on pages 275–338 for
Hogg’s pastoral drama ‘A Bush Aboon Traquair’
in the second volume. [37]
Purchasers
were clearly meant to feel that for their five shillings a
volume they were obtaining a luxury item, manufactured to
the highest standards of modern book production. The original
binding of the Stirling sample and Bodleian set has an embossed
harp within a laurel wreath, for example, and each volume
included an engraved title page and an engraved frontispiece
comparable in quality to those of the London Annuals, ‘illustrative
of scenes described by the author, or connected with his life’
as the advertising leaf in the Stirling sample expresses it.
These engravings were advertised as important features of
the collection: a prefatory advertisement in the second volume,
for instance, devotes half a page to describing the engravings
to the first two volumes and concludes ‘Volume third
will appear on the 1st of April, illustrated by a beautiful
view of ROSLIN GLEN
[see Figure 3], and the ABBEY OF MELROSE’,
without any indication of what Hogg tales are to be included
in the forthcoming volume. The illustrations were also widely
praised in contemporary reviews, even at the expense of Hogg’s
fiction. [38]
A notable feature of the construction of the Blackie edition
of Stackhouse’s History of the Holy Bible is
that, while some of its twelve parts end with the text in
mid-sentence, each begins with a fine map or other quality
engraving and some parts also contain a second illustration,
showing the importance of the engravings in attracting and
retaining customers.
Fig
3. Frontispiece Plate to Vol. 3 of Tales and Sketches by the
Ettrick Shepherd, Titled ‘Roslin’.
[A vignette illustration of ‘Melrose Abbey’ follows
on the title page.]
The preponderance
of religious works in the publications of Blackie & Son
during these years and the fact that the heartland of the
firm’s operations was in the devout Presbyterian and
evangelical west of Scotland suggests that the bowdlerisation
of Confessions in the Tales and Sketches was
probably the work of the firm rather than Hogg himself, Blackies
being ‘exceptionally keen not to cause offence amongst
their main constituency of subscribers’. [39]
In other instances Blackies and their employees might have
needed to make adjustments to the length of tales to create
an exact fit for their space limit of ten sheets per volume.
‘The Fords of Callum’ (originally published in
Friendship’s Offering for 1830, pp. 187–96),
for example, when it was substituted for part of ‘The
Bush Aboon Traquair’ in later sets of Tales and Sketches
was deprived of two passages relating to an old peasant couple’s
scepticism about the existence of supernatural beings and
Hogg’s comment on it—these particular passages
may have been eliminated from a desire to avoid the suggestion
that Hogg himself was superstitious, but clearly the tale
had to be cut somewhere so that it did not overrun the pages
formerly allotted to Hogg’s pastoral drama. Hogg’s
death would leave the Glasgow firm with a relatively free
hand to censor in deference to reader sensibility, and to
make any cuts demanded by the tight format of their publication.
It is also
worth considering that the success of the number trade was
heavily dependant on the publisher’s punctuality and
reliability. If subsequent instalments were delayed or failed
to fulfil the promises made for them, then subscribers might
discontinue the work. This was clearly a risk in any case,
the surviving paper cover for Stackhouse’s A History
of the Holy Bible stating firmly and probably with a degree
of wishful thinking, ‘Those taking the First Part are
bound to take the whole Work’. A surviving printed notice
to the subscribers for the Blackie edition of Aikman’s
History of Scotland shows that the author and publishers
had differed about the length of the work and the provision
of an Index as the numbers were produced, and that this had
inconvenienced purchasers. The later companion set to Hogg’s
Tales and Sketches of his Poetical Works was
to be similarly hampered by John Wilson’s failure to
deliver his much-advertised memoir of Hogg in the final volume
of the five-volume set. ‘A Life of the Author, by Professor
Wilson, of the University of Edinburgh’ had featured
prominently in advertisements for the collection, set in large
type above the line mentioning the engravings at the head
of the prefatory advertising leaf to the first volume of the
set, which also referred to the closeness of Christopher North
and the Shepherd (in the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ’
series in Blackwood’s Magazine) and pronounced
of Wilson that ‘of all men he is the one to whom
we should look for biographical reminiscences and characteristic
sketches of the Poet’. The bitterness towards Wilson
of Blackies’ letter to Mrs Hogg of 23 August 1841 is
therefore understandable: ‘We fear no hope need be entertained
that Professor Wilson will fulfil his promise—indeed
were he to do so now we question whether any benefit would
arise’. Clearly Wilson’s failure had adversely
affected sales. [40]
The firm’s Edinburgh agent, Martin, in his account of
negotiations with Hogg in February 1833 was probably expressing
a general Blackies view in stating, ‘My own opinion
is, that it were preferable in most cases, to have the Mss.
out of the author’s hands before we proceeded to publish’.
