Baltimore Evening Post, 15 September 1807

Frequently in the course of my research people ask me what sort of sources I use when studying provincial print culture.  Most historians love a good primary source.  There is a secret thrill at discovering something, long buried in a dusty archive, which will change the way people understand an individual or event.  The discovery of a new set of sources can make a historian’s career and open up new fields of exploration.  Less glamorously, amazing historical knowledge can be gained by examining existing sources in new ways, and mining tiny pockets of information from scattered and diverse source material.

One of the problems of studying provincial print culture is that source material is often difficult to find.  Most of the surviving publisher’s archives come from the largest and most long-lived publishers: think John Murray, or Mathew Carey, or Longman and Co.  (Though these larger archives can contain an amazing amount of material relevant to provincial print culture.)  Very rarely do we find surviving archives for small printers and publishers in provincial towns. This is partially why so few have studied provincial print culture, and why so many are curious about my source material.

Simply put, provincial newspapers are one of my favorite, and most useful sources.  Provincial papers are multidimensional sources.  They can be used in a variety of ways and they provide information through their text, paratext, and materiality.  Newspapers carry a wealth of details about their printers and editors.  They can tell you about distribution routes, prices and subscribers as well as the political affiliations and business associations of their owners.  Readers can learn about the capital available to the printers, and the quality of their type and paper supply.  For scholars of print culture the importance of local newspapers extends beyond the information they convey on their pages.  Their simple existence tells a story about the local demand for print, making them one of the most valuable sources for the study of provincial print culture.

For scholars of any area, sitting down and reading longer runs of local papers can give unparalleled access to the life of a community.   The advertisements provide details of available goods and services.  Editorials highlight local concerns.  Even the foreign news can hint at the larger communication networks available to local readers.  Taken together these things begin to reveal the rhythm of local life.

Amidst the mundane details of everyday life, small gems can rekindle our fascination with history and keep us eagerly reading.  One of my favorite gems is the above advertisement.  Though of little direct significance, Spottee the horse reminds me of the joys of reading the newspaper, and how much it can tell us about provincial communities.

Freedom of information became a critical issue during the American Revolution.  As Joe Adelman described, the fight for freedom of information took on revolutionary tones during the 1760s.  Not only was the circulation of information considered vital to the American war effort, but it was also seen as crucial to the development of a republican citizenry.  In order to be a virtuous citizen of the new republic, individuals needed to be informed.  This basic premise underpinned American understanding of the role of copyright.  Yes, American authors should be rewarded, but it was equally important to prevent information, i.e. publications, from being monopolized by copyright holders.  American authors were to be rewarded and nurtured with copyright protection, but citizens must have information, so copyright periods were kept short and all foreign texts were fair game for reprinters in America.  In practice, during the eighteenth century, American copyright was applied to only a small percentage of texts, even among those produced by American authors.  The economies of the book trades ensured that publishers were often better-off to risk being pirated than to spend the money to have a work copyrighted.

The American example emphasizes two important issues.  First, America’s founding father’s recognized that copyright had the potential to produce monopolies of information that were inimical to republican citizenship.  Secondly they recognized that copyright, at least in a limited form, was important for the encouragement of authors, and that some compromise was needed in both directions.  The United States was very late to join with other nations to extend copyright protections internationally, because that extension conflicted with the American beliefs (and established business practices).

So what lessons can we take from this example?  First, I think it is important to be aware that even the American government has not always seen piracy as an evil.  American beliefs about the necessity of an informed citizenry came with a price, namely ensuring that all citizens had access to the important information, even if that meant limiting the rights of copyright holders.  Secondly, seeing the benefits our eighteenth-century ancestors took from publishing piracy should prompt us to re-evaluate our current intellectual property system.  Even if we choose to continue enforcing copyright protection, we should also be looking for ways to increase access and distribution of ideas for the benefit of everyone.

Hopefully this little jaunt through eighteenth century piracy has provided some additional perspectives to the contemporary issues facing the world and has raised awareness of the long history of debates over piracy.

A Copyright Will Protect You From Pirates - by Ioan Sameli - http://bit.ly/lJrePv. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-sa 2.0 license

A Copyright Will Protect You From Pirates – by Ioan Sameli – http://bit.ly/lJrePv. Licensed under a Creative Commons by-sa 2.0 license

It is not every day that the issues that are so central to my work on eighteenth century publishing are such flashpoints of contemporary debate. However this is exactly what is happening with the controversy over internet piracy and the pending SOPA legislation in the US. Here we have a timely opportunity to learn from the past. (Yeah for History!)  In the eighteenth century, piracy was the scourge of corporate entities and copyright holders, but many individuals and governments acknowledged that it also had benefits. Hopefully this activity will provide some food-for-thought and a bit of balance for these polarizing and high-stakes questions. I plan on focusing on piracy in the eighteenth century, but for a great road map to trace these developments over time, see Adrian Johns’ book Piracy: the intellectual property wars from Gutenberg to Gates.

