After Dodsley’s death, though poetry was at times far from being
an unprofitable speculation, the publishers seem to have shunned
it as a speciality; and, accordingly, a Constable, a Murray, and a
Longman, though gathering large incomes from the sale of the works
of some one or two great poets, placed their main reliance upon the
prose compositions that administered to either the pleasure or the
necessities of their public.
For a time, Taylor and Hessey almost adopted poetical publications as
the mainstay of their business; and in their generous encouragement of
Keats, and others of lesser note, including Clare, are to be gratefully
remembered; but their trade-life as poetical publishers was brief, and
it remained for Edward Moxon to identify his name with all the best
poetry of the period in which he lived, to a greater extent than any
previous bookseller at any time whatsoever.
Edward Moxon, not unlike some others of his craft, began life with
strong literary aspirations. His warm admiration for genius, his
hearty good-fellowship, and his longings for a literary career,
brought him into contact with some of the greatest writers of the
day, and attracted their support and friendship. As early as 1824 he
was made a welcome member of the brilliant circle that owned Charles
Lamb as its chief, and to be a _protégé_ of Lamb’s was a passport
into all literary society. In 1826, he published his first volume,
“The Prospect; and other Poems;” and his friends received it with all
possible kindness, as, perhaps, containing germs of something better.
Even Wordsworth, usually very niggard of praise, wrote him a letter of
encouragement--and warning:--“Fix your eye upon acquiring independence
by an honourable business, and let the Muse come after rather than go
before.” But advice of this nature, even when given with the practical
illustrations that Wordsworth’s own career might have furnished,
had little likelihood of being accepted by a young and impetuous
poetaster; and in 1829 we find Moxon launching another venture on the
world--“Christmas, a poem”--to be as coldly received by the “general
public” as the former. What, however, the advice of a veteran poet
could not effect, a stronger power was able to accomplish.
During Lamb’s residence at Enfield, their acquaintance ripened into
a very frequent intercourse, and eventually resulted in Moxon’s
engagement to a young lady who spent most of her time under the
protection of Lamb and his sister. Lamb had met Miss Isola some years
before at Cambridge, and had taken so much interest in the little
orphan girl, who was then living with her grandfather--an Italian
refugee, and a teacher of languages--that by degrees he came to be
looked upon as almost a natural guardian. Marriage, however, was out
of the question until her lover had some more substantial manner of
livelihood than the cultivation of the Muse seemed ever likely to
afford him. In this strait, Rogers came forward and generously offered
to start him in life as a publisher, and, with the goal of matrimony in
view, the offer was eagerly accepted.
Accordingly, in 1830, Moxon opened a small publishing shop at 34, New
Bond Street. The first volume he issued was “Charles Lamb’s Album
Verses,” and the dedication sufficiently explains its purpose:--
“DEAR MOXON,--I do not know to whom a Dedication of these
trifles is more properly due than to yourself: you suggested
the printing of them--you were desirous of exhibiting a
specimen of the _manner_ in which the publications entrusted to
your future care would appear. With more propriety, perhaps,
the ‘Christmas,’ or some of your own simple, unpretending
compositions, might have served this purpose. But I forget--you
have bid a long adieu to the Muse ... it is not for me nor you
to allude in public to the kindness of our honoured friend,
under whose auspices you are becoming a bookseller. May this
fine-minded veteran in verse enjoy life long enough to see his
patronage justified. I venture to predict that your habits of
industry, and your cheerful spirit, will carry you through the
world.
“ENFIELD, 1st June, 1830.”
An unfavourable notice of these “Album Verses” appeared in the
_Literary Gazette_; but Lamb was too well loved to lack defenders, and
some verses in reply, by Southey, were soon afterwards inserted in the
_Times_.