[41]
It seems likely that Hogg would have expected his work to
be published volume by volume as he supplied copy, and that
Blackie & Son wanted the whole work or most of it in hand
before beginning to publish. Ironically, Hogg’s death
would make all his prose work that then existed into final
copy for publication once an agreement had been reached with
his widow as the copyright holder in his work.
The whole Blackie
enterprise was designed to provide a centralised system of
book production, where the publisher was effectively printer,
engraver, and sales staff too, and where the author’s
role was limited to handing over his copy and then receiving
his profits subsequently. The traditional space between printer
and publisher which Hogg had so successfully occupied on numerous
occasions to influence the production of his work had simply
been closed up. Blackie & Son required an absent author,
and by 1837 they had got one.
As the century
progressed the firm’s grip on the two collected sets
tightened, and at the same time the number-driven nature of
the operation becomes more transparent in their records. A
receipt signed by Mrs Hogg shows that on 26 October 1860 for
a sum of £150 she relinquished all interest in the copyright
of the materials contained in them. [42]
By this point, the firm had already been engaged in a number
of methods for disposing of old stock, including sets at reduced
prices, sales of individual volumes with altered title pages
matching the specific contents, [43]
and the issuing of sets in parts. The clearest indication
of the last mode is found in an advertisement in an undated
catalogue listing Tales and Sketches as ‘In 6
vols. price 5s or Parts, 2s. each’, and likewise the
Poetical Works as ‘In 5 vols. at 5s., or Parts,
2s. each. [44]
A few years
after Mrs Hogg had sold any remaining rights, the whole collection
was again reset in larger format under the editorship of the
Revd Thomas Thomson (who provided a Life of the author), and
in this instance a number issue clearly preceded any sale
in volumes. The Stock Edition Book, 1838–1900, shows
the serialisation in detail, through twenty-six parts, from
inception in June 1863 through to September 1865, with an
initial run of 2,000. [45]
The option to buy in book form (volume 1, Tales; volume 2,
Poems and Life), clearly came on its completion, an advert
from a Catalogue of 1865 offering the New Edition ‘In
26 parts, super-royal 8vo, 1s. each; or 2 vols., cloth extra,
32s.’—the last price presumably incorporating
the extra for cloth binding. The Stock Edition book then records
another issue in thirty parts late in 1873; and a Catalogue
of 1874 offers for sale the ‘Centenary Edition’
‘In 15 parts, 2s. each, forming two handsome volumes
super-royal 8vo’. Finally, after another reprinting
itemised in thirty parts in the Stock Edition Book, the Centenary
Edition is advertised in a catalogue of 1884 as ‘In
15 parts at 2s. and 30 parts at 1s. each; forming 2 volumes
sup.-royal 8vo, 36s’. [46]
Scholars and
bibliographers are still liable to think of the Thomson-edited
Works as comprising two large and narrowly printed
volumes, but the Blackie records make it unquestionably clear
that the initial sale was in numbers, and that thereafter
the option of purchasing in parts held at least equal weight
with sales of entire volumes. In such respects, this second
operation offers a useful retrospective insight into the original
1836–37 production of the Tales and Sketches,
where spatial as well ideological considerations may well
have played a significant part in distorting Hogg’s
original work.
Notes
1. The
Nineteenth Century Short Title Catalogue (CD-ROM version,
1996) records datings for Tales and Sketches of [1836],
1837, [185–?], and [1852?], and for the Poetical
Works of 1836/40, 1838, [1838?], [183–], and 1855.
2. Sets
of the original issues of Tales and Sketches and
Poetical Works are found in the Bodleian Library
(at 37.137–42 and 10 THETA 74–78 respectively).
The bindings have turned greyish, and the front hard covers
bear a harp design, with the legend ‘Naturæ
Donum’. A similar, though less plain design, with
gilding and a more elaborate harp, is found in later sets.
In both instances, the poetical works were uniformly bound
with the prose.
