Stylized And the Forgotten Edition of Strunk's Elements of Style

I read Mark Garvey's book, Stylized: A Slightly Obsessive History of Strunk & White's The Elements of Style, and I was disappointed. Although he provides a comprehensive history of E.B. White's editions, he doesn't do the same for William Strunk's editions. One Strunk edition, the undated Thrift Press edition, isn't even mentioned in Garvey's book.

In his Introduction, Garvey tells us that the story begins in 1957 when White received a copy of the 1918 edition in the mail. Garvey slants his story that way with hardly any mention of Strunk's other editions. He tells us that he visited the Cornell archives, and held a copy of the 1918 edition in his hands. Had he held a copy of the 1919 edition in his hands as well, he may have discovered that W. F. Humphrey was the printer of the 1918 edition and the 1919 edition, and not W. P. Humphrey, as everyone including E. B. White had believed.

The only thing slightly obsessive about Garvey's book is his inclusion of the thoughts of other writers concerning The Elements of Style. I'd rather know how many copies of the 1918, 1919, and 1920 editions were printed. The book is supposed to be about the history of The Elements of Style. Garvey tells us that another Cornell instructor, Edward A. Tenney, revised the 1935 edition and changed the title to The Elements and Practice of Composition. Did Strunk help revise it? What about the 1934 or 1936 editions? Did Strunk help revise them? And how many copies of the 1934,1935, and 1936 editions were printed? That is the slightly obsessive history I want to know.

The 1934 edition was undated, but Strunk and Tenney acquired the copyright on August 17, 1934. Tenney and possibly Strunk totally revised the format, replaced several words in Strunk's 1920 list of "Words Often Misspelled" with numerous new words, and replaced some of Strunk's recommended reference books. The title, however, remained the same: The Elements of Style

Strunk and Tenney acquired the copyright for the 1935 edition of The Elements and Practice of Composition on September 17, 1935. Strunk had already been in Hollywood since July as an adviser for the MGM production of Romeo and Juliet. At the time, Strunk was considered to be one of the leading Shakespeare authorities in the country. Strunk remained in Hollywood until June 1936 and most likely played little part in the editing of the 1935 and 1936 editions. Except for one major change, the format of the 1935 and 1936 editions remained the same as the 1934 edition. The 1934 edition did not include the practice leaves; students had to purchase them separately. The 1935 and 1936 editions contained the practice leaves in the back of the book.

Strunk retired in 1937, and that should have been the end of the history of Strunk's early editions. But Garvey tells us that because of the shortage of instructors during the war, Cornell called Strunk out of retirement in 1943. Strunk only lasted two months because he got sick, but in that time, what book do you think he provided his students with? Do you think he provided them with Tenney's revised edition? I don't think so.

In my Elements of Style Collection, I have an undated edition of The Elements of Style that was printed by the Thrift Press of Ithaca, New York. When I acquired it in 2001, I thought the edition preceded the 1920 edition – until I glanced at the title page: The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. Professor of English, Emeritus, Cornell University. The word "emeritus" means that this edition wasn't published until after Strunk retired in 1937. I had always thought that some of the other Cornell instructors had the Thrift Press edition printed because they didn't care for the Tenney editions. I now believe that Strunk had the edition printed when he returned to teaching in 1943. Except for minor revisions, the Thrift Press edition is a reprint of the 1920 edition.

In their listing of the Thrift Press edition, Cornell University has the publication date as circa 1958. I believe it was published in the early 1940s. One of the recommended references in the Thrift Press edition is Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition, G. & C. Merriam Co.. This edition was first published in 1936 with numerous reprints in the 1940s. In 1949, Merriam published The New Collegiate Dictionary, replacing Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. If the Thrift Press edition of The Elements of Style were published in 1958, wouldn't the newer reference have been listed?

