I was planning on telling you about the next essay in The Art of Daring but it has turned out to be a hot and windy day and I feel a bit limp. So, I’m just going to tell you about a funny bit in the prologue to the biography of Keats I just began reading the other day.
The biography is the one by Robert Gittings. In the prologue he tells a little story about the first biography of Keats intended to be published not long after his death in 1821, Memoirs and Remains of John Keats. Apparently friends of Keats were angry and scandalized that someone would so hastily and prematurely publish such a book.
Appointed spokesman of the friends tossed out a barbed insult at Taylor of the publishing firm Taylor and Hessey who were planning on printing the abomination. The insult? Are your ready for it? It’s really bad. Ok, Brown called Taylor “a mere bookseller.” I know, right? It doesn’t get any worse than that. The insult worked so well that the book was never published and no one who knew Keats firsthand ever wrote a full-length biography.
I know, it was a different time and a different publishing landscape. No doubt the epithet probably implied Taylor was a money grubbing opportunist or something like that. But to think that being called a bookseller and a mere bookseller at that, was once insulting is at least worth an amusing snort, don’t you think?
These days if “mere bookseller” were to be used as an insult I am afraid it would mean something more along the lines of “you are a stupid idiot because everyone knows print is dead and no one actually reads any more.” Of course we know differently, which would also make this worth a snort of amusement and perhaps a head shake of pity for the poor fool making the insult. And a sigh. I think a good sigh would also be in order.
Haha Stefanie, thanks for sharing this. I love prologue and intros. We often don’t talk about them enough. They are worth highlighting in little, as in short not unworthy, posts like this.
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Thanks Whisperinggums! I am glad you liked it. I agree regarding prologues and intros, we tend to skip over talking about them much.
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The idea of true originality is the bane of dreamers.
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Foghorn, it certainly can be.
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Ah, yes. Those people who are expected to have read all the millions of books published (and now self-published) throughout the centuries, know every design permutation and date published, location of said book in each store throughout the land, and every detail of plot and character in each book… of course, those mere booksellers. (Sigh.)
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Jule, but of course you are supposed to know about everything! As a librarian I get the same expectations. It can be rather amusing 🙂
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Librarians have it even worse – your knowledge base really is expected to be everything, not just books. Librarian superheroes!
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Oh the horror of *being in trade*
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Nordie, I know! Be careful, someone might get infected 😉
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Ah, the delicate insults of the long ago times.
Thank you for sharing that. 🙂
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Delia, those were the days weren’t they? It promoted so much more creativity.
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Hahahaha!! I love your interpretation of a “a mere bookseller” and I agree…a BIG sigh!!!!
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cirtnecce, glad you enjoyed it! 🙂
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Wasn’t there a slew of biographies about Steve Jobs hastily publishing in the months after his death? Mind you, some of them will have been e-book versions, so they will have come from mere programmers, right?
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Jeff, oh yes there was! I never read any of them so I don’t know how good they were. Heh, “mere programmers,” good one 😉
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I think Noride has the truth of it here and it was the fact of being in trade that was so offensive. It’s hard for us to realise now just how rigid and divisive the class divisions were then. I read the Gittings when I was studying Keats as an undergrad and remember enjoying it very much. And, if memory serves me right, I think he also edited a collection of the poets letters that was also very much worth reading.
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Alex, I suppose you are right about that. Someone making themselves rich by actually working is so much dirtier than inheriting your wealth made upon the work of others! Gittings did do a collection of letters and I am reading those too. They are very good.
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It actually says something about civility…then and now, doesn’t it?
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Grad, heh, you’ve got that right!
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Mere bookseller! That’s excellent! I’m going to insult someone in that same manner the next chance I get and SEE HOW IT GOES.
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Jenny, if you do you must report back on the results! 😀
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How scathing! That is pretty amusing–my how times have changed! Was the biography ever published? It might have been really interesting and quite complimentary, even if in slightly bad taste….
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Danielle, No, the biography was never published. No one who knew Keats ever published anything about him. Kind of weird I think.
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