The Poems of John Ruskin, edited by
W. G. Collingwood,
was published by
George Allen in
1891. The two‐volume edition was released in the two forms that, by then,
Allen had established on a plan that was profitable while remaining responsive to
Ruskinʼs standards of quality for bookmaking and to his ideas of fair trade in selling and distributing books.
That is, for modest consumers,
Allen made the two volumes available for ten shillings net, in the sturdy and serviceable
Uniform Edition.
For collectors,
Allen produced a deluxe edition, lavishing his craftsmanʼs love of fine bookmaking on what a
1900 advertisement described as
“a Large Edition, with 23 Illustrations in Photogravure from Drawings by the Author and Facsimiles of MSS. Medium 4to”, priced at thirty shillings for the two volumes
(reproduced in
Dawson, The Peopleʼs Ruskin, ii).
Even in the less expensive
Uniform Edition format, a few plates were bound into volume 1, which facsimiled samples of
Ruskinʼs boyhood handwriting—embellishments
that
Collingwood and
Allen likely deemed essential to all readersʼ experience of the materiality of the boyhood manuscripts as well as key to
Collingwoodʼs arguments for dating the poems
(see
Ruskinʼs Handwriting).
The Provocation of American Literary Piracy
Sporadic evidence suggests that plans for publication of the poems developed over a number of years.
Presumably, from
Ruskinʼs standpoint, his fatherʼs private publication of
Poems by J. R. (1850) had long ago brought to a close
any perceived need for further collecting of the poems. Ironically, it was the existence of that private publication that,
because of its rarity and increasing interest as a collectorʼs item in the final third of the century, prompted the American publisher
John Wiley & Sons to release an unauthorized edition,
Poems by John Ruskin, in
1882.
The volume was “collected and edited” by
John Osborne Wright,
basing his copytext on poems published in the
literay annuals.
The wording of the title page,
collected and edited, was clearly designed to evoke the sought‐after
Poems by
J. R. “collected |
1850”;
and
Wrightʼs preface highlighted the rising desirability of the
1850 volume,
while pretending to scoff at the rare‐book market in which “copies have become virtually inaccessible except to the most rabid bibliomaniac,
whose heavy purse enables him to successfully outbid competitors in the auction room and bookstore”.
A footnote pointed to the sale of a copy in
London two years earlier for 41 guineas
(
Poems by John Ruskin, ed. Osborne, i, iv).
While the
Osborne edition capitalized on the phenomenon of
Collecting of Modern Authors in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,
the bookʼs preface conveys an impression, however disingenuously, that its piracy was justified as a democratic public service,
by bringing a rare and expensive resource within reach of the common reader.
Ruskin reacted aggressively to counter what he recognized as piracy, but his reaction was complicated by his ambivalence toward his early writings.
Writing in
1882 to
Alexander Wedderburn, he fumed perhaps less about piratical practices by American publishers or about an opportunistic reprint trade
that was simultaneousy pursued by British publishers—issues that increasingly worried
George Allen
(see
Dawson, George Allen of Sunnyside, 22, 25–26).
Rather,
Ruskin at least pretended to be outraged more about English law,
half‐playfully holding
Wedderburn personally responsible for his profession as a barrister: “what a beast British law is!
Iʼm obliged to print these—at least a lot out of—these idiotisms—because another fellow—a blackguard—called Wily! [punning on Wileyʼs name]—has
published them without my leave—copyright of [the literary annual]
Friendshipʼs Offering being out! Theft & libel in one!”
To
Ruskin, literary piracy was mere theft, whether at home or abroad, another way in which authors were denied
fair pay in the tangled system of book dealing, from which he had attempted to extricate his work by setting up
Allen as his personal publisher.
As
Brian Maidment has argued, however,
Ruskinʼs seemingly personalized complaints were more broadly polemical
than the anger or resignation expressed by other British writers toward American piracy
(
Maidment, “John Ruskin, George Allen, and American Pirated Books”, 7–8).