3. For
the most authoritative account of the planning and production
of the Magnum Opus, see Jane Millgate, Scott’s
Last Edition: A Study in Publishing History (Edinburgh:
EUP, 1987); the uniform nature of the later sets is described
there on p. 48.
4. Letter
of 20 May 1813, Hogg to Archibald Constable, National Library
of Scotland (hereafter NLS) MS 7200, fol. 203. We are grateful
to the Trustees of the National Library of Scotland for
permission to quote from this and other manuscripts.
5. The
work was published in association with G & W. B. Whittaker
in London, with Oliver & Boyd retaining the management.
It is noticeable that at a later point Hogg was contemplating
a reunification of Winter Evening Tales with his
first published fiction, The Brownie of Bodsbeck; and
Other Tales (1818), which had fared poorly in the hands
of William Blackwood and John Murray: ‘I want The
Brownie &c […] all published in a set as Winter
Evening tales and either a continuation in other two
vols or not as you please’ (NLS Accession 5000/188,
Hogg to George Boyd, 17 Oct 1822).
6. Longman
Archives, Part I, Item 101, Letter-book 1820–25, no.
396C (Longman & Co. to Hogg, 11 Aug 1823; typed transcript
by Michael Bott). A subsequent letter to Hogg from Owen
Rees, giving the green light for the ‘Confessions’
project, throws doubt on this other scheme: ‘With
respect to the Scottish Tales &c, before you can do
any thing it will be necessary for you to have the consent
of Messrs Oliver & Boyd; and after all it may be doubtful
whether a republication at this time would answer’
(25 Oct 1823; no. 388B, typed transcript). We are grateful
to the University of Reading Library for permission to quote
from the Longman Archives in this paper.
7. NLS
MS 4017, fol. 138.
8. The
volume price proposed by Archibald Constable late in 1825
had been a guinea (21s) a volume: see Millgate, Scott’s
Last Edition, p. 5.
9. Basil
Hall’s Voyage to Loo-Choo, not published until
January 1827, owing to Constable’s financial failure:
see Millgate, Scott’s Last Edition, pp. 91–94.
10.
NLS MS 4036, fol. 102.
11.
In a letter of 30 Sep 1830 to Blackwood, Hogg claims
to have got Scott’s support for ‘our proposed
publication of my Scottish tales in monthly numbers’
(NLS MS 4027, fol. 194).
12.
That John Anderson was the link is suggested by a
letter of Cochrane to Hogg, 18 June 1835: ‘I was delighted
to see your friend John Anderson in London […] It
was Mr Anderson who introduced my name to your notice &
I have always felt grateful to him’ (NLS MS 2245,
fol. 262). This most likely refers to John Anderson, junior,
whose shop was at 55 North Bridge Street; the designation
‘junior’ was used to distinguish him from another
bookselling John Anderson, whose premises were in the High
Street. We are indebted to Richard Jackson for information
about John Anderson. A detailed account of the presentation
of this single volume is given in the Introduction to the
Stirling/South Carolina Edition of Altrive Tales,
ed. Gillian Hughes (Edinburgh: EUP, 2003).
13. Letter
to [?Roscoe and Richie], 19 Mar 1832, in the Beinecke Rare
Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University: James Hogg
Collection, GEN MSS 61, Box 1, Folder 17. For the probable
recipients see Hogg’s letter to John McDonald of [c.
18 May 1832] in NLS MS 2245, fols 168–69: ‘I
hope you have the list of what tales each vol. is to consist
[…] I left the charge with Roscoe and Richie who were
Cochrane’s correctors of the press […]’.
14. The
copy of Altrive Tales in the Bodleian Library (at
256.e.14869) contains a last (unnumbered) leaf advertising
‘The Novelist’s Library’, with biographical
and historical notes by Thomas Roscoe. This series, published
by Cochrane and Pickersgill, ran for nineteen volumes, 1831–33;
the original bindings (though yellow rather than green)
resemble in basic design Altrive Tales.
15. See
Hogg’s letter to John M‘Donald, 3 May 1832,
which suggests that ‘Smith, Elder, and Coy [sic]’
take over the 2,000 (from 3,000) copies of Altrive Tales
which, according to Hogg, have not been released (in Mrs
Garden, Memorials of James Hogg, The Ettrick Shepherd,
3rd edn (1885; Paisley: Alexander Gardner, 1904), pp. 268–71).