In his 1934 edition, Tenney deleted five of the "Words Often Misspelled" which were listed in Strunk's 1920 edition: affect, effect, impostor, incident, and Philip. In the early 1940s edition, four of the five "Words Often Misspelled" were reincarnated: affect, effect, incident, and Philip. The word not brought back was impostor. The fact that the word "Philip" was brought back makes me believe the word was one of Strunk's idiosyncrasies. Moreover, of the 47 new "Words Often Misspelled," Tenney added to the 1934 edition, at least 37 were deleted in the Thrift Press Edition, and replaced by 71 new words, three of which could describe the Tenney editions: contemptible, irrelevant, and outrageous. Was this Strunk's doing? Possibly.

A Correction to the Copyright and Bibliographic Records of The Elements of Style

I recently acquired a copy of the 1919 edition of The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. for my Elements of Style Collection. While collating the book, I was surprised to see that the printer was identified on the verso of the title page as the Press of W. F. Humphrey, Geneva, N.Y.

I thought at first that it had to be a typo because the bibliographic records at the Library of Congress and elsewhere identify the Press of W. P. Humphrey, Geneva, N.Y. as the printer of the 1918 and 1919 editions. Moreover, W. P. Humphrey is listed as the printer of the 1918 and 1919 editions in the Catalogue of Copyright Entries published by the Library of Congress. A quick check online, however, revealed that there was a printing firm by the name of W. F. Humphrey in business in Geneva, New York during that period.
I queried Cornell University, identified my findings, and asked them to examine their copies of the 1918 and 1919 editions. Patrick J. Stevens, Curator of the Fiske Collections, Kroch Library, Cornell University, performed the examination. Here are his findings:


"I examined two copies of the 1918 and one copy of the 1919 Elements of Style immediately available to me in our Rare Books Collection, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections.

"Examining first the 1919 copy, I saw that the very small typeface could easily be read as W. P. Humphrey. With my reading glasses, however, it is clear the name is W. F. Humphrey.

"As for the 1918 copies, both have what appears to be the same printerstatement on the title page verso as the 1919, but for the 1918, it isconsiderably harder to discern whether the letter in question is a P or an F. I think the impression is simply not a good, clean one and that it could therefore very well be an F. One cannot with absolutecertainty confirm it as a P. So I would, given the history, the appearanceof the typesetting and so forth, say it was an F.

"Our cataloguing records thus appear to be wrong for the 1918 and 1919 editions.

Several days later I again examined the three items mentioned above this time with a fairly strong magnifying glass. I came away even more convinced than before that we are looking at W. F., not W. P.

"The 1919 edition we have is unequivocally W. F. "In the 1918 editions, it is clear under magnification that the tops of the letters across the entire printing statement suffer from inadequate impression. Thus the F in the word "of" in the statement is identical to the F in the initial pair "W. F." (remembering that these are all small caps). One can also see more clearly the curved segment in the letter P of the word "press" connecting the upper and lower horizontal strokes. This curved segment is of course absent where the letter F is confirmed.



"I have included an image in jpeg of the title page verso of one of our 1918 copies. Using a viewer such as Windows Picture and Fax Viewer at a quite high magnification--remembering these printer's statements are extremely small on the originals--one can clearly see the defects in printing across the tops of the letters and consequently see why the F was interpreted as a P.






"The jpegs are moderately large. I have included one of the title page as wel as one of the title page verso.

"Kind regards,

"Patrick"

While Patrick was examining Cornell's copies of the 1918 and 1919 editions, I was researching the histories of the Press of W.F. Humphrey and the Press of W. P. Humphrey. If the records at Cornell were wrong, that meant the records at the Library of Congress, WorldCat, and everywhere else in the book world were wrong.


The Press of W. F. Humphrey had been in the printing business in Geneva, New York since the late 1890s. In 1896 its place of business was 30 Linden Street. In 1917, its place of business was 300 Pulteney Street. William Francis Humphrey was the proprietor of the W. F. Humphrey Press. While a student at Hobart College in Geneva, he was an editor of the Hobart College Herald. His firm later became the printer of the Herald.  His firm also printed the Cornell Law Quarterly. William Francis Humphrey was very active in the community. He was a member of the Elks, the Masons, Trinity Church, the Chamber of Commerce, the Rod and Gun Club, the Geneva Country Club, and the United Typothetae of America. He died of pneumonia in 1934.

