FABER and GWYER Ltd.
PUBLISHERS

MANAGING DIRECTORS:
G. C. FABER (CHAIRMAN)
C. W. STEWART
R. H. I. DE LA MARE

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.
TELEGRAMS: FABGWY, WESTCENT, LONDON.

24, RUSSELL SQUARE,
LONDON, W.C.1.

21st September 1928

Ezra Pound Esq.,
Via Marsala, 12.mt.5,
RAPALLO, Italy.

Dear Mr Pound,

First of all I must apologize for the delay
that there has been in giving you a definite re-
ply about CAVALCANTI. I started my holiday with
the matter very much upon my mind and determined,
when I got back to town again, to read once more
your correspondence with Mr Eliot in order to make
quite sure that I should answer all the points
that you had raised. I think I can now give you
a detailed answer.

My firm is against the plan you proposed of
making an edition copiously illustrated with re-
productions of original manuscripts, for several
reasons - indeed we think it would be far better
to have no facsimiles at all. In the first place
our experience of getting illustrations printed

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own, and, in addition to that, lists of variants and
textual notes.

The terms we offer are as follows: to pay the
Italian editor of the text ten guineas for his work,
and yourself a sum of £25 in advance of a royalty of
15% on copies sold in England and of 15% of the price
received for sheets sold to America. I think we
should prefer to make it a signed limited edition -
but at a reasonable price - of not more than one
thousand copies for England and America - the price
we should have to fix later when we are better able
to estimate the cost of producing the book.

I hope you will agree to this suggestion - but
if there is any question that I have omitted to answer,
will you be kind enough to let me know.

FABER and GWYER Ltd.

PUBLISHERS

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.

24, RUSSELL SQUARE,

LONDON, W.C.1.

8th October, 1928

Ezra Pound, Esq.,
C/o American Express Co.,
Piazza di Spagna,
Roma. Italy.

Dear Mr. Pound,

Before replying to your letter I have made another careful examination of my estimates for "CAVALCANTI", and at your suggestion we have considered the matter afresh. I am sorry if I appeared to you unreasoning - as that to judge from your letter must have been the case - but the actual fact is that I was quite clear about your suggestion. You see the figure that Mr. Eliot quoted to you originally as an approximate estimate for the book was inclusive of such items as jackets, advertising, overheads, and binding the whole edition of the book in a style suitable to the price that we should have to charge. (In estimating for a book we must consider our total liability, otherwise it is impossible to estimate the profit - incidentally we figure separately to discover the number of copies we have to sell in order to cover expenses). Your Vienna estimate covered

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none of these charges, and it appeared to you in consequence
that the more elaborate edition with facsimiles would actually
cost less than the edition we proposed <u>without</u> facsimiles,
whereas the fact is that it would cost more, although not so
much more as it would if the <u>facsimiles</u> were made in England.

Now it would be practicable, to have the facsimiles made in
Vienna if you would be there to supervise, but quite out of the
question, I think, to have the text set up there; so if we are
to have the Vienna-made facsimiles in our book they are bound
to be an extra to be added to the total of the estimate I have
already made. My estimate proved it to be just possible to
publish the book at twenty-five shillings, and that seems to us
the limit of price we could charge for the book, with or without
facsimiles, if it is not to be strangled at birth.

I am afraid the only reply which I can make is that we
cannot undertake to pay for facsimiles unless we can first be
assured of an American publisher buying an edition of not less
than 500 copies of this more elaborate book - and if you can
persuade an American publisher to do so we should be pleased
to go ahead on these lines. In the meantime the offer I made
in my last letter stands - but that I see does not attract you.
In fairness to my firm I think I should point out now that the
less elaborate edition was your own original suggestion, and
the edition with collotype facsimiles only a later development

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of the plan made after we first agreed to do the edition
without facsimiles. I say this because I don't at all
like the idea of your thinking that we have gone back on
our original offer - all that has happened is that we have
not felt ourselves inclined to embark upon the more costly
venture, as we do not agree with you that the facsimile edition
would have a sale very much greater than the edition without
the facsimiles, and certainly not a sale 'two or three times
as great' as you suggest in your letter. Finally, I am quite
sure that a Vienna printed *text* would be at a considerable
disadvantage from the sales point of view compared with a
text set and printed in England by one of the better known
presses, whose books are collected to a certain extent without
regard to their contents.

I do hope this makes things quite clear now.

FABER and GWYER Ltd.

PUBLISHERS

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.

24, RUSSELL SQUARE,

LONDON, W.C.1.

19th October 1928

Ezra Pound Esq.,
c/o The American Express Company,
Piazza di Spagna,
ROME.

