‘Is there a Reader who can Handle it with any Comfort?’: A Brief Publication History of the Works of Francis Bacon

With the Oxford Francis Bacon project yet to be completed, after more than 150 years the standard scholarly edition of Francis Bacon's (1561–1626) complete works is still The works of Francis Bacon. This great but now almost outdated Victorian edition was first published in London in seven volumes, 1857–1859. It has a rather complex publication history, often leading to confusion, which is well worth telling in full. The story is used here as an opportunity to look at some of the practical considerations and discussions behind this classic edition: the alternative plans for its arrangement and publication, and the conflict between the publisher and the editors relating to the scholarly implications of making the edition either as profitable or as readable as possible.


INTRODUCTION
With the Oxford Francis Bacon project yet to be completed, after more than 150 years the standard scholarly edition of Francis Bacon's (1561-1626) complete works is still The works of Francis Bacon. 1 The monumental Spedding-Ellis-Heath edition of the Works was the outcome of a collaboration between three Trinity College, Cambridge, men: James Spedding (1808-1881), Robert Leslie Ellis (1817-1859) and Douglas Denon Heath (1811-1897). It *l.m.verburgt@uu.nl 1 The Oxford Francis Bacon project was founded in 1995 by the late Graham Rees and Lisa Jardine with the explicit aim of supplanting the Spedding-Ellis-Heath edition. Its goal is to produce a new critical edition of the works of Francis Bacon in 16 (or more) volumes. Among many other novel features, it will provide facing-page translations for the edited texts of the Latin work. So far, eight volumes have appeared. For more information see www.oxfordfrancisbacon.com/about-2/ (accessed 8 March 2021). All major twentieth-century selections of Bacon's work, such as Rose-Mary Sargent (ed.), Francis Bacon: selected philosophical works (with introduction) (Hackett Publishing Co., Indianapolis, 1999) were based on the Spedding-Ellis-Heath edition.
was first published at Longman, the London publishing firm then headed by Thomas Longman (1804-1879), in seven volumes, each editor being responsible for his own part: Ellis for the Philosophical works (Volumes I-III, 1857) and the Translations of the philosophical works (Volumes IV and V, 1858); Spedding for the Literary works (Volumes VI and VII, 1858-1859) and Heath for the Professional works (Volume VII, 1859). 2 The Works was followed by The letters and the life of Francis Bacon, which appeared between 1861 and 1874, edited by James Spedding alone, in seven volumes. 3 This work also included all Bacon's 'Occasional works', such as speeches, tracts and memorials.
The Works is today associated mainly with the name of Spedding, and with good reason. But there is some evidence that the original impetus for a new edition of Bacon's complete works had come not from Spedding but, indirectly, from Ellis. Around 1847, Ellis, then a 30-year-old Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, was preparing an edition of Bacon's philosophical works, which was offered for publication to Longman. 4 For some reason, Spedding, who was then working on his Evenings with a reviewer, acted as intermediary between Ellis and the London publisher. 5 He reported in May 1847 that he had written to Longman, reporting Ellis's proposition, and recommending them to treat immediately with him upon those terms; for that if they get the philosophical works alone so edited, their edition will command the market, even if they do nothing but reprint the rest as they are. Whereas, if any other publisher should engage Ellis's services for that portion, their trade edition would be worthless for ever. […] If they refuse the opportunity, I think I shall decline further connexion with the enterprise. 6 Hitherto, Spedding had been working in his own way at Bacon's life and letters with the sole aim of defending him against the attack in the famous 1837 essay by Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859). 7 It was in the context of Ellis's edition of the philosophical works being offered to Longman that Spedding was first 'consulted' about a new edition of Bacon's complete works. 8 Since his part was to come first, Ellis's name was given before that of Spedding and Heath in all the public announcements of the edition issued by Longman. Hence, it would be historically more accurate to refer to the Works as the Ellis-Spedding-Heath edition.