On the other hand, the Press of W. P. Humphrey was not in the printing business in Geneva, New York. At least Karen Osburn, Archivist of the Geneva Historical Society, could find no record of its existence. Google Books erroneously lists W.P. Humphrey as the printer of numerous works; but an examination of the printer's name on the publications will show the same problems with the typeface as experienced with the 1918 edition of The Elements of Style. The only publications listed in the records of the Library of Congress in which W.P. Humphrey is identified as the printer are the 1918 and 1919 editions of The Elements of Style.

And now we know that these records need to be corrected.

Addendums:
 The Library of Congress corrected its records on Sept. 28, 2009.

Here is an image from another copy of the 1918 edition:

......

William Strunk's Other Books in My Library

William Strunk Jr. was not just the author of The Elements of Style. He was the author or editor of books on Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Poetry and several literary classics. He was one of the leading Shakespearean authorities of his time. In 1935, MGM hired him as an adviser for the movie, Romeo and Juliet, directed by George Cukor.

Topics and Questions on Shakespeare

By William Strunk Jr.

Ithaca, N.Y. 1927

The Tragedy of Julius Caesar

Edited by Arthur D. Innes

American Edition Revised by William Strunk, Jr.

Boston, 1915

Macaulay's and Carlyle's Essays on Samuel Johnson

Edited With Introduction and Notes By William Strunk, Jr. New York, 1895

Macaulay's and Carlyle's Essays on Samuel Johnson

Edited With Introduction and Notes by William Strunk, Jr.

New York, 1896, Second Edition, Revised

English Metres

By William Strunk, Jr.

Ithaca, N.Y. 1922

The Last of the Mohicans

By James Fenimore Cooper

Edited For School Use by William Strunk, Jr.

English Classics-Star Series

Yonkers-On-Hudson, N.Y. 1913

Studies in Language and Literature

In Celebration of the Seventieth Birthday

of James Morgan Hart

November 2, 1909

New York, 1910

William Strunk was one of the editors of this work, and contributed an article as well: The Importance of the Ghost in Hamlet.

Strunk received a few copies of the article, which was reprinted from the book. He gave a copy of the article to the author, Frederick Tupper. It is stamped "With the Compliments of" and signed "W. Strunk Jr."

There are at least three other books that Strunk either wrote or edited. I will include them as I acquire them.

My Elements of Style Collection

Nota Bene:  I originally published this post on May 19,2009.  I revised the post a week later to include a new addition to the collection.  And I revised it again the next month to include another addition.  I continued to revise the post with each new addition until 2012.  This is how my Elements of Style Collection looked like in 2012.

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I collect multiple copies of The Elements of Style. In this blog entry, I will display my collection, and identify some of the revisions for each edition. To date, I have thirty-seven copies of The Elements of Style, and one copy of The Elements and Practice of Composition. Ten copies of The Elements of Style are collectible copies of pre-1959 editions. One of them is a copy of the 1919 edition. Four of them are reprints of the 1920 First Trade Edition. Three of them are copies of the 1934 Revised Edition. And two are copies of the circa 1940 edition, published after Strunk retired.

I am actively seeking a copy of the 1918 edition. Please contact me if you have a copy for sale. In the meantime, I will refer to the 1918 edition on Bartleby.com.

Below is an image of a copy of a 1919 edition of The Elements of Style which I recently acquired.

The Elements of Style

by William Strunk, Jr.

Ithaca, N.Y., 1919.
Press of W.F. Humphrey, Geneva, N.Y.

43p.

in paper wrappers

What struck me right off was that the 1919 edition was privately printed by W. F. Humphrey, Geneva, N.Y.. The 1918 edition was supposedly privately printed by W. P. Humphrey, Geneva, N.Y. – at least, that's what everyone, including me, had been led to believe (See my post: A Correction to the Bibliographic and Copyright Records of Strunk's Elements of Style).



Surprisingly, there were several changes between the 1918 and 1919 editions.

In the 1918 edition, Rule 4 read:

Place a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause.