First, we need a bit of definition of what publishing piracy was in the eighteenth century. In Britain copyright and trade courtesies protected texts.  Any unauthorized reprints were piracies. However in Ireland and America it was perfectly legal to reprint British texts, even if they were protected by copyright. It was only if these reprints were then imported into Britain that they became piracies.  In America, texts could be registered for copyright, first by state and later nationally, but this only protected American authors from American pirates. Copyright was a very local concept. This parallels current issues of internet piracy, where discrepancies between national copyright law and practices of use create opportunities for pirates to flourish.

Ireland was a unique case, not because they reprinted texts copyrighted elsewhere, most nations did this to some degree, but because even within Ireland there was no copyright regime for Irish texts. The Irish publishing industry became experts in producing quick and cheap reprints of British texts, both for their own market and for exporting to places like America.  In the eighteenth century Ireland stands as the premier example of pirate publishing.  Though these publications were legal in Ireland, these products were often transformed into piracies as they traveled around the Atlantic.

There were several benefits to these ‘pirate’ editions.  Richard Sher, in the Enlightenment and the Book, asserts that the Enlightenment traveled across the Atlantic on a wave of Irish reprints.   Without Irish pirates, the ideas of Scottish authors like Adam Smith would not have had the impacted that they did.  Pirate editions spread ideas by increasing distribution of books.  These editions created greater competition within the publishing world, and opened new markets for print.  Even the monopolistic London publishers were forced to change their practices to compete with Irish reprints for the American export market.  The greater availability and lower prices of books changed people’s reading habits.  Reading became more casual and commonplace, even before the great increases in literacy in the nineteenth century.

It could be argued that pirate publishers benefited everyone in the English-speaking Atlantic world, except possibly copyright holders (and there may even be an argument for them).

Despite the fact that eighteenth century Ireland was often touted as the ideal ‘Pirate Kingdom’, in the words of Adrian Johns, it should not be forgotten that it was in many ways dependent on the local characteristics of copyright for these advantages.  Without Britain and its copyright system, the Irish reprint industry would have had less incentive and advantage to provide the public with cheaper alternatives.

However price was not the only benefit of pirate publications.  Part II of this post will focus on America, and how piracy not only benefited readers, but was an intrinsic republican value central to the building of a new nation.

A recent post by Lisa Griffith on the Irish History Blog Pue’s Occurrences has caught my eye.  Lias has a job working at the National Print Museum in Dublin and the post shares 5 things she has learned there.  Lisa’s post, which reminded me about all the really interesting machines in the National Print museum, also helped to remind me how important it is as scholars dealing with printed matter to understand the physical process of printing.

I was very fortunate, early in my research, to have Dr. Charles Benson insist that if someone was going to study eighteenth century printing they should know the basics of how to operate a hand press.  He took a few of us down to Trinity College’s printing house, where a few hand presses are kept for producing Christmas cards, and gave us an opportunity to set some type, ink some paper, and pull the press.  This exercise, while extremely fun, also gave us an appreciation for the physical strength and dexterity needed to man (or woman) a hand press all day long in a busy print shop, and a greater understanding of the physical limitations of eighteenth century printers.

However, in case you don’t happen to know the man with the keys to Trinity’s printing house, Dublin’s National Print Museum also offers groups a similar chance to play around with a hand press.  The museum, unlike Trinity also contains a very wide range of presses, which really allow visitors to get a sense of the development of this technology over the last several hundred years.  Many other institutions offer tours, summer schools, or master classes which teach individuals the ins and outs of hand printing.

If you are serious about studying any aspect of book history during the hand press period, I would advise that you take advantage of one of these opportunities.  Understanding the production process ggives us a much better appreciation for the materiality of printed objects, and the best way to understand that process is by doing it, even if it is only once.

Like the Philadelphia conference, full versions of the papers from Dublin have been made available online on a private wiki.  (Contact Johanna Archbold at TCD for access.)  Meanwhile the papers from Philadelphia will be maintained online by the McNeil Center for the foreseeable future.  So anyone unable to attend, one or both parts of the conference, should still be able to view the papers.