2 That the Works appeared in seven volumes between 1857 and 1861 is a common error. The sixth and seventh volumes appeared as Volume I and Volume II, respectively, of the Literary and professional works. The sixth volume, edited by Spedding, contains the Literary works. The seventh volume consists of two parts: 'Literary works: continued' and 'Professional works'. In what follows, the abbreviation 'SEH' is used to refer to the Spedding-Ellis-Heath edition: James Spedding

PLANS AND EDITIONS OF THE WORKS
From the start, in the late 1840s, there seems to have been discussion, or least a lack of consensus, between the publisher and the editors-Spedding taking the lead-about the plan on which the new edition was to be published. There were two closely overlapping topics at stake. The first was the arrangement of Bacon's works, the second that of how the chosen arrangement would be put into print. Spedding believed that, looking at the previous editions of Bacon's complete works (those by Blackbourne, Birch, Montagu and Bouillet), a new arrangement was needed for the new edition. 9 His idea was to arrange Bacon's work with reference not to subject, size, language or form but to the different readerships that Bacon had in view; such an edition would fall into three divisions: 10 first, the philosophical and literary, addressed to mankind; second, the professional, addressed to lawyers; and third, the occasional, addressed to particular persons or bodies and referring to particular events. Because no single editor would be able to edit all three divisions, it was agreed that each division was to have a separate editor. Hence, on the original plan, the Works was not Spedding's project, with Ellis and Heath working more or less as assistant-or co-editors. Instead, each division was to be made complete in itself and Ellis, Heath and Spedding were each fully responsible for their own part of the edition. This plan, which was first advertised by Longman in 1856, was abandoned as late as in December 1859, when the Philosophical works (Volumes I-III), the Translations of the philosophical works (Volumes IV and V) 11 and the Literary and professional works (Volumes VI and VII) had already appeared in print.
Given his new arrangement of Bacon's works on the basis of readership, Spedding preferred all divisions to be published separately as independent sets of volumes, each with their own title and index. Thus, for example, the first volume would be Volume I, not of the Works, but of the stand-alone Philosophical works. He reasoned that no-one, except perhaps he himself, really cared for anything and everything that Bacon had written; 12 at 11 The history of the translations appearing in volumes IV and V of the SEH edition is a rather complicated one, which has also led to confusion. For instance, it is a common error that the translation of the Novum organum was Spedding's. Instead, it was translated by someone who passed on his manuscript to Spedding and Ellis, who both examined and corrected it in turn. Because Ellis was unable to look over it again after he had received the final corrections, and as the translator did not want to attach his name to it, Spedding was obliged to take charge of it, for instance changing the style in his final revision. All other translations were done by Francis Headlam, Fellow of University College, Oxford. However, Headlam was unable to finish his manuscript, which he left with Spedding to be dealt with as he thought fit. For the entire story of the translations, see James Spedding, 'Preface', in SEH IV ('Translations of the philosophical works, Volume I'), pp. iv-vi, and James Spedding, 'Preface', in SEH V ('Translations of the philosophical works, Volume II'), pp. v-vii.