Hogg probably knew of the firm through his friendship with
Thomas Pringle, the editor of Friendship’s Offering.
16. Fullarton’s
letter offering terms, which included a fee of 100 guineas
to Hogg, is in NLS 2245, fols 208–09; a copy of the
same by Hogg, with Hogg’s letter of acceptance, both
also dated 23 Apr 1832, is in the Beinecke Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Yale University: James Hogg Collection,
GEN MSS 61, Box 1, Folder 47.
17. NLS
MS 3813, fol. 66 (Hogg to Fullarton, 14 Sep 1832); Beinecke
Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University: James
Hogg Collection, GEN MSS 61, Box 1, Folder 36 (Hogg to Fullarton,
14 Oct 1832). For the issuing of The Works of
Robert Burns, edited by the Ettrick Shepherd and William
Motherwell, 5 vols (Glasgow, 1834–36), see J. W. Egerer,
A Bibliography of Robert Burns (Edinburgh and London:
Oliver & Boyd, 1964), pp. 167–68.
18.
Agnes A. C. Blackie, Blackie & Son 1809–1959:
A Short History of the Firm (London and Glasgow: Blackie
& Son, [1959]), pp. 11–12. Hogg’s original
letter to Fullarton, postmarked 30 Jan 1833, and endorsed
‘To be left at his office / Edinr’,
still survives (NLS MS 3813, fol. 71); it makes no mention
of any Tales project.
19. Blackie
Archive, Glasgow University Archives & Business Records
Centre, UGD61/8/1/1, items 6 and 7. We are grateful to the
Archivist for permission to quote from the Blackie Archive
in this paper and to reproduce the entry from the Stock
Edition Book as an illustration.
20.
NLS MS 807, fols 16–17, 18–19. These letters
were apparently once positioned alongside Martin’s
in the same Blackie letter book (see note above), but are
recorded there as having been sent ‘To National Library
Feb 1937’.
21. Blackie
Archive, UGD61/8/1/1, Item 10.
22. Evidence
of an eventual meeting can be found in a letter from Hogg
to Mrs William Laidlaw of 4 Nov 1833: ‘Mr Blackie
of Glasgow was here the other day and I bargained with him
for six Vols of Tales offering him sixteen more which he
declined contrary to every rule of Grammar’ (Queen’s
University of Kingston, Ontario: Miscellaneous Collection).
We are grateful to the Queen’s University of Kingston,
Ontario for permission to cite this letter in the present
paper. In his letter to the firm of 25 Mar 1834, addressed
from Altrive, Hogg also refers to his nephew James Gray
as someone ‘whom Mr Blackie jun. has met here’
(Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University:
James Hogg Collection, GEN MSS 61, Box 1, Folder 30).
23.
For the idea of an extended Altrive Tales,
see James Cochrane’s letter to Hogg of 9 Aug 1833,
with plans for ‘1500 Copies of Vols 2 & 3—uniform
in all respects with the first volume’ (NLS MS 2245,
fol. 230); and for the extended ‘Winter Evening Tales’
plan, Hogg’s letter to Archibald Fullarton, 5 Sep
1833: ‘Mr Blackie was to have called on me before
this about The Winter Evening tales but he has not done
so and they are as yet entirely unappropriated. He offered
me only one twelfth of the retail price which I refused
but as he sells to the trade at half price I am not sure
that the proffer would not have been advantageous. I should
like to have your advice’ (NLS MS 3813, fol. 73).
24.
Letter to John [M‘Crone], 3 Aug 1833, owned
by the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle: Brooke Collection,
vol. VI, fol. 83A. We are grateful to the Society of Antiquaries
of Newcastle for permission to cite this letter here.
25.
NLS MS 934, fol. 220.
26.
Hogg to Blackie & Son, 11 Nov 1833, in NLS MS
807, fols 20–21. See also Douglas Mack’s discussion
in ‘Note on the Text’ in his edition of The
Brownie of Bodsbeck (Edinburgh and London: Scottish
Academic Press, 1976), pp. xx–xxvii (pp. xxiii–xxv).
27.
Discussed most fully and most recently in The Private
Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, ed. P.
D. Garside (Edinburgh: EUP, 2001), pp. lxxii–lxxix.
28.
See Agnes Blackie, Blackie & Son, pp. 5–8.
29.
