Piracy_ The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates - Adrian Johns [179]
LEVIATHAN
As the reprint industry grew, it developed a hierarchy. A Dickens novel might appear first in a good-quality reprint by Carey or some other respectable firm; then in a cheap piracy of that reprint; then in chapbooks; then in serialized forms; then in provincial newspapers; then in 25¢ "railroad" editions; and finally as chapters printed on railway timetables. As this happened, distinctions between propriety and transgression became increasingly blurred. Reprinters who ignored the courtesies issued popular works in enormous quantities and at very low prices. A five-volume Macaulay appeared in sixty thousand copies, at i5¢ per volume. Reprinters also issued science (Liebig's Chemistry) in impressions well into the tens of thousands. And just as the Careys and Harpers justified their own reproductions as moral enterprises, so these "pirates" (as Carey called them) openly defended theirs as exemplifying republican values. Here, after all, was an endeavor that distributed improving literature and authoritative ideas in unprecedented quantities and at extraordinarily low prices. It arguably did more to make America a truly lettered republic than any number of polite Philadelphia publications. It was in monarchical England, one pirate observed, that special societies had to be created topush useful knowledge out; here, entrepreneurs of knowledge responded to the pull of the masses.20
The sensational climax of this piratical arms race came with the advent of the so-called story papers. Issued on newsprint, and initially forming supplements to actual newspapers, these organs took the republic of piracy to its logical conclusion by abandoning the book altogether. Their raison d'etre was to take advantage of preferential postage rates to reach enormous readerships. They first arrived on the scene in 1839, when another banking crisis had precipitated a depression in the publishingworld. Commitments to courtesy threatened to dissolve under the strain, while Carey responded by withdrawing from the reprint business altogether to concentrate on science and medicine." The best known of the story papers that now appeared were Brother Jonathan and The New World, both edited by the partnership of Park Benjamin and Rufus Griswold. They were published weekly, using the massive capacity of industrial printing to produce in large numbers and low prices-BrotherJonathan sold for 6c. They scored an early victory by getting the first Nicholas Nickleby via the brand-new steamship Great Western. From then on, they promised, they would capitalize on such advanced technology to beat the oldguard to the latest works.
From these grew the bizarre objects called "leviathan" papers. Brother Jonathan created the genre, claiming to employ "the largest folio sheet in the world." One Christmas special measured more than six feet by four. To modern eyes their close-printed sheets are almost unreadable, and in fact they were soon replaced by more manageable formats that readers could bind up to form their own books. But with no copyright fees, no binding, no storage, no bookstores, and no tied-up capital, they were ultra-cheap to produce. By 1843 the New World was selling twenty to thirty thousand copies a week. Only the biggest-selling conventional newspapers came close to such figures. Publicity stunts helped - Benjamin had street vendors march in cacophonic processions through central New York when a new title arrived. As a correspondent told London's Athe- naeuln, the phenomenon reached to every kind of literature: in one week this witness had seen a historyof Ireland, the Edinburgh Review, d'Aubigne's account of the Reformation (translated from French), Liebig, and Froissart. The story papers hailed it all as "a great literary revolution," "truly democratic," and utterly subversive of "intellectual aristocracy."22
The story papers pillaged European periodicals, reprinted old works under new titles, and, at a pinch, stole