Tauchnitz publishers

Tauchnitz was the name of a family of German printers and publishers. They published English language literature for distribution on the European continent outside Great Britain, including initial serial publications of novels by Charles Dickens. Though copyright protection did not exist between nations in the 19th century, Tauchnitz paid the authors for the works they published, and agreed to limit their sales of English-language books to the European continent, as authors like Dickens or Bulwer-Lytton had separate arrangements for publication and sale in Great Britain.

Karl Christoph Traugott Tauchnitz (1761–1836), born at Grossbardau near Grimma, Saxony, established a printing business in Leipzig in 1796 and a publishing house in 1798. He specialized in the publication of dictionaries, Bibles, and stereotyped editions of the Greek and Roman classics. He was the first publisher to introduce stereotyping into Germany.

The business was carried on by his son, Karl Christian Phillipp Tauchnitz (1798–1884), until 1865, when the business was sold to O. Holtze. He left large sums to the city of Leipzig for philanthropic purposes.

Christian Bernhard, Freiherr von Tauchnitz (August 25, 1816 Schleinitz, present day Unterkaka – August 11, 1895 Leipzig), the founder of the firm of Bernhard Tauchnitz, was the nephew of the first-mentioned. Christian's father died when he was young and his uncle played an important part in his development. His printing and publishing firm was started at Leipzig (Germany) on February 1, 1837.

Bernhard started the Collection of British and American Authors in 1841, a reprint series familiar to anglophone travellers on the continent of Europe. These inexpensive paperbound editions, a direct precursor to mass-market paperbacks, were begun in 1841, and eventually ran to over 5,000 volumes. In 1868 he began the Collection of German Authors, followed in 1886 by the Students' Tauchnitz Editions.

In the early 1900s, a journalist writing about the company suggested that the warning on the covers of Tauchnitz's English-language books, "Not to be introduced into England or into any British colony," might lead some to believe that the books were not legitimate. In fact the books were authorised by the authors or their representatives for Continental sale only. The authors were paid royalties even at a time when no copyright protection for English and American books existed in Germany. That was Baron Tauchnitz's policy from the foundation of his company. He wrote in his original prospectus,

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