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Dickens and International Copyright
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 February 2011
Extract
Before leaving for America, in January 1842, Dickens wrote that he ‘yearned to know its people,’ and that it was the land of his dreams. On returning, only five months later, he declared, “It is no use, I am disappointed. This is not the republic I came to see; this is not the republic of my imagination.” To many of his American critics, the real disappointment was not at what he saw, but at the failure of “an impudent speculative trip” foolishly undertaken in the hope of securing a profitable international copyright agreement. At the time Dickens denied it furiously. There is no doubt that he was right. Yet so great was his fame that we still tend to link Dickens and International copyright, unaware that almost in spite of himself he was caught up in a movement in which he was bound by ties of loyalty to his fellow authors and his own reputation for frankness to assert their rights with all the means he could command. It would be wrong to disassociate Dicken's views on International copyright and his opinions on the United States in general; but the time has come by now to allow that he did not speak solely for himself in the matter, and that he fairly believed that he was acting in the best interests of literature in both Britain and the United States.
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- Copyright © British Association for American Studies 1962
References
1.From an unidentified cutting in a scrapbook of newspaper clippings, Forster Collection, F. 10 F. B., Victoria and Albert Museum Library: the scrapbook includes many similar criticisms of the visit, and reviews of American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit.Google Scholar
2.See Clark, Aubert J., The Movement for International Copyright in Nineteenth Century America, Washington, 1960. A useful study, but often inaccurate.Google Scholar
6.“Charles Dickens,” St. Paul's Magazine (July 1870), reprinted Dickensian, 1910, VI, 145.Google Scholar
8.See Houtchens, Lawrence H., “Charles Dickens and International Copyright,” American Literature, 1941, XIII, 18–28, where the text is given.Google Scholar
9.Lytton Mss., at Knebworth (letter of 24 March 1842). I am indebted to the kindness of Lady Hermione Cobbold for permission to consult them and to make use of them here.Google Scholar
10.Lytton Mss., letter of 2 April 1842. There is one other passing comment in Lytton's correspondence with Forster which probably shows his interest in what Dickens wrote from America: “I have been haunted by visions of the ‘Piazza’ commemorated by Dickens. How Swift would have smelled and revelled!” (Letter, May, 1842). The reference is unidentified, but presumably Forster had read Lytton extracts from some of Dickens's letters home, as he did to other intimate friends. Crabbe Robinson, for example, noted in his diary (20 June 1842) “I went after breakfast with my brother, self invited to Forster's, to hear him read to Kenyon 's letters from America. Better letters I have never heard read.” (Ms, Dr. Williams' Library, London).Google Scholar
12.Letter to Murray, John, 2 Aug. 1842, from MS of Sir John Murray, by kind permission. The deputation may have been about the question of international copyright in general, but since Gladstone was then Colonial Secretary it was probably about the “dumping” In British territories of American-printed piracies.Google Scholar
13.Crompton's letters or reports are in the Public Record Office; 14 March 1852 (F. O. 5/544, letter 32), and 21 February 1853 (F. O. 5/563), and the text of the Convention Between Her Britannic Majesty and the United States of America for the Establishment of International Copyright is to be found in the same volume.Google Scholar
15.Among Sir Murray's, John papers are letters from Crampton to Lytton of 14 June and 19 June, 1852, and two brief notes from Lytton to Murray also written at about this time.Google Scholar