In the 1919 edition, Rule 4 was changed to read:

Place a comma before a conjunction introducing a co-ordinate clause.

Several words, including the word, but, were added to Section V. Words and Expressions Commonly Misused.

Several words were added to Section VI. Words Often Misspelled. The following information was added after the list of words often misspelled:

Note that a single consonant (other than v) preceded by a stressed vowel is doubled before -ed and -ing: planned, letting, occurring. (Coming is an exception.)

The Elements of Style


by William Strunk, Jr.


New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, [1921]
52p.

The edition pictured above is not an image of the first trade edition.  Harcourt Brace and Howe published the first trade edition in 1920.  Will D. Howe left the firm sometime in 1921, and the firm officially changed its name to Harcourt, Brace and Company.  I have four copies of the edition printed by Harcourt, Brace and Company.  I bought my first copy in May, 2001, and have bought six copies in all (I gave two copies away as gifts). I have seen listings for another ten copies.

There were several changes in the 1920 first trade edition as well.

I. Introductory: There were minor changes to the wording in this chapter.

II. Elementary Rules of Usage: One rule, rule 8, "Divide words at line-ends in accordance with their formation and pronunciation," was eliminated in the 1920 edition.

III. Elementary Principles of Composition: One principle, "use definite, specific, concrete language," was added .

IV. A Few Matters of Form: One additional heading, "Syllabication," was added. The Syllabication chapter provided clearer methods of dividing words at the end of a sentence than Chapter II, Rule 8 of the 1918 edition.

V. Words and Expressions Commonly Misused: There were minor word changes.

The title of Chapter VI was changed from "Words Often Misspelled" to "Spelling." Several words were deleted while others were added.

A new chapter was added to the 1920 edition: VII. Exercises on Chapters I and II. It contained 25 exercises printed on three pages.


The Elements of Style, Revised Edition


by William Strunk Jr. and Edward A. Tenney


New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, c.1934


(3) 62p.

This edition is known as the Strunk & Tenney Edition of 1934, or the Revised Edition. I now have three copies of this edition. Revise it they did, revamping the entire Table of Contents:

I don't know how much input Edward A. Tenney had in this revision, but I suspect it was quite a bit. I do believe, however, that Strunk was responsible for providing a ready reference table for abbreviations and numbers used in criticism of papers graded in the Cornell course on English Usage and Style.

The 1934 edition is a totally different book than the earlier editions. In fact, when 47 practice leaves were added to the 1935 and 1936 editions, the title was changed to The Elements and Practice of Composition. I had never seen a copy of either the 1935 or 1936 edition available for sale until I spotted a copy of a 1936 edition on Amazon.com in May 2009. I grabbed it.

The Elements and Practice of Composition

by William Strunk Jr. and Edward A. Tenney

New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1936 (iv), 60p. (47)

The 1936 edition is a softcover and is two inches longer and one and a half inches wider than the 1920 and 1934 editions.

Surprisingly, the Table of Contents of the 1936 edition was totally revised from that of the 1934 edition. I believe that Edward Tenney was responsible for the changes because Strunk was in Hollywood from July 1935 to June 1936 as the technical adviser for MGM's Romeo and Juliet, directed by George Cukor.

The Table of Abbreviations used in criticism changed somewhat as well.



The 47 practice leaves were included in the 1935 and 1936 editions. The practice leaves were in tablet form for the 1934 edition. This practice proved to be inconvenient and expensive. The practice leaves for the 1936 edition were removable, and students were instructed to tear out the assigned leaf , write the exercise in pen, and turn them in at the beginning of the class. Each leaf had two sides. My copy is lacking leafs 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 10, 12 ,14, and 36.





The Elements of Style

By William Strunk, Jr., Professor of English, Emeritius, Cornell University


Ithaca, N.Y., The Thrift Press, c.1940

52p.


in paper wrappers




This is the first pre-1959 edition I bought, acquiring it sometime in 2001.  I acquired a second copy in early 2012. The key information in determining when this edition was published is the term "Emeritus." Strunk retired in October, 1937, meaning this edition was published sometime after 1936. The format of the Strunk & Tenney edition evidently wasn't popular at Cornell because Cornell went back to using the same Table of Contents as the earlier editions.


