Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/134

546 Book Publishers and Publishing commanding position of the American magazine, ' the stifling of the American playwright for three quarters of a century, ^ and the desperate struggle of all save our greatest novelists against grave difficulties until 1891 ^ may be traced to the want of such a law. In 1790 Congress passed a national law for the protection of literary property; and in those days of non-professional authorship and of dependence upon Europe, it no doubt thought that the situation had been fully met, even though as early as 1782 Jeremy Belknap" was gathering advice as to how he might prevent himself being pirated in London. But when professional authorship began in America with Morse, ' the geographer, Webster, and Brown, a new influence was in- troduced, for the rewards of American authorship, in fact, the possibility of American authorship in some cases, and the tenor of American publications are inextricably inwoven with the international copyright law. Beginning with Scott's novels, the American publishers, who before had not been numerous enough to interfere seriously with each other or able to supply the demands for British classics, entered on an absorbing race in speed of publications and in underselling powers. In 1823 Carey & Lea of Phila- delphia received advance copies of cantos eleven and thirteen of Byron's Don Juan. It was immediately given out to thirty- five or forty compositors, and within thirty-six hours an American edition was on sale. Later equally marvellous tales come down to us of speed in translating the last French success. When in 1838 the Great Western and the Sirius, the first vessels to cross the Atlantic entirely by steam, arrived at New York, the great idea dawned upon a certain class of publishers that with this close connection journalism might be made of literature. Accordingly there sprang up a large number of mammoth weeklies for the re- publication in cheap form of whatever, in this eager age of reading, promised to be popular as it issued from the European press. For instance, Zanoni was published in the spring of 1 842 ' See Book III, Chap. xix. ' See Book III, Chap. xvii. 3 See Book III, Chap. xi. ■'See Book II, Chap. xvn. sSee Book II, Chaps, i and xvil.