The Dublin conference began with an excellent keynote lecture by Richard B. Sher of the New Jersey Institute of Technology titled ‘Piracy of Patriotic Publishing? Conflicting visions of the reprint trade in late eighteenth-century Britain, Ireland, and America’.  Sher described the ‘baggage’ Mathew Carey brought with him from Dublin to Philadelphia.  In this instance it was the Irish tradition of patriotic and heroic reprinting which he had learned from the members of the Dublin book trades.  Here Sher echoed what was an important theme throughout both halves of the conference – the importance of Carey’s early life in Dublin to his later American career.

Sher’s talk, along with the first panel of papers on Friday morning gave the Dublin conference more of a book history focus.  Papers by Molly O’Hagan Hardy, Carl Keyes, and myself (Sarah Crider Arndt) discussed aspects of Carey’s printing publishing business in the US.  Here the question of Carey’s position on race was again raised by Hardy’s paper.  Later James Kelly spoke on Carey’s Dublin paper the Volunteer’s Journal, and Andrew Fagal spoke on the reception of Carey’s Navel History by members of Congress and the Republican party.  This focus on Carey’s printing and publishing career addressed a slight gap in the Philadelphia program, although it is important to note that Carey’s role as a publisher of American literature was not covered by any of the papers at either half of the Conference.  It is interesting to note that one of the big questions which came out of the Philadelphia conference was whether Carey was an innovator or simply an aggregator.  While many of the papers on political economy came down on the side of aggregator, both Carl Keyes and myself noted that Carey was often quite innovative in terms of his printing and publishing business, taking advantage of new markets, advertising strategies, and business models.

One area where the Dublin conference addressed a noticeable gap in the Philadelphia program, was in terms of the other members of Carey’s family.  A highlight from Friday’s program was the panel titled ‘House of Carey’ which included a paper by James N. Green on Mathew Carey’s relationship to Benjamin Franklin, and papers by Niall Gillespie on William Paulet Carey and Anne Markey on John Carey.  Together these papers painted a picture of a very prickly collection of brothers, often at odds with each other and the world around them.  One very noticeable absence was the mention of any female member of the Carey family.  Only Karen Kauffman’s paper on Carey’s philanthropic activities among the working poor, given in Philadelphia, significantly addressed Carey’s relationship to anyone of the female persuasion.  Although Padhraig Higgins, in his closing talk in Dublin did discuss the way in which Carey was effected by the very gendered political climate in Dublin.

Political economy continued to be an important topic of discussion in Dublin.  Eoin Magennis did an excellent job of describing Carey’s Irish milieu and the range of opinions regarding free trade which Carey absorbed in Dublin.  Daniel Peart meanwhile demonstrated how Carey later acted on these views in his campaign to influence the US tariff policy.  Finally, a paper submitted by Marc-William Palen, who was unfortunately unable to present the material himself, outlined Frederik List’s influence on the political economic theories of Henry Charles Carey.

In the last panel session on Saturday, Michael Brown gave a very interesting paper placing Carey within a world he described as the ‘Green Atlantic’.  As part of this world Carey was steeped in the eighteenth century culture of social enlightenment.  His paper, offered up several new lenses for gaining insight into Carey’s identity.

Several other papers asked the question of how singular a figure was Mathew Carey, by putting his life in contrast to other Irish radicals.  While these papers were a bit mixed, they did help to place Carey within the context of the ‘Green Atlantic’ as described by Brown, and within a broader wave of Irish emigrants.

During the final wrap-up session Dan Richter of the McNeil Center acknowledged that as a result of these conference we now know much more about the man Mathew Carey, but he posed the question of what these conferences can tell us about the worlds of Mathew Carey?  David Dickson responded by pointing out that Carey can serve as an early precursor to later politically active Irish-Catholic immigrants.  Carey’s life also highlights the importance of personal networks to individuals within the Atlantic world.  Studying Carey’s experience may open new questions on the Irish diaspora.  Michael Brown added that this conference has shown how Mathew Carey, like many other radicals of his day, read America as the model of how Ireland should be.  While these are both good answers, they display an understandable bias towards issues of concern in Irish history.  It would be very interesting indeed if this question could have been posed to the audience of the Philadelphia conference as well.  What different answers and concerns might have been highlighted there?

Overall, both halves of the ‘Worlds of Mathew Carey’ conference have proven to be very exciting.  They have brought scholars together from across the Atlantic and across disciplinary lines, and they have gone some way towards integrating the many faces of Mathew Carey.  Further scholarship stemming from this conference should prove to be useful to both Carey scholars and to those interested in the wider Atlantic world of his time.