What especially piqued
Ruskin about the Wiley edition was that, as he states in his letter to
Wedderburn,
the publication combined theft with a “libel”, meaning that he disowned the poems as “idiotisms”,
even as he was compelled to protect his property as a writer, since English copyright law failed to do so on his behalf
(
Ruskin to A. Wedderburn,
7 February 1882,
in
Ruskin ALS to Alexander Dundas Ogilvy Wedderburn, 1874–1888;
an unknown hand docketed this letter “83” in pencil above
Ruskinʼs “82” for the year).
With only seeming irrelevance, the letter goes on to call out
Wedderburn
for “your profession”, “mak[ing]
me pay 300 pounds for calling
Whistler a coxcomb!”—referring
to
J. A. M. Whistlerʼs
1878 libel case against
Ruskin for the criticʼs disparaging comments about
the painterʼs
Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (
1875).
(Although
Whistler won his suit, the victory was pyrrhic, since he was awarded only a farthing in damages,
while the plaintiff and defendant had to split court costs, which amounted to ??? on
Ruskinʼs part [see
(
Ruskin to A. Wedderburn,
7 February 1882,
in
Ruskin ALS to Alexander Dundas Ogilvy Wedderburn, 1874–1888).
Ruskinʼs analogy equates what he sees as parallel cases of American chicanery from which English law
failed to protect him—the painterʼs coxcomb “impudence” of charging high prices for “flinging a pot of paint in the public face”,
and the “blackguard” wiliness of the American publisher scooping up
Ruskinʼs unprotected property and tossing it
into an overheated book market, which the editor pretends to disparage while capitalizing on the exaggerated prices surrounding
Ruskinʼs poems.
Ruskin leaves unsaid, however, whether it is the edition or the poems themselves that constitute a “libel” on his reputation.
Would he have conceded the logic of
Whistlerʼs self‐defense that the pricing of any portion of his work ought to be calibrated according to the artistʼs
“knowledge of a lifetime𠄭? It would seem that
Collingwood ought to have allowed the point,
given the biographical approach that he later adopted in his preface to his own edition, the
Poems,
attributing a “peculiar interest” to the seemingly worthless juveniia as a witness to
Ruskinʼs “development” and “growth”
(
Poems [4o, 1891], 1:xix;
Poems [8o, 1891], 1:v).
George Allen persisted in the struggle against American piracy for fair legal protections,
but
Collingwoodʼs edition played little part. Although published in the year of the
International Copyright Act (“Chace Act”),
the
1891 Poems did not profit by the agreement, which applied only to new works published after
1891.
Nonetheless,
Collingwoodʼs edition was published in the
United States legally, as part of the
Brantwood Edition of
Ruskinʼs works,
which was produced under an agreement with the
New York firm, Charles E. Merrill & Company. While the
Brantwood Edition did not prove very profitable, it did pay royalties to the author
while upholding
Ruskinʼs expectations for quality of bookmaking. This venture provided the foundation
for
Allenʼs subsequent attempts to arrive at mutually satisfactory terms with the Merrill Company
for producing and marketing an “honest Ruskin” edition in the
United States, although in the end the agreement seems to have led only to suspicion and grievance on both sides
(see
Maidment, “John Ruskin, George Allen, and American Pirated Books”).
As
Dearden remarks, each of the
Brantwood Edition volumes carried an introduction by
Charles Eliot Norton,
with the sole exception of
Poems (
Dearden, “The Library Edition”, 52). Probably, no prefatory remarks were needed,
since
Collingwoodʼs edition was a new work with an introduction of its own, as opposed to the older works making up
most of the twenty‐two volumes of the
Brantwood Edition—works that, it was hoped, would gain renewed interest through
Nortonʼs commentary.
It was also hoped that
Nortonʼs name on the title pages would persuade consummers to justify the price of the edition, compared with the cheap and widely available American piracies.