Dear Mr Pound,

Thank you for your letter of October the 12th.
I will say at once that we agree to four reproductions;
and, after deliberating upon this point at length, I
have decided that it will be simpler, easier, and safer
to have these reproductions made in England and not
abroad. Personally I should much prefer to stick to
the ordinary collotype process and not to use the 'man-
ual' process which you suggest - the saving on four
could not in any case be very considerable. The whole
process of production would then be in my hands and I
should be able to watch it without anxiety. If you
can agree to this, we shall then be ready to go right
ahead with the book as soon as you like.

With regard to an American publisher: I have writ-
ten to-day to Boni and Liveright (whose name is now

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changed to Horace Liveright Incorporated). I had spoken already to their representative in London, who thought it probable that his firm will agree to take half the edition. - That would be very satisfactory. In my letter I pointed out that they must pay a royalty upon the published price. If they agree to this there will then be no disadvantage to you in the book's being sold to America in sheets. But what if they do not agree ? We ourselves cannot possibly set the book up here unless we have the right to sell sheets to America; so, if, in the event of their - or for that matter, any other firm - not agreeing, you insist upon getting a royalty upon published price in America, I am afraid it will mean that we shall have to abandon the idea of doing the book here altogether. I told Liveright of the alternative plan of the more elaborate edition with complete reproductions and I have asked for your opinion upon it.

Finally I hope I am not wrong in supposing that you have agreed to sign all the copies of the edition when it is ready ? It would certainly make it more saleable here, and would I think be an absolute necessity in America - Liveright made a point of that in his last letter.

FABER and GWYER Ltd.

PUBLISHERS

MANAGINO DIRECTORS:
G. C. FABER (CHAIRMAN)
C. W. STEWART
R. H. I. DE LA MARE

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.

15th November 1928

Ezra Pound Esq.,
Via Marsala, 12, int. 5,
RAPALLO, Italy

Dear Mr Pound,

I have got back the CAVALCANTI photographs from
Eliot and I am sending them to you herewith.

I still wait to hear from Ullmann's. They have
been rather a long time in replying to my letter, but
I hope that when they do reply they will give me the
exhaustive information for which I asked them.

Our binders are despatching to you to-day the sheets
of the signature page for the Limited Edition of your
SELECTED POEMS. Will you be kind enough to sign the
sheets immediately under the note stating the number of
copied copy, and return them to us as soon as you conven-
iently can. We just hope that we may be able to get the
Limited Edition out at the beginning of December. The
ordinary edition we are publishing on November the 23rd.

Enclosure

FABER and GWYER Ltd.

PUBLISHERS

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.

24, RUSSELL SQUARE,

LONDON, W.C.1.

20th November 1928

Ezra Pound Esq.,
Via Marsala, 12 int. 5,
RAPALLO, Italy.

Dear Mr Pound,

I have just received your letter of November the 17th which appears to have been written just before my own letter to you of November the 15th will probably have reached you. I think you will find that that letter of mine will explain what you now write about. I myself was under the impression that you had been consulted about a small signed Limited Edition of your SELECTED POEMS, but I gather from what you say that that was not the case. If so, I am very sorry, but I hope you will approve of our doing one. We can quite easily sell the small edition that we have printed, and it will bring a small profit to you and to ourselves.

I hope to be able to send you specimen pages for the CAVALCANTI book to-morrow, or at any rate the day after that.

FABER and GWYER Ltd.

PUBLISHERS

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.

23rd November 1928

Ezra Pound Esq.,
Via Marsala, 12, int, 5,
RAPALLO, Italy

Dear Mr Pound,

Thank you for the signature pages for the hand-made paper edition of your SELECTED POEMS. They have come back quite safely.

I am sorry not to be able yet to let you see the specimen page for CAVALCANTI, but the first one that I had from the printers did not seem to me quite satisfactory, so they are now engaged upon another.

I have now heard from Messrs Ullmann, and it is quite obvious to me that it is more than worth while to have the full set of facsimiles, since they can be printed so cheaply in Germany. I think the sooner we get on with this part of the book the better, as this is where delay is most likely to take place; so will you be kind enough to let me have the photographs for reproduction as soon as you are ready with them, and,

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since the size of page we have chosen for the book itself
is to be 7 1/8 by 11 inches, will you kindly let me know
how much you would like the photographs to be reduced, if
any of them exceed that size.

Finally, when do you expect to send me some part of
your manuscript ?

P.S. I am having the draft of an agreement prepared and
will send it to you shortly.

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.

24, RUSSELL SQUARE,

LONDON, W.C.1.

