The stationers, having complete control over their register-books, made what entries they chose, and all kinds of books, even Homer and the Classics, became the 'property' of its members. The booksellers, nearly all Londoners, respected each other's 'copies,' and jealously guarded access to their registers. From time to time there were sales by auction of a bookseller's 'copies,' but the public--that is, the country booksellers, for there were no other likely buyers--were excluded from the sale-room. A great monopoly was thus created and maintained by the trade. There was never any examination of title to a bookseller's copy. Every book of repute was supposed to have a bookseller for its owner. Bunyan's _Pilgrim's Progress_ was Mr. Ponder's copy, Milton's _Paradise Lost_ Mr. Tonson's copy, _The Whole Duty of Man_ Mr. Eyre's copy, and so on. The thing was a corrupt and illegal trade combination.
The expiration of the Licensing Act, and the consequent cessation of the penalties it inflicted upon unlicensed printing, exposed the proprietors of 'copies' to an invasion of their rights, real or supposed, and in 1703, and again in 1706 and 1709, they applied to Parliament for a Bill to protect them against the 'ruin' with which they alleged themselves to be threatened.[A]
[Footnote A: What the booksellers wanted was not to be left to their common law remedy--_i.e._, an action of trespass on the case--but to be supplied with penalties for infringement, and especially with the right to seize and burn unauthorized editions.]
In 1710 they got what they asked for in the shape of the famous Statute of Queen Anne, the first copyright law in the world. A truly English measure, ill considered and ill drawn, which did the very last thing it was meant to do--viz., destroy the property it was intended to protect.
By this Act, in which the 'author' first makes his appearance actually in front of the 'proprietor,' it was provided that, _in case of new books_, the author and his assigns should have the sole right of printing them for fourteen years, and if at the end of that time the author was still alive, a second term of fourteen years was conceded. In the case of _existing books_, there was to be but one term--viz., twenty-one years, from August 10, 1710.