Reception History
Every copy of C. Valerii Catulli Carmina has its own individual number, handwritten in the colophon. The highest number I have come across is 373, located in Houghton Library, and the lowest number is 19, located at UCLA. Although many library catalogs state that the total number of books printed is 400, Richard Doyle and Warren Myers recall that less than 400 ended up being printed.
I looked up Goold's Carmina on WorldCat, and I went into the library catalogs for every entry. All copies that I found were located in universities, most of them in the United States. The universities that own the greatest number of copies are University of Toronto and Harvard University, both of which own four different copies. Shown in this photo is the Boston College library catalog, which is one of the few catalogs that includes the number printed in the colophon.
None of the copies of Carmina located on Harvard's campus had any marginalia. The copy in Houghton Library and the copy in Smyth Library show virtually no signs of use or wear. In a phone conversation, Richard Doyle said that some of the copies of Carmina he printed were gifted to Groton graduates and others were sold or given to university libraries. He also said that he most likely gave book number 373 to Houghton as a gift because it was one of the last ones that were printed. All the copies of Goold's C. Valerii Catulli were printed by Doyle in 1973, and so the roughly 400 copies are the only ones extant.
Warren Myers, Classics teacher at Groton and good friend of George Goold, took four copies of the Carmina that Doyle printed to Rome, where he knew a book binder. He got the four copies bound specially and gave one to Olson, print master at Groton School during Doyle's time as a student, one to Doyle, one to Goold, and kept one for himsef. The rest are all bound in blue cloth over boards, each of which was given away or sold.
The entirety of Carmina is printed in Latin, including both greetings to the reader from Goold: it can be assumed that Goold's Carmina is intended to reach an audience well-versed in Latin, especially because there are no guiding notes for the poems, and indeed all copies, other than the four owned by Doyle, Goold, Myers, and Olson, were sent out to universities and Groton graduates, all of whom would have had at least some experience with Classical languages during their times as students. It was printed as Doyle's final project in his senior year because he had a personal interest in printing and in textual criticism, not for commercial purposes. Goold himself also does not seem to have agreed to provide the text for Doyle's project for profit – he did so at the request of his close friend Warren Myers.
Below is a chart of all the copies of Goold's C. Valerii Catulli found through WorldCat.
