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Wordsworth and the Copyright Act of 1842

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Paul M. Zall
Paul M. Zall*
Affiliation:
Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
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Extract

In a communication to the Times Literary Supplement, J. J. Auchmuty has suggested that a study of Wordsworth as a practical politician might remedy certain traditional misconceptions about the poet's activities in his declining years. As a matter of fact, he worked assiduously at a period of his life “when, according to legend, he is supposed to have been desiccated and devoid of principle,” in attempting to influence the passage of the Copyright Act of 1842. His part in this legislation has been taken for granted by scholars on the basis of statements to several correspondents that he had written many letters in support of the measure. But there is evidence now, both published and unpublished, that for five years he labored continually in assisting Serjeant Thomas Noon Talfourd, the originator of the bill, by letters both private and public, interviews, and an official petition. While it is true that the Act promised to benefit him directly, there is no doubt that his interest in its passage was more than selfish and had its roots in what was, in effect, a struggle for survival of literature of quality in an age demanding quantity.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 1 , March 1955 , pp. 132 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

1 “Wordsworth and Copyright,” TLS, 20 Nov. 1953, p. 743.

2 The phrase is Professor George W. Meyer's, to whom I am indebted for many valuable suggestions for the revision of this paper from its original form.

3 Wordsworth was offered in 1841 a private extension but refused it (iii, 1080). References in parentheses are to Ernest de Selincourt, ed. Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, “The Later Years,” 3 vols. (Oxford, 1939).

4 Letters, “Middle Years,” i, 241–242.

5 Remarks on the Speech of Sergeant Talfourd (London, 1837).

6 MS. references are to unpublished letters in the Wordsworth Collection at Cornell Univ. Library. I am indebted to the Library Board for permission to publish them.

7 The letter is reprinted in William Knight, ed. Prose Works of Wordsworth (London, 1896), i, 377–383 and in Quart. Rev., lxix (Dec. 1841–March 1842), 224–227. Although it is signed “A.B.” there is no question that it is Wordsworth's, on the basis not only of his own allusions to it in other letters (e.g., that to Daniel Stuart, 17 May 1838 [ii, 942]), but of the index QR, lxxx (1847), where it is listed under “Copyright,” though not under “Wordsworth.”

8 Knight, ii, 381–382.

9 This letter is dated 16 April 1838 in Leslie N. Broughton, ed. Some Letters of the Wordsworth Family (Ithaca, N. Y., 1942), p. 75, on the evidence of a postmark; but there are two postmarks—the earlier one “Kendal 14 April,” and the later a London postmark of 16 April; the letter had been forwarded in London.

10 Broughton, pp. 75–76.

11 See his letter to Peel (18 April 1838), ii, 923–924.

12 Poetical Works of Wordsworth, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1941–49), iii, 58, where it is dated May 1838.

13 See my communication to TLS, 16 Oct. 1953, p. 668.

14 That it had not been publicly known before is clear from a letter (24 April 1838) to Wordsworth written by William Johnston, the author of a series of articles favorable to the Bill and published in the Post: “I knew beforehand from Lord Lowther, that you were in favor of Mr Talfourds Bill, and I had some thoughts of taking the liberty of writing to you upon the subject, before I published the articles that have appeared in the Morning Post, but I refrained, through a fear of intruding, not knowing whether the interest you took in the matter was much or little” (MS.).

15 Poetical Works, iii, 410–411.

16 Thomas Noon Talfourd, Three Speeches on Copyright (London, 1841), p. 92. Among the many petitions Talfourd introduced were those from Thomas Campbell, Harriet Martineau, Robert Browning, H. N. Coleridge, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Hood, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Dickens, Samuel Rogers, and Joanna Baillie. Wordsworth's petition is printed on page 111, but without a footnote of the original MS.: “And not less important is this prolongation of Copyright needful for preventing the republication of such productions as the mature judgment of their Authors may have rejected, & which unconscientious Publishers may push into sale by advertizing their own edition as the only complete one of a deceased Author's writings.”

17 Talfourd, p. 100.

18 The MS. of this letter is in the Folger Shakespeare Library and has been published in Broughton, p. 79.

19 Cf. QR, lxlx, 212–218, and the letter to Lockhart (iii, 1099–1100).

20 QR, lxlx, 209.