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[540] Westward of the great Alleghany Mountains, which appeared in that year at Pittsburg, Portsmouth, Middletown, New Haven, Norwich, and Boston, and which went through several mythadding editions in the next few years. Its vogue is noted here merely to emphasize the fact that the American public was becoming prepared for that literary enfranchisement noticeable in the last years of the eighteenth century. True enough, until within the days of Hay1 and Eggleston2 the publishers could have noted an opposition to the novel, but it was even after the beginning of the nineteenth century one that, save in some districts, they need not note as prohibitive.3 The South, even before the Revolution, was obtaining by direct importation, through book dealers, and from American publishers large quantities of belles-lettres, especially novels. One aspect of the book business disconcerting to the American publisher existed for some time after the Revolution, however, and that was the publication in England of books by our authors. Roughly speaking the dominant centres of publication for American books during the period from 1765 to 1783 were, in the order of their importance, Philadelphia, London, Boston, New York, Charleston, Newport, and New Haven. For several years after the war any American book published in London had acquired a noteworthy prestige at home and had materially increased its chances for sales on both sides of the Atlantic. In some few cases, in fact, where presswork offered unusual difficulties, or where, especially, illustrations were numerous and costly, it was best that the work be published abroad. Moreover, American authors first obtained really commanding international standing through books of information concerning this country, and it was but natural that such works should obtain wide circulation in Europe with its ever-pressing problem of emigration.4 In the last two decades of the eighteenth century, signs
1 See Book III, Chaps. X and XV.
2 See Book III, Chap. XI.
3 For a discussion of this phase of American psychology, see Some aspects of the early American novel, The Texas Review, April, 1918. The publication of the works of Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall was at first bitterly opposed in this country by an influential class.
4 Any one interested in this phase of American publication should study the lives of Major Robert Rogers, William Bartram, Audubon, and, especially, Captain Jonathan Carver. [See Book II, Chap. I, and bibliography.]
Cambridge University. Press, 1917-1921.
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