In the following year the _Englishman’s Magazine_ came into Moxon’s
hands, and to its pages Elia lent the charm of his pen. Although it
only lasted from April till October, its columns still present us with
matter of literary interest. In the same number we find a sonnet signed
“A. Tennyson,” and a very long review upon “Poems, chiefly Lyrical,
by Alfred Tennyson,” written by his friend Arthur H. Hallam. This was
almost Mr. Tennyson’s first avowed appearance in public; and as Mr.
Moxon’s name was so intimately associated with the poet’s future works,
we may be allowed to go back for a moment. In 1827 a little duodecimo
volume of 240 pages, entitled “Poems, by Two Brothers,” was published
by J. and J. Jackson, Market Place, Louth; and the “two brothers” were
Charles and Alfred Tennyson, the latter being only seventeen years
of age. In 1829 Mr. Tennyson gained the Chancellor’s gold medal at
Cambridge for a prize poem on “Timbuctoo,” his friend Hallam being also
one of the competitors. The prize poem was printed with his name, and,
a thing quite unprecedented, was noticed at length in the _Athenæum_,
as indicating “really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have
done honour to any man that ever wrote.... How many men have lived for
a century who could equal this?” In the following year, 1830, appeared
the “Poems, chiefly Lyrical, by Alfred Tennyson;” London: Effingham
Wilson, Royal Exchange, 1830 (pp. 154); and it was these, of course,
which were reviewed by Hallam in the _Englishman’s Magazine_. In the
course of a very long notice, the writer says:--“The features of
original genius are clearly and strongly marked. The author imitates
nobody; we recognise the spirit of the age, but not the individual
pen of this or that writer.... In presenting the young poet to the
public as one not studious of instant popularity, and unlikely to
attain it ... we have spoken in good faith, commending the volume to
feeling hearts and imaginative tempers.” Even before this review,
deeply interesting when we remember what a loving and loved friend he
was who wrote it, the little volume was noticed in the _Westminster
Review_ by, it is believed, Mr. John Stuart Mill, as demonstrating “the
possession of powers, to the future direction of which we look with
some anxiety. He has shown, in the lines from which we quote, his own
just conception of the grandeur of a poet’s calling; and we look to him
for its fulfilment.” Encouragement such as this led Moxon to publish
a further volume of Mr. Tennyson’s poems in 1833, and the connection
thus commenced lasted throughout his lifetime. In a letter addressed
to him by Wordsworth, as a northern correspondent in the book-market,
there is intelligence, neither pleasant for a veteran poet to indite,
nor for a young publisher to receive:--“There does not seem to be much
genuine relish for poetical publications in Cumberland, if I may judge
from the fact of not a copy of my poems having been sold there by one
of the leading booksellers, though Cumberland is my native county.” In
this same year, too, Moxon published, for the first time, a collected
edition of the “Last Essays of Elia;” but before this time he proved,
by his attention to his business, that he was worthy of Miss Isola’s
hand. Lamb’s letters to Moxon, in the few weeks preceding the marriage,
are in his happiest, most delicately-bantering style--for instance:
“For God’s sake give Emma no more watches--_one_ has turned her head.
She is arrogant and insulting. She said something very unpleasant to
our old clock in the passage, as if he did not keep time, and yet he
had made her no appointment. She takes it out every moment to look at
the minute hand. She lugs us out into the field, because there the
bird-boys cry out--‘You, pray, sir, can you tell us the time?’ and she
answers them punctually. She loses all her time looking to see what the
time is! I heard her whispering just now--‘so many hours, minutes, &c.,
to Tuesday; I think St. George’s goes too slow.’... She has spoilt some
of the movements. Between ourselves, she has kissed away the ‘half-past
twelve,’ which I suppose to be the canonical hour in Hanover Square.”
On the 30th July they were married. Lamb, as long as he lived, regarded
them with almost paternal affection, and, at his death, left Moxon his
treasured collection of books.
Meanwhile the illustrated edition of Rogers’s “Italy” was in
preparation, and with a view to its publication Moxon moved to Dover
Street, Piccadilly.
