American Novelist Catharine Sedgwick Negotiates British Copyright, 1822–57

Abstract

This essay traces the publishing history of British reprints, both authorized and unauthorized, of American novelist Catharine Maria Sedgwick as a case study of how copyright law and trade custom regulated the reprinting of American literary texts in the United Kingdom in roughly the first half of the nineteenth century. Sedgwick produced books regularly, changed her US and authorized London publishers multiple times, and although one European trip in 1839–40 played a crucial role in arranging two authorized publications, she negotiated the British market primarily from across the Atlantic, making her more typical than authors such as James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, whose transatlantic editions have received more attention. Focusing on the British reprinting of American literature through Sedgwick sheds light on changes over time, including the emergence of cheap reprints of American novels in the late 1830s and 1840s.