The Elements of Style

By William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White


New York, The Macmillan Company, 1959


xiv, 71p.

This is the book that E.B. White made famous. I currently have one copy of the true first printing, the fifth printing and three copies of the book club edition. Another fifth printing is lacking the dust jacket.

Can you tell which copy is the true first printing and which copy is the book club edition? You can't by this picture.

The true first printing has a price of $2.50 printed on the inside flap of the front cover of the dust jacket.

The book club edition does not have a price printed on the inside flap.

There is another way to tell a true first printing from a book club edition. The book club edition has an indented square stamped into the bottom right corner of the rear cover.

Here is an expanded view of the indented square.

For the 1959 edition, E.B. White used a Table of Contents similar to that of the earlier 1918 edition, while adding a chapter on writing at the end:

Folded inside one of my copies of the 1959 edition was the following article about E.B. White, written by a well-known personality:





The price for the 5th printing is printed in the bottom right hand corner of the front inside flap, whereas it was printed in the top right hand corner of the first printing.



This is a paperback copy of the 1959  edition of The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White.  I have a sixth printing and a ninth printing.




Two copies of the 1962 Macmillan Paperbacks Edition. One of them is the fifteenth printing (1967) of the 1959 edition, and the other is the seventeenth printing (1968). Both copies were marked $.95.






This is a paperback copy of the 1972 Second Edition of The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White. I currently have three copies of this edition, one of whose marked price is $1.25, and another's is $1.65. The price on the third copy was punched out. White deleted the Note on this Book and included the information in the Introduction. He kept the same Table of Contents as before, while providing additional examples of rules and updating other examples.




Immediately below are three paperback copies of the 1979 Third Edition with Index, all of which are different printings. The listed price of the eighth printing was $2.95. The listed price of the twenty-third printing was $4.95. And the listed price of the thirty-second printing was $5.95.





Here are two oversized unpriced paperback copies of the 1979 Third Edition with the Index.





Here is an oversized hardback copy of the 1979 Third Edition. Its marked price on the inside flap of the dust jacket is $11.95.



Here are two later paperback printings of the 1979 Third Edition without the Index.  As of June, 2010, I have four copies of this edition.  One of them is price parked at $1.95.  another is price marked at $2.25, and two are unmarked pricewise. The major difference between the second and third editions is that Strunk added four rules to Chapter I. Elementary Rules of Usage.

This is a later printing, in hardback, of the 1999 Fourth Edition of The Elements of Style. Roger Angell, White's stepson, edited this edition, providing a new Forward, and updating some of the examples. The marked price of this edition is $14.95.




This is a softcover copy of the Fourth Edition. I currently have four copies of this edition.

This concludes the display of My Elements of Style Collection. If you'd like to see Strunk's other books which are in my library, click here.

Charles Lamb's Library on Library Thing

I've been putting my researching skills to good use.  We just finished cataloging the library of Charles Lamb on Library Thing.  In addition to citing reference lists identifying some of the  books in Lamb's library, we researched Lamb's letters contained in the Bibliophile Society and Marrs editions.

You can find out about the group "I See Dead People's Books" here. 

Update on Letters Found in Books

I still have not discovered where Joseph Carson's memorial on A.S.W.Rosenbach appeared. It was not printed in any of the Philadelphia or New York papers, and was not presented at any Philadelphia institutions or book clubs.

Likewise, I still have not identified the recipient of George Birkbeck Hill's letter. I can say, however, that the marginalia written in the accompanying books was not written by the hand of Robert Ernest Cowan.

Letters Found In Books

Wouldn't it be nice to find an autograph letter in a book? In "A Talk Over Autographs," ATLANTIC MONTHLY, April, 1895, George Birkbeck Hill wrote," Of my own collection, I have no anecdotes to relate. No such luck ever befell me as befell Mr. Fields, who, in a book picked up at a stall, found inserted an autograph letter of Johnson's (p.450)."