Rogers spared no cost in the production of what was intended to be
the most beautifully illustrated volume that had ever been published.
£10,000 was spent on the illustrations and the engraving of them.
There were fifty-six engravings in all by Turner, Stothard, and other
eminent artists. Turner was to have received fifty pounds apiece for
his drawings, but at one time the whole speculation threatened to turn
out a failure, and he then offered the bard the use of them for five
pounds each instead. To match this luxurious volume the illustrated
edition of Rogers’s “Poems” was brought out, at a further cost of
£5000, with seventy-two engravings by Turner, Stothard, Landseer,
Eastlake, &c., and, in spite of the enormous outlay on the two works,
their increasing popularity must have recouped the poet, for upwards
of 50,000 copies are said to have been sold before the year 1847.
Moxon was always proud of the share he had taken in the production of
these works. All the volumes he issued were indeed remarkable for the
beautiful manner in which they were “got up,” and in 1835 he published
such an exquisite edition of his own sonnets that the beauty of this
dandy of a book enraged and alarmed a writer in the _Quarterly_:--“Its
typographical splendours led us to fear that this style of writing was
getting into fashion,” but fortunately for the reviewer’s peace of mind
he discovered “that Mr. Moxon the bookseller is his own poet, and that
Mr. Moxon the poet is his own bookseller.... The necessity of obtaining
an imprimatur of a publisher is a very wholesome restraint, from which
Mr. Moxon--unluckily for himself and for us--found himself relieved.”
Surely after a notice like this--indeed we have only quoted the
kindlier portion, for often as publishers din the unsaleable nature of
the drug poetry into the ears of young writers, the charm of retorting
upon a bookseller seldom falls so temptingly before an author.--Moxon
must have regretted that he did not cleave to a promise, held out in
his first essay in 1826:--
“You’ll hear no more from me,
If critics prove unkind;
My next in simple prose must be;
Unless I favour find.”
This will perhaps suffice as a specimen of the productions of
Moxon’s muse, though the first lines in the volume, a “Sonnet to a
Nightingale,” are inviting. They had been the cause of much pleasantry
among the author’s friends, as having been penned by one who had
never heard the song of the bird to which they were addressed, and
the internal evidence upon this point is indubitably strong; the
sonnet perhaps, to state it in proportion, is to Keats’s “Ode to the
Nightingale,” as the owl’s screeching “too-whit” to “Sweet quired
Philomela.”
By this time, however, Moxon, in spite of his bad poetry, had made a
wide reputation as a poetical publisher, and from his establishment was
issued, not only all that was most valuable of contemporary poetical
literature, but with true catholic taste, the works of our older
dramatic poets, edited for the most part by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. By
degrees, too, Moxon was enabled to add to his catalogue the works of
many of the poets who had shed a lustre upon the two first decades of
this century, especially the works of Keats, Shelley, and Leigh Hunt.
In 1839 he brought out Mrs. Shelley’s edition of her husband’s
poems--the first “complete edition” that had been published. In the
following year a bookseller in the Strand named Hetherington was
indicted for selling a work entitled “Haslam’s Letters to the Clergy
of all Denominations,” and was sentenced to four months’ imprisonment,
as having published in this volume sundry “libels” against the Old
Testament. While the trial was pending, Hetherington commissioned a
servant of his, named Holt, to purchase copies of “Shelley’s Poems”
from the publisher, and from the retail dealers, and then obtained
a similar indictment against Moxon. The celebrated trial the “Queen
_v._ Moxon” was of course the result. The prosecution relied chiefly
upon certain passages in “Queen Mab,” more especially in the notes,
and these were read in order to prove the charge of blasphemy. Mr.