12 The question-raised by one of the two reviewers-whether this preference of Victorian readers of Bacon also applied to the works of other canonical British authors, such as John Locke, David Hume and Dugald Stewart, is an important and pertinent one. It cannot, however, be answered here, as it involves a comparative study of several topics, including the publication and reception histories of (the various parts of ) their respective works. Following the approach adopted in the present paper, one fruitful starting point might be to look at the existence of 'collected works', asking why they were published and how they were edited. For instance, Locke's collected works, first published in 1714-some 10 years after his death-ran to many editions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; on the other hand, a complete edition of Hume's works-containing not only his philosophical works, which had been published for the first time in 1826, but also his moral, political and literary writings-only appeared in 1874-1875, almost a century after Hume's death. ( the same time, there were many who cared for only one thing, say the Novum organum but not the letter of advice to Queen Elizabeth. Spedding predicted that, when printed according to this plan, the Works would not only be read more but also bought more. The fact was, however, that when the Works finally appeared-not, as Longman had initially hoped, in 1850, and not even, as it still announced in 1855, early in 1856 in monthly intervals, but in a period of two years from 1857 onwards-it was published as one set of seven 'unjustifiable thick' tomes: Volume I contained 868 pages, Volume II, 692 pages, Volume III, 836 pages, Volume VI, 764 pages and Volume VII, 831 pages. 13 The translations, Volumes IV and V, ran to some 600 pages each. As Spedding despaired about the Works: 'Is there a reader who can handle it with any comfort? [T]he wrists of any but an athlete are too weak to hold them up.' 14 On the original plan of the Works-drawn up in the autumn of 1847, described in detail in Spedding's 'History and plan of this edition' of 1857 and announced in advertisements up until 1859-the 'Occasional works' were envisioned as the third series, dubbed 'Occasional and literary works', of a 14-volume edition. The projected third series was, indeed, still announced as such around 1859. However, the Letters and life turned out to be an entirely distinct and different work. It consisted of lengthy biographical and historical commentaries forming a frame for Bacon's 550 letters and 200 pieces of legal and political writing, rather than critical and historical prefaces and notes preceding and accompanying separate texts. For this reason, it was given an independent title: The Letters and life of Francis Bacon: including all his occasional works, namely letters, speeches, tracts, state papers, memorials, devices and all authentic writings not already printed among his philosophical, literary or professional works (7 vols, 1861-1874).
As Graham Rees remarked in the 1996 Collected works of Francis Bacon, Spedding's decision to present Bacon's letters and occasional texts ( produced as responses to particular short-term historical circumstances) in a parallel edition was a pity, since it de facto separated them from works written for an audience wider than the Tudor and Jacobean political elite. 15 It is not entirely correct, however, as some authors have suggested, that the Works and the Letters and life were deliberately kept apart from the start-i.e. that the Works was never meant to be complete-such that the latter would explain the 'Life' and the former could be read independently of, and untarnished by, the 13 James Spedding, Publishers and authors (Printed for the author by John Russell Smith, London, 1867), p. 81. Longman had announced in December 1856 that a volume would be published every month until the whole edition was complete. This was done without Spedding's knowledge, who in his 'History and plan of this edition', written in January 1857 and prefaced to Volume I of the Works, emphasized that he could not make any promise as to the time when volumes VI and VII would be ready. See Spedding, op. cit. (note 8), p. iv, n. 4. As Longman assured its subscribers in its Notes on books for February 1857: 'It has not been thought advisable to postpone the publication of the first seven volumes until these could be announced as ready to follow in regular succession, but the Editor is anxious to bring them out with as little delay as possible; and, as soon as the completion of the part not in the press gives him leisure to resume his work upon them, he will proceed with them as fast as he can.   Robertson. 18 In 1996, Routledge/Thoemmes Press reprinted the 1879 edition of the complete Works, with an introduction by Graham Rees; although a facsimile copy, the volume and page numbering differs from that of the original. 19 It was only between 1961 and 1963 that the first 14-volume edition of the London original was published (in facsimile reprint) in Stuttgart, in which the Works appeared as Volumes 1-7 and the Letters and life as Volumes 8-14. 20 The recent Cambridge Library Collection edition of the Works, published in 2011 at Cambridge University Press, is a photographic copy of this edition.
During the 1860s, in the midst of the Civil War, three separate American editions of the Works appeared: one in Boston (Brown and Taggard, 1860-1862, and Taggard and Thomson, 1863-1864) and two in New York (Hurd and Houghton, 1864 and 1869). 21 These editions, which were prepared under Spedding's supervision, omitted the Letters and life, while still taking up 15 volumes, and used a different pagination. As if the New World had been called in 'to redress the wrongs of the Old [World]', the American editions were more popular than the London edition, selling 1500 sets within two years. 22 'I have great pleasure', Spedding wrote to the publishers in New York in 1866, 'in acknowledging the receipt of your remittance of five per cent upon the retail price of all the volumes of Bacon's works sold …; and though you express regret for the smallness of the amount I am bound to confess that it is more than I ever received here.' 23 Money for editing Bacon! Spedding, who had devoted 20 years of his life to Bacon, had never heard of such a thing.

