My Dear Friend,--Learning here in town that letters may go today
to the "Great Western," I seize the hour to communicate a
bookseller's message. I told Brown, of C.C. Little & Co., that
you think of stereotyping the _History._ He says that he can
make it profitable to himself and to you to use your plates here
in this manner (which he desires may be kept secret here, and I
suppose with you also). You are to get your plates made and
proved, then you are to send them out here to him, having first
insured them in London, and he is to pay you a price for every
copy he prints from them. As soon as he has printed a supply for
our market,--and we want, he says, five hundred copies now,--he
will send them back to you. I told him I thought he had better
fix the price per copy to be paid by him, and I would send it to
you as his offer. He is willing to do so, but not today. It was
only this morning I informed him of your plan. I think in a
fortnight I shall need to write again,--probably to introduce to
you my countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick, the writer of affectionate
New England tales and the like, who is about to go to Europe for
a year or more. I will then get somewhat definite from Brown as
to rates and prices. Brown thought you might better send the
plates here first, as we are in immediate want of copies; and
afterwards print with them in London. He is quite sure that it
would be more profitable to print them in this manner than to
try to import and sell here the books after being manufactured
in London.
On the 30th of April we shall ship at New York the first two
volumes of the _Miscellanies,_ two hundred and sixty copies. In
four weeks, the second two volumes will be finished, unless we
wait for something to be added by yourself, agreeably to a
suggestion of Wheeler's and mine. Two copies of _Schiller's
Life_ will go in the same box. We send them to the port of
London. When these are gone, only one hundred copies remain
unsold of the first two volumes (_Miscellanies_).
Brown said it was important that the plates should be proved
correct at London by striking off impressions before they were
sent hither. This is the whole of my present message. I shall
have somewhat presently to reply to your last letter, received
three weeks since. And may health and peace dwell with you
and yours!
--R.W. Emerson