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The assertion that the first two editions of Henry Fielding's Miscellanies (both published in April 1743) are in reality only one edition, was first made over forty years ago. 1 However, recent bibliographic studies, such as William B. Todd's "Recurrent Printing" (SB, XII [1958], 189-198), have stimulated a re-examination of the truth of such statements. Since the two
The history of the composition and publication of this work is one of delays and postponements. At some time during the winter of 1741-1742 Fielding issued proposals for printing by subscription a miscellaneous collection of his works, both poetry and prose, in three volumes. On June 3, 1742, Henry Woodfall printed 700 more proposals for Fielding. 2 Two days later the Daily Post printed a notice of these proposals which describes the contents of the volumes and then states:
The Price to Subscribers is One Guinea; and Two Guineas for the Royal Paper. One Half of which is to be paid at Subscribing, the other on the Delivery of the Book in Sheets. The Subscribers Names will be printed.
Note, The Publication of these Volumes hath been hitherto retarded by the Author's indisposition last Winter, and a Train of melancholy Accidents scarce to be parallell'd; but he takes this Opportunity to assure his Subscribers, that he will most certainly deliver them within the Time mentioned in his last Receipts, viz. by the 25th of December next.
Subscriptions are taken in by Mr. A. Millar, Bookseller, opposite St. Clement's Church in the Strand.
As the Books will very shortly go to the Press, Mr. Fielding begs the Favour of those who intend to subscribe to do it immediately. 3
However, in the winter of 1742-1743 Fielding was again plagued with sickness and worries (which he describes in the preface to the Miscellanies), and so publication was again postponed. On February 14, 1742/43, the Daily Advertiser carried the following notice:
One Monday the 28th instant will be ready to be deliver'd to the Subscribers . . . Miscellanies. . . . Those who are pleas'd to subscribe to these Miscellanies, and have not yet sent in their Names, are desir'd to do it before the 22d instant, on which Day the Subscription will be closed: And all such as have dispos'd of any Receipts, and have not yet sent in the Names of the Subscribers are requested to do it within the above-mention'd Time. 4
For some reason, however, the volumes were not published on February 28. The next notice to the subscribers appeared in the St. James Evening
The General Evening Post for April 21-23 announced that "Next Week will be published, Price bound 15s. The Second Edition, of Miscellanies. . . ." In its next issue of April 23-26, 1743, the same paper advertised that "This Day were published . . . The Second Edition, of Miscellanies. . . ." 7 This so-called second edition, "printed for A. Millar" and minus the list of subscribers, 8 was thus offered to the public only nineteen days after the first edition was ready for the subscribers.
Careful comparison of these two "editions" indicates not only that they are in truth, one edition but also that they are merely varying states of the same impression.9 The first state is composed of copies printed on both royal paper and coarse paper and contains the list of subscribers. Copies of the second state have different title pages, lack the list of subscribers, and are printed only on coarse paper. More specific information is given in the following description of variants.
J. P. de Castro (p. 259) was the first person to publish the fact that William Strahan was the printer of this volume. The entry in Strahan's ledger is as follows:
April 2, 1743. For printing the first vol. of Fielding's Miscellanies 26½ sheets pica 8o, no. 1000 coarse and 200 fine, at £1 : 2 : 6 per sheet £29 : 16 : 0
The first state of this volume contains 26 sheets plus one leaf of printed material, but the second state contains only 24¾ sheets. The majority of the copies printed were second state; so by charging for 26½ sheets for all the copies printed, Strahan increased his profit at Fielding's expense.11 Volume II contains 26½ sheets and volume III 27 sheets. Assuming the same rate for the printing of these volumes, the total cost to Fielding for printing his Miscellanies was approximately £90.
I assume that Strahan made a mistake in listing only 200 copies printed on the fine (or "royal") paper. In the first place, the subscription list calls for 214 copies on royal paper. Secondly, we know that there were some subscribers whose names are not on the subscription list. 12 Thirdly, we know that 250 copies of volume III were printed on royal paper (see below). Since the royal-paper copies are noticeably larger than those printed on coarse paper, Millar would surely have detected a shortage of fifty copies of volume I. Strahan may have been unfair to Fielding but certainly not to this extent; the ledger entry must be in error.