4th December 1928

Dear Mr Pound,

I am at last able to send you some specimen pages
for the Cavalcanti book. I feel quite sure that you
will have criticisms to make of them, and I think my-
self that they can be improved in some small particu-
lars. But I do hope you will not mind my pointing out
that if we are to get a really good typographer upon the
job - and in this case I have got Mr Oliver Simon of the
Curwen Press to look after the typography for us - we
must leave a certain amount for him to decide. I think
you will agree that we want this book to be a success
typographically, and if it is a success of this kind,
as well as a success of the other kind, which I feel
quite certain you will make it, it will without doubt
help us considerably to sell it here and will certainly
make a great difference to the sale of the book in Amer-

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ica, because these press books are widely collected.

Personally I think the eighteen point Baskerville that he has used for the Italian looks very well indeed and the smaller size of Baskerville that he has used for the translations seems to me quite suitable - but there is one point about which I have not made up my own mind, and that is whether when there happens to be only one translation set it will be better to have the one translation set in a slightly larger size. What do you think ?

I have received your letter of November the 26th and your letter of November the 30th which came with the manuscript. I have given the manuscript to the printers, and I am telling them exactly what you say about the setting of it; they will not, however, do anything more until we get back from you this specimen page with your criticisms upon it.

With regard to the photographs of the facsimiles; I should very much prefer you to send them to me first, and let me forward them to Ullmann. The whole thing will then be entirely in my hands and I shall know exactly where we stand.

Finally, I will let you know when you may expect proofs as soon as it is possible to get a promise from the printers.

7.

TELEPHONE: MUSEUM 9543.

24, RUSSELL SQUARE,

LONDON, W.C.1.

15th January 1929

Dear Mr Pound,

I am afraid you may be disappointed to hear that our printers have not yet started setting up CAVALCANTI. The reason for the delay is that *they* have been struggling with your elaborate suggestions, and I with estimates based upon the specimens they have set up. First of all, they set a new specimen embodying the suggestions you made in your letter of December the 7th; but this arrangement proved to be quite impracticable on account of the terrific expense it would entail in production costs. It would have made the book twice as long and very much bigger than we originally bargained for, and certainly very much more costly than we can possibly afford. The printers then set a second specimen (Specimen 'B' enclosed), keeping the Italian in a large size of type (24point), but putting the two translations in

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smaller type on the same page. This had some points to recommend it, but it did not seem to make a very satisfactory page, and the expense was still too great. I wonder if you are aware that the largest size of type that can be set on the Monotype at present is 18 point ? We simply cannot afford to have this book, even in part, set up by hand.

With us, the crux of the matter is this: when the suggestion for a new edition of your translation of CAVALCANTI was first made to us we based our estimates upon the matter in the original book, plus Rossetti's translations. The copy you have now sent us very greatly exceeds the length we expected the book to be, judging by what you told us about it, and makes the whole proposition far more expensive than we ever anticipated. A further point that I must stress is this: when we agreed originally to do the book we assumed that the actual typography would be entirely in our own hands, and we planned to do it in a way that would make the thing a business proposition, instead of a highly speculative one. If we were to go ahead now on the lines you yourself suggest, I have no doubt at all in my own mind that we should end up very seriously our of pocket. Our own plans were for a well printed and handsomely produced

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book, but not for one on the grand scale of the specimens
we have had set up recently.

We have gone into the matter very carefully, and we
have decided that we can undertake to do the book only
provided we are permitted to do it in the way we suggest,
i.e. much more economically. The printers have been at
great pains to help us, and now suggest that the book be
set up in the style of the rough specimen 'A' which I en-
close. The Italian text would be set in 12 point, at the
top of the page, and the translations underneath the Ital-
ian in 10 point or 11 point. The marginal glozes would
be set in the manner you yourself suggest and there would
be a rule round the page as indicated. We realize that
this may be far from your wishes; and, if it is, we quite
understand that you may prefer to get the book printed
on your own plan and published by some other firm. If,
however, you can agree to what we now suggest, we shall,
of course, be pleased to proceed on the basis of the agree-
ment between us (with one or two small modifications)
which Messrs Curtis Brown have just drafted.

I regret to say that Messrs Horace Liveright & Co.,
have now refused to take sheets of the book for sale in
America, and The Random House Incorporated, to whom we
were advised to write by Mr Liveright, have also turned
the book down. I am afraid it may be rather difficult

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to find anyone to publish the book in America. I
point this out because it was your assurance that the
book would find an American publisher that persuaded us
to take the risk in the first place - if it does not
find a publisher in America, I fear we shall have little
chance of recouping ourselves.

The photographs for facsimile reproduction have
now come safely to hand, together with your letter.
I will keep the photographs and postpone discussion about
them until I hear from you in reply to this letter.