Carey & Lea, Printer and Publisher: Seasonal Variations in its Business Cycle, 1833-1836

Notes

By Richard H. Gassan

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1 Stern, Madeline B., ed. Publishers for Mass Entertainment in Nineteenth Century America. Boston: G.K. Hall & Co, 1980, p. 76.
2 Charvat, William. The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800-1870: The Papers of William Charvat. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, p. 80.
3 Tebbel, John. A History of Book Publishing in the United States: Volume I, The Creation of an Industry, 1630-1865. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1972, p. 370.
4 Biographical and firm history from: Kaser, David. Messrs. Carey & Lea of Philadelphia: A Study in the History of the Booktrade. Philadelphia: U. of Philadelphia Press, 1957; Publishers for Mass Entertainment; A History of Book Publishing; and Van Doren, Charles. Webster's American Biographies. Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, Inc. 1984.
5 Messers. Carey & Lea, p. 72.
6 Ronald Zboray's A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 177, 163 (Table 15), points to the 1840's and 1850's; however, William J. Gilmore's Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England, 1780-1835. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989, suggests an earlier date; see, for example, p. 208.
7 The primary sources for this study are: Kaser, David, ed. The Cost Book of Carey & Lea, 1825-1838. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963, and Account Book vol. 38 of the Matthew Carey MSS Collection at the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts.
8 These figures are culled from the Cost Book. Although useful, these cannot be considered definitive, as the Cost Book generally listed only first runs and not later editions. Despite this, it is a reasonable gauge and is probably the only source of any reliability for any of this data.
9 Souvenir information from Cost Book, pp. 275-284; "sumptuously bound" from Messers. Carey & Lea, p. 138.
10 Figures from Kaser, Cost Book. Numbers from 1829 and 1831 are too fragmentary to give accurate total costs -- for example, the Cost Book listings for 1829 have figures for only 16 of 38 titles identified by Kaser in Messers Carey & Lea, p. 72.
11 Quote from Carey in Charvat, The Profession of Authorship, p. 82; other information from Messers Carey & Lea, p. 81, and Charvat, William. Literary Publishing in America, 1790-1850. Amherst: The University of Massachusetts, p. 54.
12 Copyright information from Messers Carey & Lea, p. 24; Scott from Messers Carey & Lea, p. 110; Austen from Messers Carey & Lea, p. 54. Scholarship by Michael Winship, American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields. Cambridge (U.K.): Cambridge University Press, 1995, esp. pp. 137-138) describes how the firm of Ticknor and Fields practiced the "courtesy of the trade" in copyright (royalty) payments. These payments, non-existent in the 1840's, increased in the 1850's.
13 Charvat, The Profession of Authorship, p. 78.
14 from an analysis of yearly costs from Cost Book, pp. 79-123. For 1831, the Cost Book has figures on 48 of the 64 titles Kaser identified. From these partial figures, in 1831, the last year that coherent figures can be extracted, the average cost was $1,159, with a run of 1,525. For 1830, the average cost was $1,287, with an average run of 1,583.
15 Messers Carey & Lea, p. 142.
16 See Stephen Nissembaum's The Battle for Christmas. My references are to a manuscript copy, dated June 27, 1995; see esp. pp. 171-183.
17 Information for this and subsequent genre category charts are from Kaser, Messers. Carey & Lea, p. 72.
18 Strictly speaking, it is not a classic account book -- it is more of a Journal, as described in Winship, American Literary Publishing, p. 26. A classic account book has separate pages for each entity the company dealt with -- the entry, for example, for J. Kates & Co., above, would be on a page devoted solely to J. Kates & Co. expenses and payments. The American Antiquarian Society catalog, however, refers to it as Account Book, v. 38.
19 Desilver's Philadelphia Directory and Stranger's Guide for 1833. Phila: Robert Desilver, for March, 1833; and Desilver's Philadelphia Directory and Stranger's Guide for 1835 & 1836. Philadelphia, Published by Robert Desilver, 110 Walnut St., For April, 1835
20 The Christmas season is defined here as payments made from the first week of November through the third week of February. Given the presumed lag from issuance of a bill to its payment, this would cover production work done from around late September through late December.
21 Kaser, Messers. Carey & Lea, p. 55.
22 Kaser, Messers. Carey & Lea, p. 56.
23 Kaser, in Messers. Carey & Lea, places its publication "in the year 1835...January," (p. 59), but the Cost Book entry (#463, p. 161), dates the book as December, 1834. Kaser's quote is from Messers Carey & Lea, p. 59, and is taken from the Bookseller's Advertiser and Monthly Register of New Publications, 1 (1834) (emphasis added). On January 3rd, 1835, Henry Carey wrote to the Boston Transcript, complaining about excerpts printed in the Transcript without permission. All this points to a pre-Christmas release. The book's copyright is 1835. The payment to Mrs. Butler (made out to a Pierce Butler, apparently her husband) was made May 1, 1835, and is receipt #751 in Account Book v. 38.
24 Cost Book, p. 183 (Crayon), p. 189 (Alhambra), p. 182 (Hawks), and p. 190 (Horse Shoe); Horse Shoe success in Messers Carey & Lea, p. 88.
25 As described in Charvat, Literary Publishing, pp. 76-80.
26 Lea & Febiger, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Publishing, 1785-1935. Philadelphia: Lea & Febirger, 1935, p. 25.
27 see esp. Stephen Nissembaum's Battle for Christmas.
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