James Green of the Library Company, and one of the acknowledged experts on Mathew Carey, started things off on Thursday night.  Green explained why there has not yet been a definitive biography written on Carey.  This is partly a result of the lack of private papers, despite the huge amount of correspondence which has survived.  However it is also the result of the contradictory and complex nature of Carey himself.  In Green’s words, Carey represents too many things to too many people.  He was an immigrant, printer, publishers, patriot, political economist, and philanthropist.  He was also a paradox – a man of competition and cooperation.

Over the following two days many speakers introduced us to new and different ‘Mathew Careys’.  However one of the key concepts which kept appearing was the debt which Carey owed to his early days in Ireland, and the continuity with which he maintained his beliefs for the rest of his life.  Cathy Matson’s paper titled “Mathew Carey’s Learning Experience: Commerce, Manufacturing, and the Panic of 1819″ made both of these points as did Michael Carter’s paper “Mathew Carey: The Mind of an Enlightenment Catholic.”

At the same time as these concepts kept re-appearing over the weekend, so too did several questions.  One of these, raised very early on by Maurice Bric and Andrew Shankman, dealt with Carey’s stance on race.  Was Mathew Carey a racist, or simply a man of his age?  A second question asked whether Mathew Carey was an innovator or an aggregator?  Martin Burke summarized this debate nicely in his concluding remarks by stating that Carey was perhaps an aggregator who made novel interventions in various debates.

Burke’s concluding remarks, (and probably his opening remarks in a few weeks in Dublin) emphasized the relevance of Mathew Carey to so many areas of study.  These include, but are not limited to, Political Economy, History of the Book, Eighteenth Century Ireland, Irish American History, and Catholic Historiography.

It will be interesting to see where the second half of the conference, at Trinity College Dublin 17-19 November, takes these debates.  A sizable group of individuals, including myself, will attend both parts of the conference, adding to the transatlantic nature of the event, and hopefully allowing for greater continuity between the sessions.  For anyone who is planning on attending the Dublin event further details of the program and information on registration can be found on the Dublin conference website.  If you are unable to attend the second part, the papers should be available online in the next few weeks, or you can contact the organizers for access.

Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion of this review in a few weeks time.

Book Cover

In the book, Pearson explains the evolution of books as objects.  He traces developments in paper technology, binding, illustration, and printing to show how each of these processes contributed to the final product.  Particular emphasis is put on the uniqueness of individual books before the advent of mass production.  This is used as one of the primary reasons for the preservation of ‘old books’ rather than the adoption of digital surrogates which simply re-create the text.

One of the reasons for this new revised edition, is to address many of the developments in digital books and surrogates which have rapidly expanded over the last few years.  The first chapter of this book discusses new technology like the Amazon Kindle.  Though this chapter is freshly revised, and recently published its perspective on the ever quickening pace of technological innovation seems dated already.  (Highlighting one of the problems with printed books).  Pearson believes that the time when books will no longer be the primary means of transmitting ideas is in the forseeable future (if not already here), and that in light of that we need to reconsider our relationship to books and libraries.  In these chapters, Pearson is at his most successful, provoking thought and encouraging mindfulness in our interactions with books.

Since this text focuses on the appearance and physical aspects of books, it should be no surprise that it is beautiful in and of itself.  Perhaps resembling a coffee table book more than your average academic tome, it sports glossy images on nearly every page.  These visual examples are perhaps the most valuable part of the book.  Because of these images, Pearson’s work would make an excellent introductory textbook for bibliographical studies or the history of the book.  For institutions that lack rare books collections, or historical libraries, Pearson’s book provides and excellent opportunity to view the physical characteristics of the objects he discusses.  This is further enhanced by a concise list of further reading and a visual case study at the end of the book.

I have two slight criticisms to offer.  The first, which has been noted before, would be that the images in the book are often separated from the text in which they are discussed making for awkward flipping between pages.  The second, is that the book has a very heavily English bias.  While this is understandable given the author’s position as the Director of Libraries, Archives and Guildhall Art Gallery at the City of London, this may make it less-relateable to readers who are not familiar with English history and literature.

Overall, this book is well worth a read for anyone interested in book history.  The relatively inexpensive price, at less than twenty pounds, makes it a worthy investment as an introduction to the bibliographic arts for students or enthusiasts.

The conference promises to be very exciting, and should cover a diverse range of topics, so if anyone is interested in 18th or 19th Century print culture, politics, economy, or the Irish diaspora please check it out.

This looks to be an extremely exciting event, which will allow scholars from both sides of the Atlantic to engage is some sociability and debate.  Hope to see you there!