Volume II is the only volume that does not have "Second Edition" printed on the title page of the copies of the second state. The printer of this volume is unknown.13
The printer of volume III was William Bowyer the younger, and the entry in his ledger reads as follows:14
Miscellanies
For the Author: and sold by A. Millar, 1743
3 vols. 8vo. Vol. III, 27 sheets. 250 fine
paper, delivered 30 March. Subscription ed.
2nd ed. A. Millar.
As above. 1000 coarse paper, delivered 30 March.
Volume I was printed in a somewhat unusual manner. In the first state iA and a (including d1-3) were printed as separate sheets, whereas Z1 was printed separately. In the iA gathering, however, leaves 1 and 2, 3 and 6, 4 and 5, and 7 and 8 are conjugate. 15 The evidence of the watermarks and chain lines indicates that the imposition was as follows:
In the a gathering, leaves 1 and 5, 2 and 4, and d1.2 are conjugate. a3 is pasted in between a2.4 and d3 is pasted in after d2. (This too is proved by the Princeton copy.) Again, the evidence shows that the imposition was as follows:
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Further evidence that the forme of a was arranged in the above manner is found by examining the offsets in the University of Michigan coarsepaper copy of the first state. At some stage of printing the inner forme (probably when the sheets were stacked after "drying"), two sheets that were not quite dry were laid down with their wet sides facing each other and end-for-end. The result was a mutual offset of pages d1r and a3v, d2v and d3r, a1v and a2r, and a4v and a5r.
The only puzzling aspect of the first state of volume I is the separate imposition of Z1. In a book of 26 sheets surely Strahan could have included the printed matter of Z1 if he wished to without resorting to pasting in an extra leaf at the end of the book. Note, however, that by printing even one leaf more than 26 sheets, Strahan charged a rate throughout the printing for 26½ sheets. At a time when labor was cheap and paper was expensive, this was profitable for Strahan. Thus, as mentioned above, on all the copies of the first state Strahan saved three-eighths of a sheet and on the second state one and three-fourths sheets.
In the second state of this volume the iA and a gatherings were deleted, d and Z were printed together as a half-sheet, and the revised title and special title (again conjugate) were printed on a quarter-sheet. This manner of printing shows that a simple mistake at the bindery can account for the fact that Wells (cited above) says that he has a copy of the second state that contains the list of subscribers.
Both states of volume II contain 26 1/2 sheets, and in each case 2E and the title were printed together as the half-sheet.
Both states of volume III contain 27 sheets, and it seems most likely that a, the title, and 2E were printed on one sheet.
Each of the three volumes was printed by a different printer; but since the printers were all printing approximately the same number of sheets with the same kinds of paper and type, and since they were probably provided with their copy at the same time, it seems very likely that the chronology of their work was approximately the same. Assuming that the notice in the Daily Advertiser (see above) was correct in stating that the subscription would close on February 22; assuming that no copies were printed until the subscription closed; and knowing that at least two of the volumes were completely printed by the end of March or the beginning of April, it seems that the printers were faced with the task of printing 1250 copies of 26 1/2 or 27 sheets octavo in a period of about five weeks. I believe that they could do this at their normal rate of printing. 16
The printing probably proceeded in this manner: (1) 250 copies of the first state were printed on royal paper; (2) without altering the formes, approximately 350 copies were printed on the smaller sheets of coarse paper; (3) altering the forms of volume I as described above, and changing the title pages on all the volumes, approximately 650 copies of the second state were then printed on coarse paper. 17
Of course, it is another matter to prove that such a procedure was followed. An examination of the royal-paper copy and the coarse-paper copy of each state of a given volume shows that they are invariant so far as the body of the text and the headlines are concerned. (Volume I has no headlines except in the preface.) Any further conjectures concerning the printing, therefore, must be based upon the evidence of the press figures.
