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By Root 1876 0

a relative unknown, they sent the author £5o in acknowledgment of the huge success they had enjoyed. By comparison, the copyright due to an American, James Fenimore Cooper, was about $4,ooo.h1 The Harpers justified paying Bulwer only £ioo by arguing that his popularity in the States was substantially created by their efforts, not only in publishing the books but in orchestrating reviews and responses. The very name of Harper on the title page, they informed him, mitigated criticism. But then they added a sting. Their very success would inevitably encourage piratical rivals - they sent a pirated Last Days of Pompeii to prove the point-and they warned that if Bulwer were to approach any other American publisher then they too would pirate his works to destroy their market. The threat laid bare for a moment the raw reality behind the proclamations of civility that the trade liked to make in more public settings.

At its peak, the efficiency of reprinting was awe inspiring. Distributing a work to ten or more printing houses, an experienced American publisher could have an entire three-decker novel on the streets in two to three days. In 1822, Henry Carey employed nine houses to rush out Scott's Fortunes of Nigel overnight- and was only just ahead of a rival in New York that was set to appear two days later. Competing piracies, ranging down to a tiny 18"'° appeared just after that, killing Carey's sales. In 1825 the firm printed Byron's Don Juan at thirty presses in thirty-six hours. And when Carey received Scott's dentin 2 Durward, he had i,5oo copies of the three-volume novel printed, bound, and distributed in twenty-eight hours. At that speed, he crowed, he had "the Game completely in our hands." "The Pirates may print it as soon as they please," for he expected to have "complete and entire possession of every market in the Country" for the all-important first forty-eight hours. "Independently ofprofit," he added, it was "in the highest degree gratifying to be able to manage the matter in our own way without fear of interference." In New York, meanwhile, the Harpers managed to issue the three-volume Peveril of the Peak in twenty-one hours. If an original work were in another language, then translation slowed the process down-but only by a little. A German original could be Englished, printed, and published in a matter of days. As Carey explained to a London publisher, he could not possibly purchase anything resembling a copyright in such circumstances. "The only advantage we derive from the purchase," he pointed out, "is the sale of 3 or 4 days until another Edit. can be printed in New York, Boston, and here."12

This was a cutthroat business carried out by people who saw themselves as gentlemen. Just as Mathew Carey had sought to establish a civility in the early years, so Henry too attempted to mitigate its wilder aspects. The immediate trigger for this effort was the first serious attempt by British forces to counter American piracy. It took place at a critical time. The economy had hit a slump; Carey confided to Miller that it had cost the firm some $ 3 0, 0 0 o and added that AndrewJackson "ought to be hanged." At this moment, the London publishers Saunders and Otley launched an office in NewYork to challenge the reprinters. Frederick Saunders, son of the proprietor, crossed the Atlantic in person to see off the upstarts. That threat by the Harpers against Bulwer reflected their concern: they realized that theywere nowin a fight on two fronts. First they struck at Carey. Carey had signed William Beckford's Italy the previous summer, but the sheets had disappeared en voyage. By a mysterious coincidence they now turned out to have fallen into the Harpers' hands, and the NewYorkers fed them to a Philadelphia reprinterwho rushed out an impression. Meanwhile the Harpers moved to pirate the very first book that Saunders produced in New York, Lucien Bonaparte's Memoirs. They persuaded Saunders's printer to hand them the sheets, then rushed out their own edition several days before the complacent Londoner could finish his. They