Romantic Letter Writing and the Publisher

Of the vast amount of literary correspondence that has survived from the Romantic period, a significant proportion of it is between authors and publishers. These letters are fascinating and multifaceted documents, highlighting the ways in which authors negotiate the artistic and commercial imperatives of their work with the figure who was responsible for facilitating the production and sale of the text. This essay examines a selection of correspondence between Romantic writers and their publishers in order to explore the ways in which these letters function simultaneously as business and personal correspondence. Looking at letters from authors of different levels of fame, social position, class, and gender (including Mary Wollstonecraft, William Wordsworth, Percy Shelley, Byron, and Jane Austen) and publishers of varying degrees of influence (including Joseph Johnson, Charles Ollier, John Murray) the essay will investigate how Romantic writers communicated with their publishers—the people who, in the words of Leslie Chard, acted as ‘banker, postal clerk and packager, literary agent and editor, social chairman, and psychiatrist’.