See Iain Bain, ‘Gift Book and Annual Illustrations:
Some Notes on their Production’, and Eleanore Jamieson,
‘The Binding Styles of the Gift Books and Annuals’,
in Frederick W. Faxon, Literary Annuals and Gift Books:
A Bibliography 1823–1903, rev. edn (1912; Pinner,
Middlesex: Private Libraries Association, 1973), pp. 19–25
and 7–17 respectively.
30.
Information on the firm’s changing partnership
arrangements and business premises is taken from W. G. Blackie’s
privately printed Sketch of the Origin and Progress of
the Firm of Blackie & Son, Publishers (Glasgow:
Blackie & Son, 1897), pp. 16–35, 49. The quotations
giving an idea of the work of the firm’s canvassers
and deliverers are from two items in the archive of the
firm, now in the Archives & Business Records Collection
of the University of Glasgow. These are, respectively, a
printed Introductory Account of the Number Trade
(Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1847), pp. 3, 4, and a letter
from the firm to its Deliverers of 4 Oct 1842, both in an
album of catalogues (UGD61/4/2/1).
31.
Stock Edition Book 1813–1864, opening 88 (UGD61/4/1/1):
see Figure 2. The entry for Tales and Sketches continues
on openings 96 and 112, while there is an entry for the
companion set of The Poetical Works of the Ettrick Shepherd
on opening 91.
32.
A Catalogue in the Blackie Archive, the estimated
date of which is Mar 1843, describes the five-volume Poetical
Works, a set uniform with Tales and Sketches,
as ‘Roy. 18mo.’ (UGD61/4/2/1), which was also
the format of the earlier volumes of Scott’s Magnum
Opus edition of the Waverley Novels (see Millgate, Scott’s
Last Edition, p. 36).
33.
This sample, which includes an advertisement for the
work, the engraved title page and frontispiece to the first
volume, and seventy-two pages of The Brownie of Bodsbeck
in a now-faded binding of the first issue Tales and Sketches
is gold-stamped with the word ‘SPECIMEN’ on
the front cover (Stirling University Library, Res MAS 810E36).
34.
The Bodleian Library copy (at 101.h.137) of Thomas
Stackhouse, A History of the Holy Bible […]
(Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1836), consists of parts 1–4
and 6–11 of a twelve-part work, the front cover of
the first part being bound into the volume as a title page.
Each part consists of ten eight-page gatherings, preceded
by an engraving.
35.
An advertisement for the first volume in the Glasgow
Argus of 16 Jan 1837 describes Tales and Sketches
as ‘Publishing in 6 vols. at 5s. each. Vol. 2 will
be issued in February’, while the Stirling sample
advertises the work as to be ‘published in volumes,
price 5s. each, and will be completed in about six volumes’.
36.
The set of Tales and Sketches in the Bodleian
Library at 37.137–42 is one of the few that can be
clearly demonstrated as being a first issue set, partly
because it contains original advertising leaves and has
not been rebound and partly because the addresses given
on the engraved and printed title pages, printer’s
colophons, and publisher’s addresses reflect the changes
effected by John Blackie to the firm at the time of first
publication. Vols 1 and 2, for instance, were printed by
George Brookman, vol. 3 bears the odd colophon of ‘D.
Cameron & Co., Buchanan Court’, while vols 4,
5, and 6 were printed by ‘W. G. Blackie & Co.,
Villafield’. Similarly the engraved title page to
volume 1 gives ‘8 East Clyde Street’ as the
place of publication with a date of 1836, while subsequent
volumes give the Queen Street address and 1837.
37.
One such minor correction, made in the stereotype
plates to the text of ‘Confessions of a Fanatic’,
is noted in Confessions of a Justified Sinner, ed.
Garside, p. xcviii (n. 166). An undated set owned by Gillian
Hughes, with a more elaborate standard binding than those
of the Bodleian set and Stirling sample, includes the replacement
tales for ‘A Bush Aboon Traquair’.
38.
The advertising leaf cited is in vol. 2 of the copy
of Tales and Sketches in the Bodleian Library at
37.137–42. For an example of the emphasis placed on
the engravings see the review of the first two volumes in
the Glasgow Argus of 2 Feb 1837, which, after a general
discussion of Hogg’s character as a peasant poet and
his relations with Scott and with Blackwood’s Edinburgh
Magazine, states that the ‘elegance of these volumes
is especially deserving of notice. We have seen nothing
handsomer or in better taste from the Scottish press. The
illustrations, two in number to each volume, are superb’.