Serjeant Talfourd was engaged for the defence. “I am called,” he
commenced, “from the bar in which I usually practise, to defend from
the odious charge of blasphemy one with whom I have been acquainted for
many years--one whom I have always believed incapable of wilful offence
towards God or towards man--one who was introduced to me in early
days, by the dearest of my friends who has gone before--by Charles
Lamb--to whom the wife of the defendant was an adopted daughter.” After
a magnificent oration in which he asked, with a fitting indignation,
“if the publisher of any penny blasphemy is to have the right of
prescribing to us legally that such and such pages are to be torn from
the treasured volumes of our choicest literature,” he left in the
hands of the jury “the cause of genius--the cause of learning--the
cause of history--the cause of thought,” and concluded by a tribute to
Moxon’s character--“beginning his career under the auspices of Rogers,
the eldest of a great age of poets, and blessed with the continued
support of that excellent person, who never broke by one unworthy
line the charm of moral grace which pervades his works, he has been
associated with Lamb, whose kindness ennobled all sects, all parties,
all classes, and whose genius shed new and pleasant lights on daily
life; with Southey, the pure and childlike in heart; with Coleridge,
in the light of whose Christian philosophy the indicted poems would
assume their true character, as mournful, yet salutary, specimens of
powers developed imperfectly in this world; and with Wordsworth, whose
works, so long neglected and scorned, but so long silently nurturing
tastes for the lofty and the pure, it has been Mr. Moxon’s privilege
to diffuse largely throughout this and other lands, and with them
the sympathies which link the human heart to nature and to God, and
all classes of mankind to each other.” Lord Denman, before whom the
case was tried, instructed the jury, in his summing up, to administer
the law as it undoubtedly stood, though he himself was of opinion
that the best and most effectual method of acting in regard to such
doctrines was to refute them by argument and reasoning rather than
by persecution. The jury accordingly returned a verdict of guilty,
unaccompanied by any observation whatsoever. The illegal passages were
eliminated for a time; and thus the matter ended. The trial took place
in June, 1841, at a time when Moxon was in great sorrow for the loss of
his eldest son, and much sympathy was exhibited towards him.
Shelley’s name, however, was designed to be associated with further
publishing vexations. In 1852, Moxon issued a volume entitled “Letters
of P. B. Shelley,” with an introductory essay by Mr. Robert Browning.
The usual presentation copies were sent to the papers, the “Letters”
were generally noticed as being essentially characteristic, but the
discretion shown in printing them was much questioned. Naturally
Mr. Browning’s essay attracted a large share of attention, though
consisting of but forty-four pages, for it is his only acknowledged
prose work (why, by the way, has it never been reprinted?). He
describes Shelley as a man “true, simple-hearted, and brave; and
because what he acted corresponded to what he knew, so I call him a
man of religious mind, because every audacious negative cast up by
him against the Divinity was interpreted with a mood of reverence and
adoration.” An early copy of the volume was sent to Mr. Tennyson, and
Mr. Palgrave, who was then paying him a visit, turned over its pages
until he came to a passage in a letter which he at once recognised
(with a most dutiful and filial remembrance), as a portion of an
article upon “Florence,” which Sir Francis Palgrave had contributed to
the _Quarterly Review_. He immediately communicated with his father,
who, after comparing the printed letter with the printed article,
wrote to Moxon and informed him that this letter was cribbed bodily
from the _Quarterly Review_. Moxon replied that the original was in
Shelley’s handwriting and that it bore, moreover, the proper dated
postmark. Even the experts pronounced the letters genuine, and the
detectives were then set to work--the book having, of course, been
immediately withdrawn from publication. The MSS., which had been bought
at public auction, were traced to Mr. White, a bookseller in Pall
Mall. He alleged that in 1848, two women began to bring him letters
of Byron’s for sale, at first in driblets and impelled by poverty,
they then offered him other letters by Shelley, and books with Byron’s
autograph and MS. notes. His suspicions were aroused, he followed them
home, and insisted upon seeing the real owner of the letters. This
person was introduced to him as Mr. G. Byron, a son of the poet, and
thus he thought the mystery satisfactorily explained. He then sold the
letters relating more purely to family matters to Shelley’s relatives;
Murray became the eventual purchaser of Byron’s, and Moxon of Shelley’s
letters--and Murray, who only had his volume in the press, at once
stopped it. The letters are now believed to have been the forgeries by
G. Byron, and are indeed indexed under his name in the British Museum
Catalogue. The system upon which he had obtained money for them appears
to have been very extensive and well organised, and as some few were
probably genuine, and others based upon a substratum of truth, the
difficulty of judging those which in various ways have got into print,
was extreme. Altogether, this is one of the most notable literary
forgeries of modern times.
