Book dedications: when was the first published book to carry a printed
dedication by the author/ who to?  Did Hemingway dedicate  his books/
who to? What about Scott Fitzgerald  and Mark Twain and other
important writers like
Viriginia Woolf, Dickens, DH Lawrence, Flaubert, and Tolstoy?

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Request for Question Clarification by justaskscott-ga on 14 Apr 2003 00:01 PDT

I, or another Researcher, might be interested in answering your
questions.  However, I believe that answering these questions well
will require more time and effort than the average amount of time and
effort associated with this price.  Here is a link to guidelines about
the pricing of questions:
    
http://answers.google.com/answers/pricing.html    
   
You might wish to split this into separate questions, so that we can
provide individual answers to each question.  You also might wish to
narrow these questions.  (As it stands now, if we cannot find the name
of one person to whom one of these authors decidated a certain book,
we risk rejection of the answer.)

Or you might want to clarify what is essential in an answer -- perhaps
just the name and year of the first published book to carry a
dedication, along with the name of the person to whom the book was
dedicated.

However, if you wish to keep this as a single question in its original
form, you can raise the price and also post a clarification here
stating that you have
raised the price.

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Clarification of Question by caro27-ga on 14 Apr 2003 00:35 PDT

Hi, I am happy to pay a little more for this answer, so I can go up to
$20.
If you can't find out about the specific authors I mentionned, you
might want to try Oscar Wilde and/or Proust, or any other examples of
classic writers like Faulkner that you come across in answering the
initial question about  what was the first known published book to
carry a  printed dedication by the author ( as opposed to a personal
dedication such as you might get today at an author signing)  Hope
this helps and good luck!

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Request for Question Clarification by leli-ga on 14 Apr 2003 06:37 PDT

Hi Caro

You've asked an interesting but challenging question. After some
preliminary research, I'm fairly sure there's no definitive answer
online. Even using a good library, it might take a very long time to
track down the first ever printed dedication by an author.

It would be possible to give you a general overview of dedications
from before the first printing press up to the early twentieth
century. We could also refer you to works with dedications by a few of
the authors you've asked about. For me, this would be interesting! I
realize, though, that it may not be at all what you're looking for;
so, could you let us know if you would find an 'overview with
examples' kind of answer useful?

Leli

Hello caro27-ga,

I have found a good article on the history of dedications.  It
explains that dedications have not only existed but have been "bought
and sold" since Roman times.  There was a dedication in a Japanese
book from the eighth century.  As for printed books, dedications were
already very popular in Elizabethan times.  The article also collects
dozens of dedications, including one by Mark Twain, and notes that
Oscar Wilde tried to solve the mystery of a Shakespeare dedication.

"'Dedicated to-'", by A. Lawrence Marshburn (presentation on April 27,
1967)
Fortnightly Club of Redlands, California
http://www.redlandsfortnightly.org/dedicatd.htm

William Caxton included dedications in the first books printed in
English:

"It was [Margaret of York] who urged Caxton to translate from French
his first printed book, the History of Troy, which he dedicated to
her.  And it was to Margaret's brother, George, that Caxton dedicated
his second book, The Game and Play of Chess."

"The Whirligig of Time Brings Its Revenges", by Edward A. Quattrochi
(presentation on October 29, 2001)
The Chicago Literary Club
http://www.chilit.org/QUATT1.HTM

So dedications are as old as, and much older than, the printing press.

The following post mentions some books and essays on the history of
dedications that you might want to track down (perhaps by asking the
author of the post):

"Re: Dedications", posted by Jerry Morris (Wed, 26 Feb 2003)
Exlibris
Conservation OnLine
http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/exlibris/2003/02/msg00170.html

I have found a fairly straightforward method for finding names and
sometimes texts of dedications: search for "[author's last name]
dedicated".  For most of the authors listed in your question who wrote
in English, this method produces at least one result.  (For an author
with a common last name, you might want to search for: ["author's last
name] dedicated" [author's full name].)  You can use the results to
refine your searches into something like: [author's last name] [person
to whom book was dedicated] dedicated.  A few variants on this search
are possible.