Thursday, 17 November, 2011

National Library of Ireland

6pm     Keynote Lecture

Richard B. Sher, New Jersey Institute of Technology

Piracy or Patriotic
Publishing? Conflicting Visions of the Reprint Trade in Late Eighteenth-Century
Britain, Ireland and America

Followed by Reception in the National Library of Ireland

Friday, 18 November 2011

Trinity Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin 

Martin Burke (CUNY), Mathew Carey – Philadelphia Conference Review

Maurice Bric (UCD), Mathew Carey – Dublin Conference Preview

Session 1:

Molly O’Hagan Hardy (Southwestern) “If that be in my power”: Transatlantic Copyright and Local Citizenship in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia

Carl Keyes (Assumption College) “A New Spring to the Business” Mathew Carey and Innovations in Consumer Advertising in Eighteenth-Century America

Sarah Crider Arndt (Trinity College Dublin), Mathew Carey Baltimore Bookseller

Session 2:

James Kelly (St Patrick’s College) Carey and the Volunteers Journal 

Andrew Fagal (State University of New York) War, memory, politics and Mathew Carey’s Naval History

Brendan MacSuibhne (New Jersey?) title TBC

Session 3:

James N. Green (Library Company of Philadelphia), “I was always dispos’d to be serviceable to you”: Benjamin Franklin’s relationship with Mathew Carey

Niall Gillespie (Trinity College Dublin) William Paulet Carey: Literary Journalism in Associational Dublin

Anne Markey (Trinity College Dublin) John Carey and the Politicisation of Children’s Fiction

Saturday 19 November 2011

Session 4:

Eoin Magennis (Intertrade Ireland) Mathew Carey and the meanings of ‘free trade’ in Ireland in the 1770s and 1780s

Daniel Peart (Queen
Mary, University of London) “The vital interests of a great nation are too valuable to be offered a sacrifice to any man or any party”: Mathew  Carey and the making of US tariff policy

Marc-William Palen (University of Sydney) An old controversy laid to rest: The ideological origins of Henry Charles Carey

Session 5:

Kenneth Ferguson, Philadelphia and the divergent destinies of Carey and Tone

David Barnwell (National University of Ireland, Maynooth) Mathias O’Conway & Mathew Carey: Two Irish Catholics, Two Different Stories

Session 6:

Michael Brown (University of Aberdeen) The Politicisation of Mathew Carey

Johathan Wright (Trinity College Dublin) “A man of the mob”: Peter Finnerty and the Irish contribution to English radicalism, c. 1799-1822

Tim Murtagh (Trinity College Dublin) Mathew & William Paulet Carey: contrasting attitudes towards plebeian radicalism

Talk by Padhraig Higgins (Mercer Community College) on women and gendered language from his recently published work A Nation of Politicians: Gender, Patriotism, and Political Culture in Late Eighteenth-Century Ireland (History of Ireland & the Irish Diaspora) University of Wisconsin Press (2010).

Where the magic happens.

Now hurricane Irene has done her best to disrupt work over the weekend.  Friday was interrupted by extensive preparations for the coming storm.  Provision needed to stocked (water, flashlights, peanut butter and wine), and keys secured.  All of the residents here at the Library Company prepared for a weekend without power, or the internet.  We discussed early American entertainment and pioneer resourcefulness.  However as it turned out, there wasn’t really much of a storm here in Philadelphia, and work continued with little actual interruption.

While nature has been doing her best to de-rail my research over the week, it has actually been a very productive week in the archives.  The primary purpose of this trip was to read Mathew Carey’s correspondence at the HSP.  Several very interesting letters between Carey and Patrick Byrne a Dublin bookseller could possibly shed new light on the importation of Irish books into America as well as Byrne’s later American career.  Vincent Kinane quote some of these letters extensively in his work on Irish book exports, which have been recycled by other scholars.  The most notorious section of which, describes the ‘vile’ books circulated in Ireland and the more refined American reading tastes.  However the full letter puts these statements in more perspective.

From the Mathew Carey Letterbooks

On 22 October 1788 Carey wrote to Byrne that:

“The book business in this country is much altered of late.  As the conclusion of the war, there were few books, and money in great abundance.  In consequence any trash went off well. Now, the  very reverse is the case.  We are deluged with books from England and Ireland, and money is very scarce. Therefore even the best books sell slowly, and at low rates.  ….What demand we have, is for books, which easily command cash with you.  Bibles, law books, delphini classics, dictionaries, etc. etc. are called for, and purchased.  Novels will by no means answer.”*

Though Carey did describe certain books in Ireland as vile, he was by no means categorizing all Irish publications.  It is little tidbits like this, that make these research trips exciting, even without natural disasters.

*Mathew Carey to Patrick Byrne, 22 October 1788, Mathew Carey Letterbook, vol. 1, pp 75-76, Lea and Febiger Collection 227b, HSP.