To return, however, to Moxon, we find that in 1835, conjointly with
Longman, he published Wordsworth’s “Yarrow Revisited,” and shortly
after this the poet transferred all his works from the Messrs. Longman,
and we believe that Moxon purchased the copyrights of the past poems
for the sum of one thousand pounds.
Mr. Browning’s earlier volumes, like Mr. Tennyson’s “Lyrical Poems,”
had been published by Effingham Wilson, but in 1840 Moxon issued
“Sordello.” This was followed by “Bells and Pomegranates,” published in
numbers between 1842 and 1845, and by a “Blot in the Scutcheon,” (acted
at Drury Lane in 1843), and which, though unsuccessful on the stage,
was in the opinion of Charles Dickens “the finest poem of the century.”
In 1848, however, Mr. Browning removed his works to the care of Messrs.
Chapman and Hall.
Among the other authors whose productions were issued by Moxon
somewhere at this period, and whom we cannot do more than mention, were
Talfourd, Monkton Milnes (Lord Houghton), Tom Hood, Barry Cornwall
(Proctor), Sheridan Knowles (who was by turn an usher, a journalist,
a dramatic poet, and a dissenting minister), Quillinan (whose works
Landor wittily, though unjustly, described as Quillinanities), Mr.
Browning (for a brief period only), Haydn, and Dana.
Mr. Tennyson had been silent for ten years, had been maturing his
talents, been mourning for the death of his friend Hallam, and probably
during the whole of this time not a thousand copies of his poems had
been sold. But he was already acknowledged as one of our greatest
living poets by a small and ardent band of admirers, and in 1842 he
was induced to break his long silence and publish an edition of his
poems in two volumes, of which the second was composed entirely of new
pieces, and in the first some were new, and many had been re-written.
By this time his success was publicly and generally acknowledged, and
fresh editions were called for in 1843, 1845, 1847, and from that
date in still more rapid succession. The beauty and purity of his
poems attracted royal favour, and in 1846 he received a pension from
the crown, and this unfortunately gave offence to some rivals in the
divine art, and Lord Lytton in the “New Timon” attacked “Schoolmiss
Alfred.” To this Mr. Tennyson replied by a poem published in _Punch_
(February, 1846), which may be summed up in the two words, “Thou
bandbox.” In 1843, Wordsworth, in a letter to Reed, says, “I saw
Tennyson when I was in London several times. He is decidedly the first
of our living poets (_sic_), and I hope will live to give the world
still better things. You will be pleased to hear that he expressed, in
the strongest terms, his gratitude to my writings. To this I was far
from indifferent, though persuaded that he is not much in sympathy with
what I should myself most value in my attempts, viz., the spirituality
with which I have endeavoured to invest the material universe, and the
moral relations under which I have wished to exhibit its most ordinary
appearances.” Again, in 1848, Mr. Emerson, in describing a visit to
Wordsworth, says, “Tennyson, he thinks, a right poetic genius, though
with some affectation. He had thought an elder brother of Tennyson at
first the better poet, but must now reckon Alfred the true one.”
When Wordsworth died in 1850, the laureateship was offered to Mr.
Rogers, and the letter conveying the offer was written by Prince
Albert. The poet, however, was now eighty-seven years of age, and he
felt that his years and his wealth should prevent him from interfering
with the claims of younger and poorer men, and he generously felt
impelled to decline the honour, which was then conferred upon Mr.