According to
Maidment, the first book by
Ruskin that
Allen succeeded in bringing out in full compliance with the strenuous regulations
of the
Chace Act was
Verona and Its Rivers,
published in the
United States and
Britain simultaneously in
1893 (
“John Ruskin, George Allen, and American Pirated Books”, 15–16).
While protection specifically under the
Chace Act eluded the
1891 Poems,
Allen and Merrill and Company were at least able to use the inclusion of
Collingwoodʼs edition
in the
Brantwood Edition to help advertise the case for honesty in
Ruskin publishing. In an
August 1892
full‐page “important announcementȍ in the
New York magazine
The Critic, Merrill and Company placed an “important announcement”, which laid out the terms whereby it was to be understood that
“
Ruskinʼs Works will hereafter be published in
America by Messrs. CHARLES E. MERRILL & CO., of
New York,
who will issue the only authorized editions”; and for whatever reason, this notice included a claim that the
Poems were copyrighted under the “new law”:
In accordance with a contract with Mr.
Ruskinʼs English publishers, . . . we have the pleasure of announcing
the publication of the
Brantwood Edition of
Ruskinʼs Works in 21 volumes.
This is the only
edition published in this country with Mr. Ruskinʼs consent, and from the sale of which he derives a profit.
The illustrations have been prepared under the authorʼs personal supervision, and the type, paper and style of binding
are in accordance with his suggestions. Each of the prose works contains a special introduction by Prof.
Charles Eliot Norton,
of Harvard College, explaining the purposes for, and the conditions under which it was written. These introductions from the pen
of Mr.
Ruskinʼs most intimate friend and most acute and sympathetic critic, many of them containing extracts from personal letters written
while the works were in preparation, give to this edition a rare and unique value. The two volumes of poetry written between the ages
of seven and twenty‐six, with an appendix of later poems now first collected from original manuscript and printed sources,
are edited in chronological order, with notes biographical and critical, by Mr.
Ruskinʼs secretary,
William G. Collingwood, M.A.
The chronological arrangement of the poems—the authorʼs age at the time of writing being printed at the top of each page—illustrates
in a most interesting manner the development of his mind and style. The two volumes of poems have been copyrighted in this country under the new law,
and the attention of the public is called to the fact that, by virtue of this copyright, we shall hereafter be
the only publishers in this country able to supply Ruskinʼs works in a uniform style of binding.
This edition is intended to include what Mr.
Ruskin and his literary advisers regard as the essential and permanent part of his writings.
The unillustrated volumes, bound in dark green cloth, will be sent by mail, postpaid, on receipt of $1.50 each,
and the illustrated volumes for $2.75.
All English editions of Ruskin now in print are kept in stock or will be imported at short notice.
The same issue of
The Critic carried a brief commentary claiming that “wily travellers” from
Britain come to
America to “buy the Wiley reprints”
of “
Englandʼs highly‐prized but higher‐priced Apostle of High Art”, and return to “smuggle them into the right little, tight little island where the writer lived”,
since “‘We canʼt afford to buy
Ruskin at home, you know’”. While cheekily asserting that “[o]ur laws permitted the American publisher
to appropriate the work of any foreign author”, and that “the Messrs. Wiley might have reprinted Mr.
Ruskinʼs books as long as they liked
without asking any oneʼs consent”, the notice nonetheless self‐righteously alleged that Wiley & Sons “had tried to get the authorʼs consent
and had even sent him a check as a matter of business courtesy. But Mr.
Ruskin withheld his approval and rejected the proffered payment”
(
“The Lounger”).
The Editing of The Poems of John Ruskin
Collectors. See
Collecting of Modern Authors in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.
By the
1890s, the privately printed and distributed
1850 edition of the
Poems had taken on a talismanic aura for rare book collectors,
and
Collingwoodinevitably justified the purposes of the
1891 edition in part by appealing to the “no idle curiosity . . . that prompts the admirers
of Mr.
