Lord de Goubertini

Commendatore De Gubernatis, a government official who writes poetry in secret, becomes the emblematic customer of Manutius, the vanity press operated by Signor Garamond. Hoping to enter a prestigious literary world and gain the recognition he believes his work deserves, he accepts praise, promises of publicity, and an apparently conventional publishing offer. The arrangement instead places the financial risk on the author while allowing the publisher to control the print run, distribution, and fate of unsold books. His story makes visible how the publishing business can sell not only books but also the prospect of belonging to a recognized cultural elite.

Identity and Introduction

De Gubernatis arrives at the publishing office carrying his manuscript in a leatherette briefcase. His appearance suggests a respectable official rather than an established literary figure: he wears a double-breasted suit, a rosette, and a fountain pen in his breast pocket, with a folded newspaper at his side. Garamond has already been told that De Gubernatis served in the customs service and spent his nights writing poetry. The visitor is thus introduced through the dual identity that shapes the episode: dutiful state employee by day, aspiring author in private.

Garamond treats the manuscript as a discovery before assessing its merits. He praises De Gubernatis’s origins, imagines him composing through the night, and speaks as though he can sense poetic inspiration from a glance at the opening page. The manuscript is typed on onionskin, a detail Garamond recasts as evidence of poetic sensibility. His performance turns the author’s modest circumstances into part of an attractive story about artistic vocation, while postponing the practical question of whether a publisher will invest in the book.

The Promise of Recognition

De Gubernatis wants more than copies of his work: he wants to be received into a recognizable literary family. As Jacopo Belbo explains, he has often dismissed the fame of celebrated writers as a conspiracy of accommodating critics, yet he longs to appear in an encyclopedia alongside writers who are state directors, bank managers, aristocrats, and magistrates. An entry would enlarge his circle of acquaintances and might prove useful when he needs a favor. Literary reputation, in this account, is also a form of social access.

Garamond understands that ambition and predicts how it will shape the encounter. He expects De Gubernatis to imagine himself as Adeodato Lampustri, a celebrated literary persona whose invented biography and achievements appear in an encyclopedia entry. The forecast describes a seduction by recognition: after an initial dinner and a suggestion to visit the office, De Gubernatis will arrive expecting a serious publisher to validate his talent. Garamond can then offer extravagant praise while presenting commercial caution as the only obstacle between the poet and publication.

In Garamond’s projected conversation, the manuscript is sublime and worthy of a prize, yet too far ahead of its time to sell widely. The estimate of only a few thousand readers is framed not as a judgment of quality but as a mismatch between genius and an unprepared public. That explanation preserves the author’s self-image while shifting the discussion toward a solution he can finance himself. De Gubernatis’s imagined audience is not an abstract mass market but the familiar people of his own world: former classmates, bank managers, teachers, retired officers, and local acquaintances. To reach them, he is prepared to draw on savings, borrow against his pension, mortgage his home, or sell government bonds.

The Self-Financing Contract

The office scene shows the difference between Garamond’s normal publishing operation and the offer made to a hopeful author. For university editions, the business relies on institutional projects, professors’ prefaces, authors who correct proofs and check references without receiving royalties, and modest sales over several years. Such books are adopted as textbooks, cover their expenses, and offer few surprises. Manutius’s self-financing authors, by contrast, pay for publication themselves; the later account describes the firm as a vanity press with high earnings, minimal overhead, and only four staff members: Garamond, Signora Grazia, the bookkeeper, and Luciano, the shipping clerk.

Garamond’s persuasive pitch hides the terms that determine who bears the risk. He proposes an initial plan for two thousand copies while the contract allows for a maximum of ten thousand, but the agreement sets no minimum print run. It also makes the author’s payment independent of the number actually printed, although the quantity is supposedly agreed only verbally. A further clause permits Manutius to pulp unsold copies after a year unless the author buys them back at half the list price. The ten pages of small print also reserve foreign, subsidiary, dramatic, broadcast, film, and other rights, and send disputes to the Milan courts. De Gubernatis is so absorbed in the promise of literary arrival that he is expected to sign without reading these provisions.

The production and distribution figures reveal the practical effect of the contract. Despite the author being charged for the production costs of two thousand copies, Manutius prints one thousand and binds only three hundred and fifty at first. Two hundred are for De Gubernatis, roughly fifty for minor or associated bookshops, fifty for provincial magazines, and about thirty for newspapers; the rest may eventually be donated to hospitals or prisons. The lavish launch is supported by long press releases and critical essays, while the circulation that might bring the book to ordinary readers remains narrow. A prize created by Garamond adds another sign of prestige: its costs amount to two days of the jury’s meals and lodging and a vermeil Nike of Samothrace for the winner.

The Reversal and Its Cost

The arrangement reaches its crisis a year and a half later, when Garamond writes that De Gubernatis is fifty years ahead of his time. The letter reports rave reviews, awards, and critical acclaim, then says that few copies have sold and that the warehouse must be cleared. Unless De Gubernatis exercises his contractual right to buy the remaining copies at half the list price, Manutius will pulp them. The praise that once seemed to confirm his literary importance now accompanies a demand for further payment.

De Gubernatis is devastated by the prospect that his writing will be destroyed. His relatives console him by blaming cliques, bribery, and an indifferent press, and remind him that only five author’s copies remain while important people have yet to receive the work. They try to assemble enough money to buy back five hundred copies. Meanwhile, Manutius still has six hundred and fifty copies in unbound sheets; Garamond has five hundred bound and shipped cash on delivery. The final account states that De Gubernatis paid for the production of two thousand copies, although Manutius printed one thousand and bound eight hundred and fifty, and that five hundred copies were paid for a second time. With about fifty such authors a year, the scheme remains profitable.

Narrative Significance

De Gubernatis’s episode places artistic aspiration inside a commercial system that can manufacture the appearance of recognition while transferring its costs to the aspiring writer. His official standing and private literary ambition do not protect him from the bargain; they help make the imagined ascent persuasive. The publisher offers the language of quality, prizes, reviews, and future reputation, but controls the actual scale of production and the terms under which the books reach readers.

The contrast with Manutius’s institutional editions clarifies that the firm does not simply publish books according to a single editorial principle. Its low-risk textbook business is distinct from the self-financing operation, in which the author supplies the money and becomes the principal market for the product. As Jacopo Belbo observes, Luciano ships books to authors rather than booksellers, and Manutius is not chiefly interested in readers. De Gubernatis’s experience turns that remark into a concrete economic pattern: the author pays for the promise of an audience, and the publisher can profit even when that audience scarcely materializes.