Both states of volumes I and II lack enough variations in their press figures to enable one to make meaningful deductions. The evidence of the printing sequence, therefore, must be found in volume III. The royal-paper copies of volume III lack four press figures found in all the coarse-paper copies of both states, the figures being added before the coarse-paper copies were printed. Also, only the second state has a press figure in 2E. (Since the title page was changed in the second state, and since it was printed on the forme with 2E, the printer undoubtedly introduced the new figure at that time.)
Perhaps it will be argued that the coarse-paper copies may have been printed first and that the press figures fell out before the royal-paper copies were printed. This, however, was not the case. In the royal-paper
This particular evidence reflects the printing practices only in Bowyer's shop and thus is limited to volume III, the press figures in the other volumes generally being on the level of the catchwords. Admittedly there is no conclusive proof to show that volumes I and II were printed in the same manner, but the available evidence does indicate that the printing probably proceeded in the sequence described above.
See, for example, Wilbur L. Cross, The History of Henry Fielding (1918), I, 381 -- hereafter cited as "Cross" -- and J. P. de Castro, "The Printing of Fielding's Works," The Library, I (1921), 259 -- hereafter cited as "de Castro." (In this paper I am neglecting the two volume reprint of the Miscellanies published in Dublin in 1743.)
P. T. P., "Woodfall's Ledger, 1734-1747," N&Q, 1st Ser., XI (1855), 419.
Quoted by Cross, I, 380-381.
First noticed and cited by Henry Knight Miller, Jr. in his unpublished doctoral dissertation "Fielding's Miscellanies," (Princeton University, 1953), Introduction, p. 7 -- hereafter cited as "Miller."
Quoted by John Edwin Wells, "Fielding's Miscellanies," MLR, XIII (1918), 481 -- hereafter cited as "Wells."
The Daily Advertiser does not contain the "This Day published" notice of the Miscellanies until the next day, Friday, April 8, but there is no reason to doubt the notices of the other newspapers.
Once again the Daily Advertiser did not publish this announcement until the following day, Wednesday, April 27.
Wells (p. 482) states that "I have two copies of the Second Edition. One copy contains the list; the other omits it." I have not seen such a copy.
I am accepting William B. Todd's definitions of edition, impression, and state. See his "Recurrent Printing," SB, XII (1958), 191.
I am grateful to William B. Todd for several comments plus descriptions of the three copies of volume I, first state in the University of Texas Library.
Strahan's ledgers show that he did not always engage in such practices -- for example, he sometimes listed discounts given for type that was still standing when a second edition was called for. Throughout his career, however, he occasionally reverted to such dishonest proceedings. In 1775, for example, he charged full price for setting the type of the second edition of Johnson's Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland when over twenty per cent of the second-edition sheets had been printed with the first edition.
One notable example is Fielding's good friend, Ralph Allen. See Pope's letter to Allen, dated 12 April, 1743: The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn (1956), IV, 452. Probably some of Allen's £20 was spent on royal-paper copies.
Miller suggests that Henry Woodfall the elder, who printed the first two editions of Joseph Andrews and the proposals for the Miscellanies, is a likely possibility.
K.I.D. Maslen, "Works from the Bowyer Press (1713-65): A Supplement to John Nichols," unpublished B.Litt. thesis (University of Oxford, 1952), p. 104, as cited by Miller, Introduction, p. 8.
The Princeton University coarse-paper copy of the first state is loosely bound and its spine is broken in several places. Fortunately, this enabled me to determine the conjugacy of leaves with certainty.
When Strahan printed Johnson's Journey in 1775, for example, the normal rate for printing 2000 copies was approximately three sheets per week. (See William B. Todd, "The Printing of Johnson's Journey [1775]," SB, VI [1954], 247-254.) Thus, it does not seem impossible to print slightly better than five sheets per week when making only 1250 copies.
William Strahan's printing of Macpherson's Fingal in 1761 is a later example of a single impression of a book being issued as two editions on two sizes of paper. See William B. Todd's note in the Book Collector (Winter, 1959), pp. 429-430.