Ruskinʼs works to collect his boyish writings and to learn the story of his youth”. But he also denies playing to this audience,
arguing that
Ruskin is “misunderstood by the casual reader” etc. (v–vi).
In his editorial rationale,
Collingwood, admitted that the poemsʼ “author himself has never brought them forward”,
it being “impossible for him to offer his own juvenile productions as examples of the lofty ideal he preached” in his attempt to elevate
“the public taste in poetry as well as art” (a half truth, since
Ruskin did occasionally quote from his juvenilia,
with precisely the purpose of showing that they adumbrated his ideals).
Collingwood, however, was determined to shape the corpus
of early writing in favor of the “sonorous line and noble thought”, the “genuine feeling and fine, enthusiastic description”.
Without expurgating irony and fun,
the editor felt obliged to present the consistency of
Ruskinʼs
“ways, and aims, and attitude”—conditions that “in his case, more than with” other writers, were “determined at an early age,
and illustrated in his early writings. That is the recurrent burden of his autobiography:—‘I find in myself nothing whatsoever
changed’”
(
Poems [4o, 1891], 1:xx–xxi, xxviii, xx; and
Poems [8o, 1891], 1:vii, xv, vi; and see
Ruskin, Works, 35:00).
Although printed in the back of volume 1 like an appendix, the “Preliminary Note on the Original MSS. of the Poems”
(
Ruskin, Poems [8, 1891], 1:261–67;
Ruskin, Poems [4, 1891], 1:??? )
probably reflects in its title the accurate relation of the “Note” to the remainder of the edition. As a “preliminary” effort, the descriptive bibliography dates at least in part to
1889 or earlier,
on the evidence of the binding history of
MS XI. In the “Note”,
Collingwood describes
MS XI as “an envelope containing loose papers”,
whereas in its present state this manuscript is bound in several volumes. These bindings originated in
1889 at the latest, although the physical and documentary evidence is obscured and somewhat muddled
(
see MS XI: Description). Thus, while
Collingwood apparently failed to revise his “Note” to reflect ongoing efforts respecting the manuscriptsʼ preservation and provenance—efforts that may
have been beyond his ken (see Provenance of Early Manuscripts at Denmark Hill and Brantwood)—the “Note” does record a “preliminary” stage of the editorial project. And this makes sense,
as the noteʼs stated purpose is to justify the chronology that
Collingwood used to arrange the edition: “After some study of these ancient Codices, . . . the Editor has been able to disentangle their contents
and to arrange them in chronological order; which it may be worth while to note here, both for the assistance of future students, and in jusification of the hypothetical dates assigned to some of the poems”
(
Ruskin, Poems [8, 1891], 1:??? ;
Ruskin, Poems [4, 1891], 1:261).
“I am happy in the permission to print this and other early unpublished prose writings in a companion volume to these Poems” (1:265).
In this instance,
Collingwood avows his responsibility—“the very few emendations I have presumed to make
are marked by square brackets”—and while he tended to be much more casual than a twenty‐first‐century editor would be
about what emendations needed flagging, we probably can safely assume that these aesthetic “emendations” were his, and not specifically authorized
by the elderly
Ruskin. In his notes and prefaces to the edition,
Collingwood always refers
to the authorʼs investment in the edition in the past tense, as having authorized the editorʼs judgments but resigned his own responsibility,
consistent with
Collingwoodʼs general statement that closes his
“Prefatory Notes on the Plates”: “this publication
is in no sense my own enterprise, . . . it had been long contemplated by
Mr. Ruskin, and . . . it was put into my hands
in default of better, with instructions which I have endeavoured to carry out faithfully. But as the selection and arrangement have been left entirely to me,
it is only just to the author that I should avow the responsibility” (
Poems [4o, 1891], 1:281, xi;
Poems [8o, 1891], 1:282).