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Article
Edward Everett, Transatlantic Publishing Connections, and an Unrecorded Early American Burns
Burns Chronicle (2024)
  • Patrick Scott, University of South Carolina - Columbia
  • Thomas R. Todd, Jr., The Burns Club of Atlanta
Abstract
The 1808 American Burns ‘edition’ described here from the copy in Mr. Todd's collection, is unrecorded in earlier Burns scholarship. It is significant both for its 19th century owner, the American politician and orator Edward Everett (1794-1865), and for its strange printing history. Everett’s bookplate and a manuscript inscription show that the Todd copy was presented to Everett by a young American poet Epes Sargent (1813-1880), and together these suggest an under-documented interest in Burns in America outside the Scottish diaspora before the 1840s, when Burns’s work would be championed by Emerson, Frederick Douglass and others. The title-page states the edition was published in Boston, Massachusetts, but the book’s irregular pagination shows that it was printed in Scotland, not Boston, and was made up of sheets of an 1807 Scottish edition. The American title-page (a close but not exact match with the Scottish one), whether printed in Edinburgh before copies were shipped or in Boston afterwards, disguised its Scottish origin during a period of strong protectionism in the American book-trade. If the title-page was printed in Scotland, the 1808 Boston Burns would seem to be the only known early 19th century example of such an arrangement.
Keywords
  • Scottish poetry; Scottish publishing history; American reception of Burns,
  • publishing history of Burns,
  • transatlantic bookselling,
  • international copyright,
  • protectionism,
  • Boston publishers,
  • Edward Everett,
  • Epes Sargent,
  • Oliver C. Greenleaf,
  • John Johnstone,
  • Burns bibliography
Publication Date
March, 2024
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3366/burns.2024.0101
Citation Information
Patrick Scott and Thomas R. Todd. "Edward Everett, Transatlantic Publishing Connections, and an Unrecorded Early American Burns" Burns Chronicle Vol. 133 Iss. 1 (2024) p. 61 - 76 ISSN: Print ISSN: 1365-7518 Online ISSN: 2634-7059
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/patrick_scott/443/