I, too, have been blessed with finding a letter inside of a book. It was a piece on A.S.W. Rosenbach hidden inside of the book, TO DOCTOR R. I am still trying to discover when and where Joseph Carson presented this address on Rosenbach.

Ironically, a G.B. Hill letter that I picked up in an ebay auction concerns the very same Samuel Johnson letter that James T. Fields found in a book. Frank Lynch, webmaster of the Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page,clued me in to the G.B.Hill letter, which was included with a dilapidated set of Hill's edition of BOSWELL'S LIFE OF JOHNSON. Since I already had a few of the books Hill wrote, I wanted the letter.

Researching this G.B. Hill letter, which was not included in his daughter's book, THE LETTERS OF GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, London, 1906, is an on-going project. I was able to identify the Johnson Letter; but I was unable, at first, to discover how the American book collector, who still remains unidentified,was aware that Fields was the one who found the letter. Researching Hill's letter deserves a separate blog posting of its own.

Researching a George Birkbeck Hill ALS

In Nov 2004, I acquired one of George Birkbeck Hill's autograph letters.
George Birkbeck Hill wrote this letter to an unidentified American book collector while he was staying at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Ashley, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In the top left corner, a previous owner wrote the word, "Johnsoniana," and the name, "Cowan."

In this letter, Hill reveals his interest in a Samuel Johnson letter to the Reverend Compton that, according to the American book collector, an American publisher had acquired. This SJ letter was not identified in Hill's 1892 edition of THE LETTERS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON LL.D..








6 Acacia Street

Cambridge, Mass.

June 1, 1893

My Dear Sir,

You will be surprised in receiving a letter from me written on your side of the Atlantic. My wife and I left Liverpool for Boston on May 11, & since Sunday week have been in the pleasant shelter of my daughter's house in this beautiful town. Unfortunately I caught cold on the voyage, in a fog off the Banks & so have been able as yet to see next to nothing. I am beginning to creep out a little, but am still weak. I hope soon to see Boston.

I am sorry that your letter should have been returned from Pembroke College through some mistake on the part of the porter. Had it been sent to my private residence it would have reached me. I have not been in Oxford since September. On our return from Switzerland early in May we only stayed in London and Liverpool.

I hope that your copy of Dr. Johnson's Footsteps has not miscarried. No tidings of it have reached me. If you have received it, I shall be happy to write in it as you request.

I am much interested by what you tell me of Johnson's Letter to the Rev Mr Compton & shall be greatly obliged by a copy of it. If James T. Fields was the publisher, his widow is living in Boston & is known by my daughter, so that I may perhaps be able to see the original.

Do you know Mr. R.B. Adam of Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, N.Y. a great Johnsonian Collector? From him I have lately received copies of four or five unpublished letters of Johnson.

The story told by Sir Walter Scott of the altercation between Johnson & Adam Smith has been shown in every particular to be untrue. It was no doubt one of those numerous inventions in which the Scotch might revenge for Johnson's wit.

Your very truly

G.B. Hill

P.S. Your letters were forwarded to me from England, having I think been sent first to Switzerland. My son who forwarded them had taken off the envelope, so it is unknown how far they had traveled. This explains my delay in sending you an answer.





The SJ letter referred to in this correspondence is the letter that Samuel Johnson wrote to the Rev. James Compton on Oct. 24, 1782. Compton was a Benedictine monk who, after reading Johnson's Rambler essay #110, wanted to convert to the Church of England. Johnson assisted him monetarily upon his arrival.

This letter first appeared in print in the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Vol 8 No. 48, Oct. 1861,p.442, in "My Friend's Library," an article about a woman's library of choice books, many of them containing inscriptions from renowned authors of the day. The letter to Compton was found "in a well-preserved quarto copy of "RASSELAS," with illustrations by Smirke, which my friend picked up in London a few years ago."

In 1877, "My Friend's Library" was published in UNDERBRUSH, a collection of articles James T. Fields had contributed to the ATLANTIC MONTHLY. The SJ letter to Compton was printed on page 17.

