Editing Richardson by Tug-of-War: Anna Letitia Barbauld and Richard Phillips in 1804

Anna Letitia Barbauld’s edition of Samuel Richardson’s correspondence, published in 1804 by Richard Phillips, was a product of conflict between Barbauld’s idea of how to present the correspondence and Phillips’s treatment of the correspondence as a commodity. A newly available note from Barbauld to Phillips, published here for the first time, testifies to that conflict and helps to explain the shortcomings of the edition. The Barbauld–Phillips conflict can be seen as a moment in relations between authors and publishers, a struggle that authors were losing in the early nineteenth century.