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NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY THE PROFESSION OF WRITING IN ENGLAND, 1660 to 1740 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS for tMe degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH B Y GEGiiGE BEi^UCrLi-ii.-P EVAi'i ST ON , ILLINOIS APRIL, 1942 ProQuest Number: 10060889 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10060889 Published by ProQuest LLC (2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106 - 1346 TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I OPINIONS CONCERNING THE PROFESSION OF WRITING The situation of writers before the middle of the seventeenth century..........••••••• 1 The meaning of the term, 11Profession of writing.11.............. ,. .. .................. 10 Opinions of modern scholars concerning the date of origin of the profession of writing........ 14 Opinions of writers within the period 1660- 1740 concerning their own profession.. 20 Reasons for questioning these opinions........ 32 The bases upon which a conclusion concerning the profession of writing should be determined ........... 33 CHAPTER II THE COST OF LIVING, 1660-1740 Problems and fallacies In comparing the cost of living In the eighteenth century with the cost today............ .. 37 The cost of living in the period preceding 1700........... 44 Records of expense for lodging, food, and clothing ...... 50 Wage scales and payment for labor............. 58 Estimates and records dating from the period ....... . 64 CHAPTER III THE BIRTH OF A PROFESSION Indications of Income from writing in the years before 1660 ........ 70 The popularity of, and consequent income from, sermons and theological writings•••••....... 75 Table of Contents Other factors that led preachers into part or full time writing...........................91 Ease of finding a publisher in the period from 1660-1700............................... 97 John Miltonrs experience in publishing Paradise Lost* ......................... .... 101 The extent of the reading public prior to 1700.......................................... 104 The predominance of religious literature throughout the period from 1660-1740....... 109 CHAPTER IV DRXDEN AND THE COURT GROUP The status of patronage after 1660...... 115 Lryden!s income*........................... 125 The income of other Restoration writers-- Otway, Shadwell, Behn, e t c 129 Drydenfs Virgil and publication by subscription.................................. 143 CHAPTER V THE AGE OP QUEEN ANNE The extent and importance of political patronage during the reign of Queen Anne... 152 Misapprehensions concerning the writing profession and political patronage......... 157 Political patronage, the profession of writing, and the profession of politics.... 170 The Influence of copyright laws and literary piracy upon the income of writers................... 178 Records of payment for manuscripts, 1700- 1715.......................................... 182 Income from journalism................. 191 The importance of part time writing in the years 1700-1715.............................. 203 Table of Contents CHAPTER VI ALEXANDER POPE AND THE PROFESSION OF WRITING Pope *s social and economic position......••••• 211 Popefs income from the translation of the Iliad........................................ 215 Advantages and disadvantages of publishing by subscription. ....... 213 The decrease of political patronage to writers ....... 221 Increasing maximum returns from booksellers... 227 Opportunities for the unknown n e w c o m e r • 235 Traditional wretched figures of the period— Savage, Johnson, Collins................... 23S The relationship of booksellers and authors, 1569-1740.................................... 255 CHAPTER VII THE STATUS OF WHITING AS A PROFESSION Varying attitudes toward the professional writer ............ 271 The proper bases for comparison between the profession of writing and other profess- sions...................... 276 Economic aspects of the ministry as a profession............. 277 The law as a profession ....... 280 The 11 profess Ion of Physic.1’........ 286 Acting as a profession....... 292 Teaching as a profession ........... 295 Advantages of writing over comparable professions ....... 301 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................... 303 SUMMARY.............................. 328 OPINIONS CONCERNING- THE PROFESSION OF WRITING Even In the days of Ancient Rome, the making and selling of hooks was an active and important industry* Books were cheap and plentiful, we are told, and thousands of slaves were kept busy transcribing at a rate that made it possible to produce an entire edition of perhaps a thousand copies of a book in a 1 single day. The bookseller was able to make a good profit, but there is no indication that any part of this profit was ever passed on to the ai thor who pro­ duced the manuscript* Men wrote for fame, or they wrote to make their views prevail, but they wrote in their leisure time, and depended for their livelihood upon their private resources or upon the patronage of the rich. For hundreds of years this was t lie natural order of things, and any other footing for authorship was unimagined* With the flowering of the stage in Elizabethan days, the market for new plays and revisions with which to meet the repertoire demands of the companies gave' to Greene and Marlowe a pre­ carious source of Income. Shakespeare, Jonson, 1. Henry Curwen, A History of Booksellers (London, [1875]), p. 12. (Hereafter referred to as Curwen.) 2 Beaumont, Fletcher, and a host of other playwrights of the day were more fortunate only In so far as they had patrons or other resources* Shakespeare prospered from his shares in the Globe and Blackfriar theatres, 1 not from the plays he wrote. Even with patronage, the lot of one who devoted himself wholly to literature was not a happy one. Ben Jonson, speaking out of full experience, tells us: Poetry in this latter age hath proved hut a mean mistress to such as have wholly addicted them­ selves to her, or given their names up to her family. Those who have hut saluted her on the way, and now and then tendered their visits, she hath done much for, and advanced in the way of their own professions (hoth the Lav/ and the Gospel) heyond all they coiild have hoped or done for themselves without her favour.^ 1. For evidence on this point, see Alwin Thaler, uShake­ speare’s Income,” Studies in Philology, XV (1918), 82-96. It Is true, of course, that playwrights had a slight income from the sale of the play to the company. Occas/ionally the playwright kept title to his play, Malone tells us, and for payment received the benefit of the second night. A benefit for the third night for those authors who did not outright/y sell their plays was established by 1612, and became increasingly the method used. Edmund Malone, An Historical Account of the Rise and Progress of the English StageA (Basel, 1800), pp. 172-3. (Hereafter referred to as Malone.) Malone quotes Oldys as saying that Shakespeare sold Hamlet for five pounds, ’’whether from the players who first acted it, or the printer or book­ seller who first published it, is not distinguished ....[But he continues] I do not believe he had any good authority for this assertion.” Malone, p. 178. 2. Ben Jonson, ’’Discoveries,” Works, ed. W. Gifford^ (London, 1816), IX, 174. o Concerning Jonson, Phoebe Sheavyn concludes: Very few Elizabethan authors produced so large a body of work as Ben Jonsonj few were employed to anything like the same extent in the comparatively paying branch of masque writing* If he, pensioned and with no extravagant vices to reproach himself with, fell into indigence In his later years, what must have been the Inevitable lot of less favoured writers? If this Is marked success, what must failure have been? We need no theories about vicious habits of self-indulgence to account for the incessant cry of poverty.1 In such discussion, we need to remember that we are not dealing with Income from writing in the modern sense. These playwrights did not, in so far as evidence exists, normally sell their manuscripts to a p publisher. They wrote poetry and hoped for a patron, or they wrote plays and sold them to a company of actors. The actors, as a rule, made every effort to prevent the publication of their plays so long as they *z were using them. The bookseller either pirated the play, through shorthand or through bribery of an actor, 1. Phoebe Sheavyn, The Literary Profession in the Elizabethan Age (Manchester, England, 1909), p. 93. (Hereafter referred to as Sheavyn, Literary Profession.) 2. This statement might be slightly qualified. Genest suggests that a play which was rejected by the com­ panies might nevertheless sometimes be sold to the publishers, and the playwright would then get the amount paid. See John Genest, Some Account of the English Stage (Bath, 1832), 1,8“ (lie re after referred to as Genest.) 3. E. Km Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage (Oxford, 1923)§ III, 183 ff.