Charles Dickens

When Charles Dickens died at age 58 in 1870, many said it was from the strain of a “gruelling” reading tour he’d done of America. There may be some truth to that, says Matthew Pearl, author of a novel about Dickens called The Last Dickens: “It was perhaps unwise for Dickens to make the long trip. His strength had been fading … he was plagued by a lame left foot and weak spells … Still, in some ways Dickens had little choice: He was being victimized by “an intellectual-property war every bit as fierce as today’s DVD black market in China.”

As Pearl explains in an essay at More Intelligent Life, Dickens had spent most of his time on an earlier trip to the States stumping for a universal copyright law, to no avail. Since then, things had deteriorated: “A loophole in American copyright law enabled publishers to reprint British books at will. Until 1891, the intellectual property of non-citizens was up for grabs. Charles Dickens, Alfred Tennyson and other popular British writers lost untold amounts of income as American publishers profited. American writers, too, were commercial losers at home, as a book of poetry by Longfellow or Poe selling for one dollar had to compete with a 25 cent novel by Dickens or Thackeray.”

But now, Dickens had a scheme: He would use tour and his immense popularity to propound the idea that he had one and only one “authorized” publisher. Notes Pearl, “Dubbed the Dickens Controversy, this unprecedented arrangement sparked fierce debate among American publishers, who were caught off-guard by an author’s ability to sway public opinion.”