‘Transatlantic Bibliopoly’: Carlyle’s Early American Print Career

This chapter deals with the American reprinting of Carlyle’s books from Sartor Resartus (1833–34) to Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845). It draws on a rich body of archival sources to illuminate the economic background of these ventures and reveal the extent of Emerson’s activity as an Anglo-American literary agent, bookseller, editor and critic. The chapter details which economic and logistical strategies he and Carlyle developed to maximise the latter’s income from his foreign publishing (from the circulation of manuscript copies to the transatlantic import and export of whole print runs). The chapter highlights Carlyle’s efforts to achieve an American recognition of British writers’ copyright claims and demonstrates how in the 1840s he and Emerson succeeded in securing agreements with American publishers despite the absence of such transatlantic legal authority.