SPEDDING'S CRITICISM OF THE WORKS
In 1867, Spedding published, at his own expense, a booklet with the deceptively neutral title Publishers and authors. It contained two papers in which he harshly denounced the publishing business for destroying his life's work, the Works and the Letters and life. Both papers had been turned down by periodicals because they would 'offend the Powers upon whom the sale of books depends'. 24 The second paper, 'Publishers and book-buyers', contained a long passage with 'a secret history of the failure of the new edition of Bacon'-as it was mockingly called in The Athenaeum-which was put forward as an example of the seeming conflict of interest between publishers, on the one hand, and authors and editors, on the other. 25 In brief, whereas for the former the value of a book consisted in the price for which it was sold, for the latter it consisted in being read. The reader forming an insignificant minority of the buyers, publishers inevitably targeted the majority, who would 'rather give 18 shillings for one volume which cannot be read with comfort than 20 shillings for two which can'. 26 Hence, authors and editors were often overruled by their publishers, as Spedding himself had experienced with Longman, though apparently not, or at least to a much lesser extent, with the American publishers. Spedding, not convinced of the conflict of interest, called upon all readers to 'make a demonstration', showing publishers that 'they are their own enemies as well as ours'. 27  wants of the readers rather than that of the buyers. Upon this scenario, the Works would have been published in four separable parts, with 12 independent volumes in total: I submit that if these twelve volumes had been set out in uniform size, type, and binding, with the name Bacon, and the principal contents of each, lettered on the back, they would have formed quite as complete an edition of the philosophical, literary, and professional works as they do now; everybody who wanted such an edition would have wanted them all, just as much as now; those who wanted some, but not all, would have bought those they wanted. 28 Perhaps, then, if it had been entirely the main editor's decision, the classic Victorian edition of Bacon's work would have been a rather different book.
Longman's initial choice had been to sell the Works as a complete set, following the practice of subscription publication begun in the eighteenth century. 29 The same was the case for the Letters and life. Because of their connection-though published as a separate work, the Letters and life was a continuation of the Works-Longman in the early 1860s made a slightly confusing decision: 'for the convenience of purchasers', two different bindings were provided. 30 Those buyers who applied for the Letters and life would receive them bound as separate volumes under that title; those who had applied for the Works would receive them as Volumes VIII-XIV, with lettering and title pages corresponding to the previous volumes. Around the same time, Longman also decided to offer the first five and the last two volumes of the Works for sale separately, the price of each volume lying between 14 and 18 shillings. This did not solve the issue of the thickness of the individual volumes, but it did indicate the publisher's concerns about how best to market the edition. Indeed, in 1905, George Routledge & Sons published John M. Robertson's The philosophical works of Francis Bacon-'reprinted from the texts and translations, with the notes and prefaces, of Ellis & Spedding'-primarily to make a collection of the major works of Bacon available 'at a price within the reach of the mass of readers', something that 'has long been wanting'. 31 It nonetheless differed from the earlier American editions insofar as it contained 'far more than has ever been included in any popular edition'. 32 Spedding's Publishers and authors was harshly criticized, not to say ridiculed, particularly in The Athenaeum, where an anonymous reviewer mocked Spedding's 'secret history' of the Works' failure as a case of resentment and self-pity. Rather than blaming the publisher, Spedding should have taken his responsibility, laying the fault on himself.
Are we to understand that a gentleman of Mr. Spedding's position … consented to edit the works of a great writer like Bacon without reserving to himself … the right to dispose the materials of his author in the way which recommended itself to his own mind as best? If he reserved to himself no such editorial right, who is to blame but himself? If he reserved to himself the right, why blame his publishers by these implications? 33