¹ This was the name of the American house until its incorporation as a separate entity after the death of Alexander Macmillan in 1896. The first New York representative of the English house, George Edward Brett, merely sold consignments of English books. By 1870, however, the imprint “London and New York” was sometimes used, and by 1880 there had been an occasional edition for the American market alone. Still, the ordinary practice was for the American office to distribute English books. See Charles Morgan, The House of Macmillan (New York, 1944), pp. 83, 163-164.

² In Works (London, 1904), xv, 343-394.

³ The letters, all unpublished, from which I quote in this article are in the possession of Macmillan & Co., London. I am grateful to Daniel Macmillan, Esq., for making them available to me and to Matthew Arnold's heirs for permission to print them. I am now preparing an edition of Arnold's letters to his publishers, and I would greatly appreciate and fully acknowledge any help towards making this edition as complete as possible.

⁴ Arnold himself had directed this omission in an undated letter to George Lillie Craik, Macmillan's partner, while the 1877 English edition was being prepared: “The first two parts of the Church of Brou are to be left out, and the third part is to stand as an independent poem. I had been misled by a French account, and had put the Church of Brou in the mountains, whereas it is altogether in the plain: several people have found this out, and I will not republish the locally untrue parts, until I can go to the spot and re-write them.”

⁵ There can be no question about the year. In the same letter Arnold writes: “When will the preface to Johnson's Lives be wanted? Let me know as nearly as you can that I may be ready.” The question Arnold is asking here is when the preface to his edition of the Chief Lives will be wanted for separate and prior publication in Macmillan's Magazine. It appeared there in June 1878.

⁶ George Lillie Craik, who had become Macmillan's partner in 1865.

⁷ There are several verbal and punctuation differences between the American edition and the 1881 English edition. From this letter, however, and from the fact that the 1878 emendations are incorporated into the 1881 text, we can conclude that Arnold made these further changes when he read proof for the 1881 edition.

⁸ Poetry of Arnold, p. 8; Poetical Works of Arnold, pp. 18, 58, and 78.

⁹ Poetical Works, pp. v-vi.

¹⁰ And 10%, in the 1870's, would not be an unreasonable allowance for printer-changes.