OT: "copyright" (imprint) date vs. publication date

[Jonathan Lighter]

And don't forget, in the pre-computer days it could *easily* take three
months for a book actually to appear after the publisher accepted the ms.
and received the final draft.

OTOH, tiny corrections can be snuck in almost up to the last moment.

The difference between a copyright date of, say, "1900" and "1901" could be
one or two days or 366. And, as you suggest, the time it takes for anyone to
read it could be longer than that.

So despite the demands of positivism, HDAS and OED dates all imply a little
bit of wiggle room.  (Published diaries are an issue unto themselves. You
may remember the case of "Murphy's Law" many months back.)

But as an HDAS user, you can be confident that the dates therein are the
most accurate I was able to assign.

Jon

On Mon, Mar 28, 2011 at 2:58 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
> Subject:      Re: OT:  "copyright" (imprint) date vs. publication date
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> At 3/28/2011 12:09 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> >  (FWIW, I have seen books in bookstores in October that were
> >"copyright" the following year.)
>
> Samuel Sewall saw a book arrive (I don't know whether in hand or at
> his bookseller's) a year later than it was imprinted.  Not
> impossible, but that has since confused many historians.  Increase
> Mather's An Arrow against Profane and Promiscuous Dancing is
> imprinted 1684, but Sewall wrote it "comes out" on February 16,
> 1685.  That of course is 1686 New Style.  One can only imagine the
> number of events in New England that have therefore been erroneously
> dated as happening after it was published, as well as the significant
> actually-preceding events that historians deny could have influenced
> Mather to write it.
>
> Joel
>
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