In its Oct. 1, 1877 review of UNDERBRUSH, THE LITERARY WORLD, another Boston periodical, speculated that the library described in "My Friend's Library" belonged to Mrs. James T. Fields.

JAMES T. FIELDS: BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES AND PERSONAL SKETCHES , Boston, 1881, was published anonymously by Annie Adams Fields shortly after her husband's death . There was no mention of Johnson's letter to Compton in the book.

In the March 1888 issue of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, in "A Shelf of Old Books," Mrs. James T. Fields first revealed the true provenance of the books described in "My Friend's Library." She admitted that the library belonged to her late husband, James T. Fields.

In 1892, Hill published THE LETTERS OF SAMUEL JOHNSON L.L.D.. Johnson's Oct 24, 1782 letter to Compton was not included because Hill was still unaware of its existence.

Sometime shortly afterwards, the American book collector wrote a letter to Hill, informing him that an American publisher, possibly the late James T. Fields, had been in possession of the SJ letter to Compton (see GB Hill's June 1, 1893 letter).

A facsimile of the Compton letter was first published in "A Third Shelf of Old Books," SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE, Sept 1894. This article, and two other articles written by Mrs. Fields, were published in A SHELF OF OLD BOOKS, New York, 1894.

In his April 1895 ATLANTIC MONTHLY article, "A Talk Over Autographs," George Birkbeck Hill first publicly revealed that he knew Fields was the one who found the SJ letter; however, Hill said Fields found it in a book stall, and not in a bookshop. This article was later published in TALKS ABOUT AUTOGRAPHS, London, 1896.

George Birkbeck Hill printed a copy of Johnson's letter to Compton in JOHNSONIAN MISCELLANIES, New York, 1897, Vol. II, P.453. In his footnotes he cited the Sept 1894 SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE article, and UNDERBRUSH, Boston, 1877. Hill also corrected himself by saying that Fields found the letter "in a copy of RASSELAS purchased at a second-hand bookshop."

In 1906, Lucy Crump published her father's letters in THE LETTERS OF GEORGE BIRKBECK HILL, London. Hill's letter to the unidentified American was not included in the book.

After Mrs. James T. Fields died in 1915, the SJ letter to Compton was given to Harvard University.




Although I have learned just about all I can about Mr. James T. Fields and George Birkbeck Hill, I have learned very little about the American book collector Hill wrote to. I know he was a book collector because he mailed a book to Hill to inscribe. He either owned or had access to several of Hill's books, so he was probably a Samuel Johnson collector. He had a copy of Hill's FOOTSTEPS OF DR. JOHNSON, which was lost in the mail. He was aware that Johnson's letter to Compton was not included in Hill's edition of Johnson's letters. He was a reader of literary magazines. Unless he was the recipient of insider information, he had to have read Mrs. James T. Fields' April 1888 SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE article, "A Shelf of Old Books," as well as either the Oct 1861 SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE article, "My Friend's Library," or its inclusion in UNDERBRUSH, Boston, 1877. The book collector evidently had a very good memory.

As mentioned previously, a former owner wrote the word "Johnsoniana" and the name "Cowan" on the top of the letter. The only Cowan I know is Robert Ernest Cowan, the California bibliographer. I know he attended UC Berkeley from 1882 to 1884, and became a San Francisco bookseller in 1895; but where was he from 1885 to 1895? Ward Ritchie once said that Cowan had a fantastic memory. He also said that everyone called him by his last name, "Cowan."

On the negative side, there is no record of correspondence between Cowan and Hill at UCLA, its off-site location, SRLF, or at Pembroke College in Oxford. There were no Johnsonian books in the Robert E. Cowan Library at UCLA.

In the books that came with the Hill letter, Hill's edition of Boswell's LOJ, the bookseller's ticket of Jerrold Nedwick, Chicago bookseller, was pasted on the rear endpaper of the first volume. Nedwick was prominent in the early 1900s on. There are no other marks of provenance in the books; however, there are six short instances of marginalia, one of which is included below. You can view the other marginalia here.

best,
Jerry Morris