Sign up to receive email notices of recent acquisitions.
Letter from noted Antebellum Legal Publisher to Chief Justice of The Oregon Supreme Court.
New York, 1852. 5 pp. on two 8vo bifolia. A lengthy missive penned by one of the mid 19th Century’s most successful legal publishers. John Livingston found success, like others, through capitalizing on the nation’s western expansion. Recognizing the growth in interstate business that would accompany expansion, Livingston began by publishing rosters of reputable attorneys in every state and territory. Realizing that his subscribers list (mostly lawyers featured in the directory) was effectively a list of potential subscribers to any legal publication, he soon began issuing a monthly magazine entitled Livingston’s Law Reporter, which he used to market another business—the selling of legal books to attorneys located in remote areas without booksellers. The present letter, written to the jurist Thomas Nelson, then serving as Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, relates to an 1852 edition of Livingston’s serial Biographical Sketches of Eminent American Lawyers Now Living: With Well Executed Portraits. Nelson seems to have written to Livingston rather upset by the publisher’s expectation that he should bear the cost of engraving his “well-executed portrait.” Herein Livingston assures Nelson that
no matter how well the publication might sell, it would not be issued by any person who should undertake to pay the cost of its numerous engravings without a considerable loss of money. In justice to ourselves therefore we cannot avoiding adhering to the rule which I suppose you are aware is followed in most cases by those who publish similar books and this is, that the cost of every likeness appearing in the work shall be paid by its original.
Livingston then breaks down the cost of publishing the judge’s photo alone, remarking “this is a small sum, but when multiplied by one hundred, about the number of likenesses we have to pay for, it amounts to $11,000.00, an aggregate which it is not probable the entire profits of the publication will cover.” Livingston continues “Should you decline responding to this request please say whether we shall return the Daguerreotype or hand it over by your order.”
M.H. Hoeflich devotes an entire chapter to Livingston in his Legal Publishing in Antebellum America (Cambridge, Eng., 2010).
A quite detailed letter with much to say about the costs and customs of engraving and publishing in the mid-nineteenth century.
CONDITION: Very good, faint toning, old creases.
Item #2923
Sold