29 Nov: 1800
Dear Sir
I have this Evening received your obliging Letter and though it
is very late answer it I must.
I will observe that at all Events I think there ought to be no
serious misunderstanding Between Mr Bloomfield & Mr Hood: because I conceive Mr
Bloomfield no way blameable. He has acted in this as throughout by my opinion
& advice meaning to fulfil conscientiously whatever by the nature of the
agreement fairly construed he might but wishing to know what that fair
construction is.
I am persuaded that Mr Bloomfield will be as inclined as I to
consider himself as bound by whatever you acting for him at my request
understood at the time of making it to be the meaning of the Agreement.
But certainly I must say, and I do not expect that any of my
professional acquaintance will differ from me, that I can not for the sake of
Authors & for the sake of the Public and of the Laws &
[illegible word] of Litterary Property subscribe to this broad Position that a
Publisher of course by undertaking to bring out a first Edition of a work at his
own risque and to divide the Profits if it should be successful with the Author,
becomes of course a Proprietor of a Moiety of the Copy-Right. & this I
can never admit at least till I see some such authority for it as I have never
yet seen or heard or expect to see, to be a consequence flowing of itself from
such an Agreement. And I see great mischief to Litterature and so much more
important than the pecuniary interests of Authors if such a construction should
prevail.
And I must say that from my recollection of the various letters
of Mr Hood in which a wish has been
expressed that Mr Bloomfield should sell his Copy-right to either Mr Hood or to some other Purchaser I
did and do consider myself as wholly without any reason for imagining that Mr Hood thought a Moiety or any part
of the Copy-right to be in him.
It rests therefore with me at present solely upon the sense in
which you meant to contract for Mr Bloomfield at the time of the agreement to
publish the First Edition but I should be very sorry however this case may stand
in its special circumstances or a ground till this moment totally unknown to me
that I should be thought to have given my assent to a Proposition of such
dangerous and, as I think unfound'd latitude as this that where Booksellers
publish a first Edition at their own risque to divide the net profits with the
Author if it succeeds that they become thereby Proprietors of a Moiety of the
Copy-Right.
On the contrary I do not consider such an Agreement as extending
in itself beyond the impression of that first Edition.
I remain Dear Sir with great Regard yours very
sincerely
Capel Lofft
I shall be glad to see a Copy if there be one in which it has been decided or
even asserted by Counsel, that Booksellers by publishing a first Edition at
their own risque on the terms of dividing the net profits with the Author
become by implication part & equal Proprietors with the Author in
the Copy Right.