The review then goes on to devote two paragraphs to detailed
descriptions of the four engravings of the two volumes published
to date, and states, somewhat baldly, ‘we should consider
it a work of supererogation as well as beyond the narrow
limits of a newspaper critique, to enter into a discussion
of the literary merits and characteristics of the Ettrick
Shepherd’.
39.
Confessions of a Justified Sinner, ed. Garside,
p. lxxviii.
40.
The paper cover to the first part of Stackhouse’s
work is bound into the Bodleian copy at 101.h.137 as a title
page. Blackies’ ‘Notice to Subscribers’
is to be found in the Blackie Archive at UGD61/12/3/17,
together with another printed notice suggesting that subscribers
to Aikman’s History of Scotland had been placated
by the addition of two engravings to the work over and above
the number originally promised. The advertising leaf may
be found in the first volume of the set of Poetical Works
in the Bodleian library at 10. THETA. 74–78, while
Blackies’ letter to Mrs Hogg of 23 Aug 1841 is in
Stirling University Library, MS 25, Box 2 (3). Vol. 5 of
some early sets of the Blackie edition of Hogg’s Poetical
Works have a separate notice to subscribers dated May
1840 pasted to the front end-papers to explain the substitution
of Hogg’s own memoir of his life for the promised
memoir by Wilson, with a facsimile of Wilson’s autograph
promise that ‘a Memoir of Mr Hogg, on a more extensive
scale than was at first contemplated, is now in preparation
by Professor Wilson, and will be published […] within
a few Months, in the same style and form as these volumes’.
The work, however, never appeared.
41.
Martin to Blackie & Son, 13 Feb 1833, in UGD61/8/1/1
Item 10.
42.
Blackie Archive, UGD61/1/11/2 (Bundle of Assignments
with Authors, unnumbered item). A record of royalties paid
to Mrs Hogg for the two original sets, 23 Aug 1841, survives
in Stirling University Library, MS 25, Box 2 (3). This shows
royalties of £270 from 2,000 copies sold of the Tales,
£135 from the sale of a further 1,000 of the same,
and £42 4s from 500 of the Poems. These sums
are calculated at the rate of 10% of a reduced price of
27s and 22s 6d for the two sets respectively (i.e. 4s 6d
a volume), the result being marginally better than the one-twelfth
of retail price mentioned during the Hogg–Blackie
negotiations.
43.
In an undated Catalogue [marked in pencil 28 Jan 1852],
giving trade and retail prices, the Tales and Sketches
are listed at a reduced price of 21s (trade 15s 9d), and
the Poetical Works at 17s 6d (trade 13s 2d). In another
undated Catalogue, probably for the trade, the volumes are
listed as on sale individually (‘in fancy cloth, gilt’)
under separate titles: e.g. ‘THE QUEEN’S WAKE,
and other Poems’, retail price 3s 6d, and ‘MEMOIRS
AND CONFESSIONS OF A FANATIC, and other Tales’, at
the same price. This tallies with some surviving volumes
which have engraved title pages with these volume-particular
titles rather than the old generic headings. Both catalogues
mentioned above are found in the Blackie Archive, UGD61/4/2/1.
44.
Blackie Archive, UGD61/4/2/1. Immediately following
this in the same undated catalogue is a full-page advert
for The Imperial Family Bible (‘to be completed
in about 36 Parts, at 2s. 6d. each’), the earliest
complete edition of which is 1844, with another edition
in 1858. Its prominent featuring here under the heading
‘New Works and New Editions’, together with
the apparent hedging about the parts needed for completion,
argues more strongly for the earlier date here and for the
catalogue belonging to the early 1840s.
45.
Blackie Archive, UGD61/4/1/2 (Stock Edition Book,
1838–1900), pp. 212–13. The completed 1865 Works
contains 148 numbered gatherings of eight pages each, and
it would seem that the individual Parts consisted of five
or six such gatherings each. Gillian Hughes has seen a surviving
paper-covered part in the family papers of Mr David Parr
of Nelson, New Zealand, who is a descendant of James and
Margaret Hogg.
46.
Blackie Archive, UGD61/4/1/2, pp. 213–14, 273–74;
undated catalogues, [1865], [1874], [1884], UGD61/4/2/1.
