The Countess of Blessington, Bernhard Tauchnitz and the Mid-Nineteenth-Century Debate on Reprinting and Copyright

This chapter explores the interaction between Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, a renowned London hostess, popular novelist and writer of travelogues in the 1830s and 1840s, and the German publisher Bernhard Tauchnitz. In these decades, many contemporary British authors’ works and especially novels were reprinted in English-language editions in other European countries as well as in the United States. This business model was harshly criticized, while authors and publishers demanded legislative measures to curb this often unauthorized reproduction of reading material. Due to her popularity, Blessington’s works were reprinted by Baudry and Galignani (Paris) as well as by American publishers. She was among the first authors whom Tauchnitz invited to cooperate when he visited London in 1843 to contact several British authors, asking them to authorize the reprinting of their works. In return, he promised to pay honoraria and to refrain from selling his books in Britain and its colonies. He reprinted five of Blessington’s novels, Meredith (1843), Strathern (1845, reprint dated 1844), Memoirs of a Femme de Chambre (1846), Marmaduke Herbert (1847) and Country Quarters (1850), making her the first woman writer to be included in his series The Collection of British Authors. Records of the early negotiations between several British novelists and Tauchnitz provide insights into what it meant for authors to have their works reprinted by Tauchnitz.