For example, a search for "wilde dedicated" on Google results in the
following useful web pages:

"A Letter From Oscar Wilde" (November 17-23, 2000)
LA Weekly
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/00/52/wls.php

"To Pierre Lou˙s"
Oscar Wilde - Standing Ovations
http://home.arcor.de/oscar.wilde/about/l/letter_louys_12_91.htm

"Vol. II, No. 3, March 2002" [section on "Margot Asquith on Oscar
Wilde"]
The Oscholars
http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/oscholars/vol_ii_3/#Margot%20Asquith

"Frank Harris" [scroll to bottom of page]
The Princess Grace Irish Library Bulletin
http://www.pgil-eirdata.org/html/pgil_datasets/authors/h/Harris,Frank/life.htm

I hope that this information is helpful.

- justaskscott-ga


Search terms used on Google:

"dedications in books"
"dedications of books"
"caxton dedicated"
caxton "history of troy" dedicated
"wilde dedicated"
dedications "dedicated to" wilde

Prompt and focussed, but also going beyond than the specifics I
requested; very helpful and time saving.

Depending upon the definitions of "published" and "printed", one could
give different answers to the question when did the first dedications
that are not personal inscriptions appear. Authors have been
dedicating their published works to patrons and friends for millennia.
In Antiquity, a book could be published by a public reading of the
work, which then would be sent to a scriptorium, where it would be
hand copied in large numbers by slaves. The copies were sold in the
stalls of the agora or forum. Roman authors regularly dedicated their
books. Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106-43 B.C.) frequently
dedicated his books (e.g., Cato Maior de Senectute, Cato the Elder on
Old Age) to his friend Atticus (Titus Pomponius Atticus), who was
responsible for publication of many of them. The Roman poet Horace
(Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 B.C.) dedicated his Odes to Maecenas
(Caius Clinius Maecenas), the wealthy literary patron (and companion
of Caesar Augustus), who had presented him with a farm. "Maecenas
atavis edite regibus/o et praesidium et dulce decus meum..." (Odes,
Book One, 1, 1-2.) Pliny the Elder (Gaius Plinius Secundus, A.D.
23-79) dedicated his Natural History to Titus, the son of his old
friend from the German Wars, Vespasian (Titus Flavius Vespasianus
Sabinus), the co-emperor. Going back even farther, the Greek poet
Pindar (518-438 B.C.) wrote his epicenian Odes on commission to
commemorate victories in sporting events, and those works were,
naturally, dedicated to the subjects of the poems. The First Olympian
ode, for instance, is dedicated to Hiero of Syracuse for his victory
in a chariot race in 476 B.C.

If one confines oneself to books that are indeed from the era of
movable type ("printed"), the first original work in English that
carried a dedication might be William Caxton's book about Godfrey of
Boullion, "of whose acts and life I made a book unto the excellent
prince and king of noble memory, King Edward the Fourth." (Preface to
the Morte d'Arthur, 1485.) (But, as Caxton learned to print in
Cologne, and Gutenberg's printing press predated Caxton, there might
well be original works in German that predate the Godfrey.) Sir Thomas
More dedicated his Utopia (1516) to Peter Gilles, his friend from
Antwerp. Elsewhere in Europe, in Florence, Niccolo Machiavelli
(1469-1532) dedicated his book on politics, The Prince, to Lorenzo the
Magnificent, although the dedication may not have reached Lorenzo
before his death in 1519.

Mark Twain dedicated his Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc to his
wife, Olivia Langdon. Oscar Wilde dedicated Lady Windermere's Fan to
the memory of Edward Bulwer Lytton, and The Importance of Being Ernest
to Robert Ross, his friend. Wilde also dedicated Salome to Alfred
Douglas, a poor selection, to say the least.

hlabadie-ga