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Publishing Houses 545 tive and neutral, was the chief distributing centre for the South and, to a considerable extent, for the West. ^ Moreover, evidence is not clear as to when Boston, for the second time, began to lead, though we may say probably some time in the early forties. During the prolific period between the establishment of the house of Harper in 1817 and that of Scribner in 1846, New York saw the birth of many houses that were and are destined to loom large in the history of American pubKshing. In 1825 the house of Appleton was founded; in 1832 appeared John Wiley & Sons; John F. Trow, and Wiley, Long & Putnam were established in 1836, to be followed three years later by Dodd, Mead & Company. Of a much later period are the firms of McClure and Company, Doubleday, Page and Co., The Century Co., and Henry Holt and Company. The successful booksellers and publishers of the first quarter 01 the century, Small, Carey, Thomas, and Warner of Phila- delphia ; Duyckinck, Reed, Campbell, Kirk & Mercein, Whiting & Watson, of New York; West & Richardson, Cummings & HiUiard, R. P. & C. WiUiams, Wells & Lilly, and S. T. Arm- strong, of Boston; Beers & Howe, of New Haven; and P. D. Cooke, of Hartford, who had, in almost every case, won success as mere reproducers of British works or of purely utilitarian American ones, were being replaced, in all these cities save the last two, by firms whose names are now familiar wherever the English language is read. Almost inevitably the average reader will underestimate the profound influence of our old publishers in bringing sweetness and light into the sombre, narrow lives of our forefathers, in spreading education, and, above all, in helping to inculcate the national consciousness without which a literature cannot exist; though of course the two wars with Great Britain were the all-enveloping factors which make a history of purely American publication possible. But the great outstanding factor in the history of our publishing in the nineteenth century is the absence of and the struggle for an international copyright law. Much of the development of the short story in America,^ the rise to 'See Brotherhead, W., Forty Years among the Old Booksellers of Philadelphia, p. 27. Brotherhead also has an interesting discussion of the beginnings of the vogue for Americana. ^ See Book III, Chap. vi. VOL. Ill — 36