"... Hosea is done with," he says in November, "and will soon be out. It made fifty pages more than I expected and so took longer." The volume appeared on the 10th, and on the 25th he again writes to Gay: "... The first edition of Hosea is nearly exhausted already."
The following retrospect, sent to the same friend on February 26, 1849, contains the lesson of experience:
"There were a great many alterations of spelling made in the plates of the "Biglow Papers," which added much to the expense. I ought not to have stereotyped at all. But we are never done with cutting eye-teeth."
George Nichols, who published the book, was at one time an owner of the University Book-store, and, later, one of the proprietors of the University Press. He was noted for his skill in proof-reading.
The printing was done by Metcalf and Company, printers to the University; and the little book came out from their hands innocent of hives, scrolls, urns, or any other ornament. Something changed the author's mind, too, regarding _Jaalam_ as the purporting place of publication.
87. Vanity Fair. | A Novel without a Hero. | By | William Makepeace Thackeray. | With Illustrations On Steel And Wood By The Author. | London: | Bradbury and Evans, 11, Bouverie Street. | 1848.
The name of the book, as we see it in the delightful and altogether characteristic drawing on the engraved title-page, reminds us of what Miss Kate Perry says in her reminiscences of Thackeray:
"He told me, some time afterward, that, after ransacking his brain for a name for his novel, it came upon him unawares, in the middle of the night, as if a voice had whispered, 'Vanity Fair.' He said, 'I jumped out of bed, and ran three times round my room, uttering as I went, 'Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair, Vanity Fair.'"
It has been repeated, more than once, that _Vanity Fair_ was refused by _Colburn's Magazine_, and various other publishers, before Bradbury and Evans undertook it, but Vizetelly, in his _Glances Back Through Seventy Years_, thinks that this could not have been the case, since Thackeray did not finish the story until long after it had been accepted, and, in fact, was well along in the printer's hands. If refused, therefore, it was refused before it was finished. "I know perfectly well that after the publication commenced much of the remainder of the work was written under pressure for and from the printer, and not infrequently the first instalment of 'copy' needed to fill the customary thirty-two pages was penned while the printer's boy was waiting in the hall at Young Street."