Tennyson, who received, as he says so beautifully, in reference to
Wordsworth, the
“Laurel, greener from the brows
Of him who uttered nothing base.”
Before this, however, the “Princess” and “In Memoriam” had appeared.
For a time Mr. Tennyson was again silent, breaking his silence only
by four poems contributed to the _Examiner_, and by the “Ode on the
Death of the Duke of Wellington” (Moxon, 1852). One of the four poems
in the _Examiner_, however, was “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” and
of this Moxon published a quarto sheet of four pages.--“Having heard
that the brave soldiers before Sebastopol, whom I am proud to call my
countrymen, have a liking for my ballad on the ‘Charge of the Light
Brigade’ at Balaclava, I have ordered a thousand copies of it to be
printed for them.--ALFRED TENNYSON.”[26]
In 1855 appeared another poem resulting from the war--“Maud,” one
of the most beautiful and least understood of all Mr. Tennyson’s
compositions.
On the 3rd of June, 1858, Edward Moxon died, having, as a publisher,
earned the esteem of all his clients and the gratitude of all the
public. What his services to literature have been the names comprised
in his catalogues bear ample witness. Truly Lamb’s dedicatory prophecy
had been amply fulfilled! On his death the immediate management of
the firm devolved upon Mr. J. Bertrand Payne, and under his rule the
business was distinguished rather for the energy with which the already
published works were pushed forward than for any encouragement held out
to acknowledged genius. Mr. Payne himself undertook the superintendence
of the “Moxon’s Miniature Series,” and, as soon as the “Idylls of the
King” had been published, of the luxurious edition of them illustrated
by that extraordinary genius, M. Gustave Doré. There was one exception
to his lack of enterprise. In 1861 Mr. Pickering published the “Queen
Mother” and “Rosamond,” two plays by Mr. Swinburne, then a young
man of eighteen. Except in the case of a condemnatory notice in the
_Athenæum_ these poems attracted little or no attention; but in 1865
“Moxon and Son” published the “Atalanta in Calydon,” which at once
marked out the author as the most musical, and one of the greatest, of
our living singers. It was at all events pretty generally acknowledged
that for true poetic inspiration, momentary if it were, no poet of our
generation could rival Mr. Swinburne. This opinion was still further
strengthened by the publication of “Chastelard,” in 1866. When, however
the “Poems and Ballads” appeared, they were met by such a whirlwind
of abuse from critics, whose professional morality was supposed to
have been shame-stricken, that the publishers explained that they
were unaware of the nature of the poems they had laid before the
public, and suppressed the edition before it got into circulation. As
a consequence the few copies that had been sold were eagerly sought
at a price of five guineas, and the volume was speedily republished
in America. In this strait, Mr. J. Camden Hotten came forward, and to
him Mr. Swinburne confided all his hitherto published poems, including
the much-abused and also much-praised “Poems and Ballads.” His latest
works, however, “The Ode to the French Republic,” and the “Songs before
Sunrise,” have been issued by Mr. Ellis, who as the publisher of Mr.
Morris, Mr. Swinburne, and Mr. Rossetti, bids fair to occupy the
position so long and so honourably occupied by Moxon as a distinctively
poetical publisher.
Before this Mr. Tennyson had removed his copyrights to the care of Mr.
Strahan, and though in 1869 Mr. Arthur Moxon was admitted a member of
the firm, the old glory had departed from them; and in the summer of
the year 1871 the whole business was transferred to Messrs. Ward, Lock,
and Tyler, and Mr. Beeton was appointed manager; the house in Dover
Street was no longer retained, though Mr. Arthur Moxon’s services have
been secured to superintend the business department. The first volume
issued under the new régime--the “Sonnets” of Edward Moxon--is a timely
tribute to the founder of the famous house. We could not, perhaps, give
him higher praise than in saying that he was as good as a publisher as
he was indifferent as a poet.
[Illustration]
_KELLY AND VIRTUE_: