| 405 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/405 | The Author, Vol. 20 Issue 08 (May 1910) | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=%3Cem%3EThe+Author%3C%2Fem%3E%2C+Vol.+20+Issue+08+%28May+1910%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 20 Issue 08 (May 1910)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015027638405" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015027638405</a> | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Publication">Publication</a> | 1910-05-02-The-Author-20-8 | | | | | 205–232 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=20">20</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1910-05-02">1910-05-02</a> | | | | | | | 8 | | | 19100502 | Cº be El u t b or.<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.)<br />
FOUNDED BY SIR WALTER BESANT.<br />
Wol. XX. —No. 8.<br />
MAY 2ND, 1910.<br />
[PRICE SIxPENCE.<br />
TELEPHONE NUMBER :<br />
374 WICTORIA.<br />
TELEGRAPHIC ADDRESS :<br />
AUTORIDAD, LONDON.<br />
—e—º-e—<br />
NOTICES.<br />
-º-º-º-<br />
OR the opinions expressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as expressing the opinion<br />
of the Committee unless such is especially stated<br />
to be the case. -<br />
gººmsºmºmºsºmºmºmºmºmºmºsºs<br />
THE Editor begs to inform members of the<br />
Authors’ Society and other readers of The Author<br />
that the cases which are quoted in The Author are<br />
cases that have come before the notice or to the<br />
knowledge of the Secretary of the Society, and that<br />
those members of the Society who desire to have<br />
the names of the publishers concerned can obtain<br />
them on application.<br />
tº-mºmºmºmº -º-º-º-º-º-ºm-º.<br />
ARTICLES AND CONTRIBUTIONS.<br />
THE Editor of The Author begs to remind<br />
members of the Society that, although the paper<br />
is sent to them free of cost, its production would<br />
be a very heavy charge on the resources of the<br />
Society if a great many members did not forward<br />
to the Secretary the modest 5s. 6d. Subscription for<br />
the year.<br />
Communications for The Author should be<br />
addressed to the Offices of the Society, 39, Old<br />
Queen Street, Storey's Gate, S.W., and should<br />
reach the Editor not later than the 21st of each<br />
month.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the<br />
Editor on all literary matters treated from the<br />
standpoint of art or business, but on no other<br />
subjects whatever. Every effort will be made to<br />
return articles which cannot be accepted.<br />
WOL. XX.<br />
ADVERTISEMENTS.<br />
As there seems to be an impression among<br />
readers of The Author that the Committee are<br />
personally responsible for the bona fides of the<br />
advertisers, the Committee desire it to be stated<br />
that this is not, and could not possibly be, the case.<br />
Although care is exercised that no undesirable<br />
advertisements be inserted, they do not accept, and<br />
never have accepted, any liability.<br />
Members should apply to the Secretary for advice<br />
if special information is desired.<br />
à<br />
w<br />
THE SOCIETY'S FUNDS.<br />
—e—sº-º-<br />
ROM time to time members of the Society<br />
desire to make donations to its funds in<br />
recognition of work that has been done for<br />
them. The Committee, acting on the suggestion<br />
of one of these members, have decided to place<br />
this permanent paragraph in The Author in order<br />
that members may be cognisant of those funds to<br />
which these contributions may be paid.<br />
The funds suitable for this purpose are : (1) The<br />
Capital Fund. This fund is kept in reserve in<br />
case it is necessary for the Society to incur heavy<br />
expenditure, either in fighting a question of prin-<br />
ciple, or in assisting to obtain copyright reform,<br />
or in dealing with any other matter closely<br />
connected with the work of the Society.<br />
(2) The Pension Fund. This fund is slowly<br />
increasing, and it is hoped will, in time, cover the<br />
needs of all the members of the Society.<br />
—dh- A<br />
~- w<br />
LIST of MEMBERS.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
HE List of Members of the Society of Authors<br />
published October, 1907, can now be obtained<br />
at the offices of the Society at the price of<br />
6d., post free 7#d. It includes elections to July,<br />
1907, and will be sold to members and associates<br />
of the Society only. -<br />
A dozen blank pages have been added at the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#602) ################################################<br />
<br />
206<br />
TFIES A DTISIOR.<br />
end of the list for the convenience of those who<br />
desire to add future elections as they are chronicled<br />
from month to month in these pages.<br />
—e—sº-e—<br />
THE PENSION FUND.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
N February 1, 1910, the trustees of the<br />
() Pension Fund of the society—after the secre-<br />
tary had placed before them the financial<br />
position of the fund—decided to invest £260 in<br />
the following securities: £130 in the purchase of<br />
Jamaica. 3% per cent. Stock 1919–49, and £130 in<br />
the purchase of Mauritius 4 per cent. Stock 1937.<br />
The amount purchased is £132 18s. 6d.<br />
Jamaica. 3% per cent. Stock and £120 12s. 1d.<br />
Mauritius 4 per cent. Stock.<br />
This brings the invested funds to over £4,000.<br />
The trustees, however, have been unable to recom-<br />
mend the payment of any further pensions, as the<br />
income at their disposal is at present exhausted.<br />
They desire to draw the attention of the members<br />
of the society to this fact, in the hope that by<br />
additional subscriptions and donations there will<br />
be sufficient funds in hand in the course of the<br />
year to declare another pension in case any im-<br />
portant claim is forthcoming.<br />
Consols 23%.................. ........... 21,000 0 0<br />
Local Loans .............................. 500 () ()<br />
Victorian Government 3% Consoli-<br />
dated Inscribed Stock ............... 291. 19 11<br />
London and North-Western 3% Deben-<br />
ture Stock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250 0 ()<br />
Egyptian Government Irrigation<br />
Trust 4% Certificates . . . . . . . . ... 200 0 0<br />
Cape of Good Hope 33% Inscribed<br />
Stock . . . . . . . . . . . . . ................ 200 0 0<br />
Glasgow and South-Western Railway<br />
4% Preference Stock.................. 228 () ()<br />
New Zealand 34% Stock............... 247 9 6<br />
Irish Land Act 23% Guaranteed Stock 258 0 0<br />
Corporation of london 2;% Stock,<br />
1927–57 .............................. 438 2 4<br />
Jamaica. 3%% Stock, 1919–49 ......... 132 1.8 6<br />
Mauritius 4%. 1937 Stock............... 120 12 1<br />
Dominion of Canada C.P.R. 3% Land<br />
Grant Stock, 1938..................... 198 3 8<br />
Total ............... f4,065 6 0<br />
Subscriptions.<br />
1909. £ s. d.<br />
Oct. 15, Greig, James () 5 ()<br />
Oct. 15, Jacomb, A. E. () 5 ()<br />
Oct. 16, Hepburn, Thomas O 10 6<br />
Oct. 16, Trevelyan, G. M. .<br />
Oct. 16, “Haddon Hall ”<br />
Oct. 22, Jessup, A. E. © *<br />
Oct. 25, Whishaw, Mrs. Bernhard<br />
Nov. 5, Dixon, A. Francis .<br />
Nov. 6, Helledoren, J.<br />
Dec. 4, Tearle, Christian<br />
Dec. 9, Tyrell, Miss Eleanor .<br />
Dec. 17, Somerville, Miss Edith OE.<br />
1910.<br />
Jan. 12, Riley, Miss Josephine<br />
Jan. 13, Child, Harold H. . e º<br />
Jan. 14, Desborough, The Right Hon.<br />
the Lord, K.C.V.O. o g<br />
Jan. 27, Lion, Leon M. .<br />
Feb. 7, Fagan, J. B. . º<br />
Feb. 10, Newton, Miss A. M.<br />
March 7, Smith, Bertram .<br />
Donations.<br />
1909.<br />
Oct. 16, Hodson, Miss A. L.<br />
Oct. 16, Wasteneys, Lady .<br />
Oct. 18, Bell, Mrs. G. H. . º<br />
Nov. 3, Turnbull, Mrs. Peveril .<br />
Nov. 4, George, W. L. &<br />
Nov. 25, Tench, Miss Mary<br />
Dec. 1, Shedlock, Miss<br />
T)ec. 3, Esmond, H. W.<br />
Dec. 9, Hewlett, Maurice . lº<br />
Dec. 17, Reynolds, Mrs. Baillie .<br />
Dec. 17, Martin, Miss Violet<br />
1910.<br />
Jan. 1, Robinson, J. R.<br />
Jan. 1, Mackenzie, Miss J. (2nd dona-<br />
tion<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
Jan.<br />
1, Northcote, H. e e<br />
3, Watson, Mrs. Herbert A.<br />
3, Fursdon, Mrs. F. M.<br />
3, Smith, Miss Edith A.<br />
4, Pryce, Richard - º<br />
4, Wroughton, Miss Cicely .<br />
6, Kaye-Smith, Miss Sheila<br />
6, Underdown, Miss E. M. .<br />
6, Carolin, Mrs. . g<br />
8, P. H. and M. K.<br />
8, Crellin, H. R. -<br />
10, Tanner, James T..<br />
10, Miller, Arthur<br />
10, Bolton, Miss Anna<br />
10, Parr, Miss Olive K.<br />
17, Harland, Mrs.<br />
21, Benecke, Miss Ida<br />
25, Fradd, Meredith<br />
º<br />
:<br />
2<br />
()<br />
l<br />
1<br />
I<br />
5<br />
1l<br />
(<br />
:§<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#603) ################################################<br />
<br />
TISIE AUTISIOR,<br />
207<br />
S.<br />
Jan.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
Feb.<br />
29, Stayton, F. .<br />
1, Wharton, L. C. .<br />
4, Bowen, Miss Marjorie<br />
5, Cameron, Mrs. Charlotte<br />
7, Pettigrew, W. F. .<br />
7, Church, Sir A. H. .<br />
8, Bland, Mrs. E. Nesbit<br />
8, The XX. Pen Club<br />
10, Greenbank, Percy<br />
11, Stopford, Francis .<br />
11, Dawson, A. J. . e<br />
12, Ainslie, Miss Kathleen .<br />
16, W. D. . &<br />
16, Gibbs, F. L. A.<br />
17, Wintle, H. R. g<br />
21, Thurston, E. Temple<br />
23, Dawson, Mrs. Frederick<br />
24, Williamson, C. N. *<br />
Feb. 24, Williamson, Mrs. C. N.<br />
Feb. 25, Westell, W. P. .<br />
March 2, Toplis, Miss Grace<br />
March 3, Hawtrey, Miss Valentina<br />
March 5, Smith, Bertram<br />
March 12, Yould, A. .<br />
March 16, Loraine, Lady . g<br />
March 29, Macdonnell, Randall .<br />
April 6, Blake, J. P. . e &<br />
April 8, “Patricia Wentworth *<br />
April 14, Hinkson, Mrs. K. Tynan 10<br />
Aſl fresh subscribers and donors previous to<br />
October, 1909, have been deleted from the present<br />
announcement.<br />
The names of those subscribers and donors which<br />
are not included in the lists printed above are<br />
unavoidably held over to the next issue.<br />
|<br />
1<br />
I<br />
lI<br />
—e—º-e—<br />
COMMITTEE NOTES.<br />
HE Committee of Management of the Society<br />
of Authors met on Monday, April 4. The<br />
first item on the agenda was the election of<br />
chairman of the committee for the current year.<br />
On the proposal of Mr. Douglas Freshfield,<br />
seconded by Dr. S. Squire Sprigge, Mr. Maurice<br />
Hewlett was unanimously re-elected. Mr. Hewlett<br />
expressed his willingness to undertake the duties<br />
of the post for another term.<br />
The minutes of the previous meeting were then<br />
read, approved, and signed, and the committee<br />
proceeded with the election of the sub-committees.<br />
Those who have kept themselves informed of the<br />
work of the society will know that there is a stand-<br />
ing Dramatic Sub-Committee which meets once or<br />
twice a month; a standing Copyright Sub-Com-<br />
mittee, to which questions dealing with the law of<br />
Copyright are referred; and a standing Art Sub-<br />
Committee, before whom questions dealing with<br />
the illustration of books, reproduction, etc., are<br />
laid. All the sub-committees were re-elected, and<br />
the name of Captain Basil Hood was added to the<br />
Dramatic Sub-Committee to fill the vacancy caused<br />
by the resignation of Mr. W. J. Locke. The<br />
Society is to be congratulated not only on the<br />
present strength of its Dramatic Sub-Committee,<br />
but on having gained the adhesion of Captain<br />
Basil Hood.<br />
The next business was the election of members.<br />
Sixteen members and associates were elected,<br />
bringing the total elections for the current year up<br />
to eighty-seven. This is a lower average than in<br />
the two former years, 1908–9, but it is hardly<br />
possible to keep the elections as high as they were<br />
in those two years. There were two resignations,<br />
bringing the total number of resignations up to<br />
fifty-nine. The latter the committee accepted<br />
with regret.<br />
The Secretary made a detailed statement of the<br />
work undertaken by the Dramatic Sub-Committee<br />
during the past month. He reported that the<br />
repertory agreement was finally settled; that the<br />
agreement between the dramatist and the agent<br />
had, subject to one slight alteration, been passed,<br />
and that a warning in regard to the employment<br />
of dramatic agents had been added to the standing<br />
matter of The Author. He further explained that<br />
the Dramatic Committee were anxious to appoint<br />
agents abroad and in different colonies, in order<br />
that the Society might be kept informed of any<br />
infringements of performing right that might occur.<br />
The Dramatic Sub-Committee had recommended<br />
that these agents should receive 10 per cent. of the<br />
damages recovered, and, in the case of an injunction,<br />
a small fee for their work. The Committee of<br />
Management willingly accepted this proposal,<br />
leaving the amount of the fee to the judgment<br />
of the Dramatic Sub-Committee.<br />
Mr. Maurice Hewlett, as chairman and as a<br />
member of the sub-committee appointed to deal<br />
with the question of the Relations of Authors,<br />
Publishers, and the Libraries, then reported to the<br />
committee the work the sub-committee had done;<br />
how they had met the Publishers’ Association and<br />
discussed the matter in detail. He understood<br />
that at present no steps would be taken. The<br />
committee desired that all the information that<br />
could possibly be collected as to the further censor-<br />
ship of authors’ books and the further action of<br />
publishers should be carefully gathered and laid<br />
before the committee at their next meeting in<br />
May.<br />
Dr. S. Squire Sprigge, chairman of the Sub-<br />
Committee on the Price of Novels, then laid before<br />
the Committee of Management the formal report<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#604) ################################################<br />
<br />
208<br />
TISIES A DfTISIOIR,<br />
of that sub-committee. The report was adopted<br />
by the Committee of Management, and is printed<br />
as a supplement to the current issue of The Author.<br />
The secretary then raised an important point<br />
respecting the registration of works in the United<br />
States. It was decided after some discussion and<br />
after full explanation of the difficulties of the<br />
position not to take any further steps at present,<br />
but should a definite case arise in the United<br />
States, to support it with all the power of the society.<br />
The publication of the agreements of certain<br />
publishers with their names, which was decided<br />
upon at the last meeting of the committee, came<br />
up again for discussion, owing to a letter which the<br />
Secretary read to the committee bearing on the<br />
legal point of infringement of copyright. The<br />
committee instructed the secretary to take two<br />
typical agreements and write articles on them for<br />
the consideration of the committee at their next<br />
meeting,<br />
The Music Publishers’ Agreement, which was<br />
Settled by the Copyright Sub-Committee, was laid<br />
before the Committee of Management, and the<br />
report of that sub-committee was formally adopted.<br />
Mr. Harold Hardy's suggestion, put forward at the<br />
general meeting of the society, was considered, but<br />
the committee thought it was inexpedient to make<br />
any alteration in the work of the committee at the<br />
present time.<br />
Cases before the Committee.—A case which had<br />
been carried forward in Germany was mentioned<br />
by the secretary. He had been unable to obtain<br />
any assistance from the member concerned, and<br />
could not therefore proceed with the matter. The<br />
committee decided to send the member a wire, and<br />
instructed the secretary to supplement it with a<br />
letter informing the member that it would be<br />
necessary to abandon the case unless full informa-<br />
tion for the benefit of the German lawyers was<br />
forthcoming. In a case of infringement of dramatic<br />
copyright, the committee authorised the secretary<br />
to put the papers into the hands of the Solicitors,<br />
instructing them to take action as soon as possible.<br />
There were two cases of account. In one the com-<br />
mittee decided to appoint an accountant to go<br />
through the books, and in the other, as the pub-<br />
lisher had refused to produce the necessary<br />
vouchers, the committee decided to take the matter<br />
into court on behalf of the member.<br />
Owing to the fact that a member had desired a<br />
full statement of a case, with the name of the<br />
publisher, to be published in the correspondence<br />
column in The Author, the secretary read an<br />
opinion received from the solicitors and the letter<br />
from the member. After considering all the facts<br />
the committee decided that it would be inexpedient<br />
to make the publication, and instructed the<br />
secretary to write to the member to that effect.<br />
The secretary finally reported that the Canadian<br />
lawyers of the Society had recovered an amount for<br />
infringement of copyright on behalf of a member<br />
of the society. -<br />
–0—-º-0–<br />
DRAMATIC SUB-COMMITTEE.<br />
I º<br />
THE Dramatic Sub-Committee of the Society of<br />
Authors met at the offices of the society on Tuesday,<br />
March 22, at 3 o'clock. In the absence of Sir<br />
Arthur Pinero, Mr. Henry Arthur Jones took the<br />
chair. After the minutes of the last meeting had<br />
been signed, the first question that came forward<br />
for discussion was some paragraphs in the Referee<br />
of March 20 misrepresenting the society and its<br />
attitude towards dramatic authors. The committee<br />
settled a short letter which, with the approval of<br />
Sir Arthur Pinero, was sent to the editor of that<br />
paper. The following is the text :—<br />
March 23, 1910.<br />
THE EDITOR, The Referee.<br />
DEAR SIR,--I have been authorised by the Dramatic<br />
Sub-Committee to send this letter to your columns.<br />
They have read with some interest the statement<br />
contained in your dramatic gossip of March 20 in<br />
regard to the Society of Authors, as it shows entire mis-<br />
conception of the purposes for which the Society was<br />
founded and the work it has accomplished and will continue<br />
to accomplish for dramatic authors. Your correspondent<br />
states as follows:–<br />
“The Society of Authors, I believe, has of recent years<br />
extended its sphere of usefulness with particular reference<br />
to dramatic authors. But what it has accomplished I<br />
am sure I do not know.”<br />
Why does not the writer know He could easily have<br />
found it. If he had referred to the report for 1909 this<br />
knowledge would have sufficed. During the past twelve<br />
months the society has spent £500 or £600 on behalf of<br />
dramatic authors and their cases.<br />
Your correspondent is again inaccurate in his statement<br />
that -<br />
“he was told by a responsible journalist who had<br />
written more than a score of plays in his time that it had<br />
been intimated to him that he had not been invited to<br />
enter the ring simply because it was not intended to<br />
admit any writer for the newspapers to the privileges of<br />
the Fellowship of Dramatists.”<br />
There is no ring, and there is not, and, in the nature of<br />
- things, there could not be, any exclusion from the ranks of<br />
the society of journalists or members of any branch of the<br />
literary profession. The Society of Authors is only too<br />
glad to welcome any writer who desires its assistance and<br />
advice in regard to his dramatic property, whether that<br />
property has been staged or not. Indeed, in many cases it<br />
is the dramatist who has not had his pieces performed who<br />
needs advice more than he who has gained. Some degree of<br />
experience.<br />
I remain, Yours &c.,<br />
(Signed) G. HERBERT THRING,<br />
Secretary,<br />
The Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
The final settlement of the Repertory Agreement<br />
by the addition of an account clause was next<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#605) ################################################<br />
<br />
TFIE A CITFIOR*.<br />
209<br />
discussed. The secretary submitted a draft clause,<br />
which was passed. He was instructed to send the<br />
agreement to the printers of the society to be set<br />
up. The final draft of the Agency Agreement was<br />
then placed before the committee and passed.<br />
A draft agreement for a run at a West End<br />
theatre was next laid before the committee, but<br />
consideration had to be deferred till the next meet-<br />
ing, as the previous matters had occupied a<br />
considerable time in discussion. -<br />
A letter received from the society’s Indian<br />
solicitors was read to the committee with reference<br />
to a case in which the society had instructed them<br />
to act, giving information that the defendant in<br />
the case was about to start for England. It was<br />
decided to defer taking action till the defendant<br />
on his arrival could be present and could discuss<br />
the matter with the secretary.<br />
Further letters were read to the committee<br />
dealing with the appointment of agents, and these<br />
matters were deferred for future consideration.<br />
II.<br />
A MEETING of the Dramatic Sub-Committee<br />
was held at the offices of the Society on Tuesday,<br />
April 12, at 3 o'clock. After the signing of the<br />
minutes of the previous meeting, the Repertory<br />
Agreement was again discussed, and in the absence<br />
of some of the prominent members of the sub-<br />
committee it was decided to adjourn the matter<br />
until their presence could be assured. -<br />
An agreement between a dramatic author and<br />
agent was considered and settled. All dramatists<br />
who are members of the Society, and who are<br />
thinking of appointing dramatic agents, should<br />
apply to the secretary for advice and for copies of<br />
the agreement. -<br />
A letter from a member referring to a section of<br />
the standing matter was read to the sub-committee,<br />
who, after due consideration, referred it to the<br />
Society's solicitors, so that their opinion, with<br />
the letter, might be laid before the Committee of<br />
Management.<br />
The secretary reported to the Dramatic Sub-<br />
Committee Capt. Robert Marshall's resignation, and<br />
the sub-committee recommended to the Committee<br />
of Management that Mr. Arthur Shirley be appointed<br />
to fill the vacancy. -<br />
The secretary reported the receipt of a large<br />
number of answers to the recent circular issued by<br />
the Dramatic Sub-Committee, but asked for a<br />
definition of “dramatist’ in order that he might<br />
be able to compile a correct list. The committee<br />
decided that the author of any play that had been<br />
represented in a place licensed for public enter-<br />
tainment should be considered a dramatist, but that<br />
such performance must be something more than a<br />
mere performance for copyright purposes.<br />
The next subject that arose was a matter in<br />
regard to agents in the Colonies, and it was<br />
decided to asked Messrs. French to supply, through<br />
their agents, such information as they could gain<br />
about the production of plays. The secretary was<br />
instructed to furnish Messrs. French with the<br />
list of those dramatists who are members of the<br />
Society as soon as it is complete and in order.<br />
With the sanction of the Committee of Management,<br />
it was decided to pay 10 per cent. on any sums<br />
recovered by the society through information<br />
Supplied by the agents, and to pay a small fixed fee<br />
where an injunction only was obtained.<br />
A question of the liability of a manager of a<br />
theatre to pay damages for infringement of copy-<br />
right was referred to the solicitors of the society,<br />
and the Secretary was requested to ask the Com-<br />
mittee of Management whether it would not be<br />
possible, through the Foreign Office, to get the<br />
Consular Service to assist in reporting infringe-<br />
ments of the rights of dramatic authors in foreign<br />
countries.<br />
A letter received from the secretary of the Italian<br />
Society of Authors was then laid before the meeting,<br />
and the sub-committee decided to ascertain the<br />
terms for entering that society, and to consider the<br />
report at their next meeting. -<br />
A case of infringement of authors' rights in India<br />
was next considered, and it was decided to invite<br />
the Committee of Management to press the matter<br />
with vigour, in order to stop the wholesale piracy<br />
of dramatic authors’ works.<br />
Letters received from the Theatres’ Alliance were<br />
carefully considered, and the sub-committee decided<br />
to ask a representative of that body to attend the<br />
next meeting, which was fixed for April 26.<br />
The consideration of the agreement for a run<br />
was adjourned.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
Cases.<br />
DURING the past month the secretary has had to<br />
deal with seventeen cases. Two of these were<br />
claims for money. One has been settled, but the<br />
other will most probably have to go into the hands<br />
of the society's solicitors. Two dealt with money<br />
and accounts. These have both been terminated ;<br />
the money and accounts have been forthcoming<br />
and been forwarded to the authors. One difficult<br />
case of settlement of contract is still in course of<br />
negotiation. There were six claims for accounts.<br />
Four of these have been settled, one has been<br />
referred to the publishers’solicitors, and the last, after<br />
reference to the committee, has been placed in the<br />
hands of an accountant. The accounts will be<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#606) ################################################<br />
<br />
210<br />
TISIE A DITFIOR.<br />
checked at the society's expense. There is one<br />
case of infringement of copyright which is still in<br />
course of negotiation, but as the defendant has<br />
acknowledged liability the amount to be paid is the<br />
only point left in dispute. The secretary’s inter-<br />
ference has been claimed in five cases for the return<br />
of MSS. In two of these cases the MSS. have been<br />
returned, but the others have only recently come to<br />
the office.<br />
There were four cases left open from last month.<br />
Three, which dealt with matters outside England,<br />
are still open ; the fourth will most probably be<br />
closed shortly, as the offending party is in satis-<br />
factory negotiations with the secretary.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
April Elections.<br />
Atkinson, Mabel . . 26, Denning Road,<br />
Hampstead, N.W.<br />
Bayliss, Kathleen Jessie. Northend, Tewkesbury,<br />
Glos.<br />
Bigelow, Mrs. Poultney . Bay Tree Cottage,<br />
Aylesbury.<br />
Belcher, George . 14, Cathcart Studios,<br />
S.W<br />
39, Hertford Street, W.<br />
Compton House, Sher-<br />
borne, Dorset.<br />
Dauber, J. H. •<br />
Goodden, Cecil P. .<br />
Honey, Frederick H. 10 — 12, Copthall<br />
Avenue, E.C.<br />
Hood, Capt. Basil . 88, St. James Street,<br />
S.W.<br />
Lefevre, L. A. Vancouver, British<br />
Columbia.<br />
2, Alma Studios, Strat-<br />
ford Road, Kensing-<br />
ton, W.<br />
Morley, Harry<br />
Patricia Wentworth<br />
Ross, Madge Wallace 4, Ethel Terrace,<br />
Morningside Drive,<br />
Edinburgh.<br />
Stitt, Rev.S.Stewart, M.A. Stretham Rectory, Isle<br />
- of Ely.<br />
Tassinari, Herbert D. . 5, Bolton Studios, Red-<br />
cliffe Road.<br />
—e—6–e—<br />
B00KS PUBLISHED BY MEMBERS OF<br />
THE SOCIETY.<br />
—º-º-o-<br />
WHILE every effort is made by the compilers to keep<br />
this list as accurate and exhaustive as possible, they have<br />
Some difficulty in attaining this object owing to the fact<br />
that many of the books mentioned are not sent to the Cffice<br />
by the members. In consequence, it is necessary to rely<br />
largely upon lists of books which appear in literary and<br />
other papers. It is hoped, however, that members will<br />
co-operate in the compiling of this list and, by sending<br />
particulars of their works, help to make it substantially<br />
accurate.<br />
ART.<br />
100 POPULAR PICTURES IN Colour. Facsimile Repro-<br />
ductions in Colour of Popular Pictures selected from the<br />
World's Great Galleries. With an Introduction by<br />
; H. SPIELMANN, F.S.A. Part I. 154 × 11%. Cassell.<br />
• Il.<br />
DANTE GABRIELLE ROSSETTI.<br />
143 × 11%. 59 pp. Fisher Unwin. 5s. n.<br />
JAPANESE ART. By LAURENCE BINyon. 14%<br />
59 pp. Fisher Unwin. 5s. n.<br />
BIOGRAPHY.<br />
MEMORIES OF SIXTY YEARSAT ETON, CAMERIDGE, AND<br />
ELSEWHERE. By OSCAR BROwnING. 83 × 53. 364 pp.<br />
Lane. 14s. m.<br />
THE PASSIONS OF THE FRENCH ROMANTICs. By<br />
FRANCIS GRIBBLE. 9 × 6. 304 pp. Chapman & Hali.<br />
158. In.<br />
By ARTHUR SYMONS.<br />
× 11}<br />
BOOKS OF REFERENCE.<br />
AN ETYMOLOGICAL DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH<br />
LANGUAGE. By the REv. WALTER W. SKEAT, Litt.<br />
Doc. New edition. Revised and enlarged. IO; x 8.<br />
780 pp. Oxford: Clarendon Press; London : Frowde.<br />
38s. n.<br />
DRAMA.<br />
WHAT THE PUBLIC WANTs. A Play in Four Acts. By<br />
ARNOLD BENNETT. 73 x 5, 141 pp. F. Palmer.<br />
2s. 6d. In.<br />
THE TRAGEDY OF POMPEY THE GREAT. By JoHN MAs E<br />
FIELD. 73 × 5. 106 pp. Sidgwick & Jackson. 3s.6d. in<br />
EDUCATIONAL.<br />
A COLLECTION OF EASTERN STORIES AND LEGENDs. For<br />
Narration or Later Reading in Schools. Selected and<br />
adapted by MARIE L. SHEDLOCK. With a Foreword by<br />
PROF. T. W. RHYs DAVIDs, 7} x 5. 141 pp.<br />
Routledge. 1s. 6d. n.<br />
FICTION.<br />
OLIVIA L. CAREw. By NETTA SYRETT. 74 × 5. 374 pp<br />
Chatto & Windus. 6s,<br />
THE WILD HEART. By M. E. FRANCIS. 73 × 5. 326 pp.<br />
Smith, Elder & Co. 63.<br />
PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT. By BARONESS ORCzy.<br />
370 pp. Hutchinson. 6s.<br />
BETTY CAREw. By KATHARINE TYNAN. 73 x 5. 309 pp.<br />
Smith, Elder & Co. 63.<br />
A GIRL FROM THE SOUTH. By CHARLEs GARVICE. 73 × 5.<br />
344 pp. Cassell. 63.<br />
THE SECRET OF ENOCH SEAL. By J. B. HARRIS-BUR-<br />
LAND. 7# × 5. 314 pp. Chapman & Hall. 68.<br />
HILARY THORNTON. By HUBERT WALEs. Popular<br />
edition. 7 x 4%. 318 pp. John Long. 1s. n.<br />
MORNING STAR. By H. RIDER HAGGARD. 74 × 5.<br />
308 pp. Cassell. 6s.<br />
-<br />
8 × 5.<br />
TOWER OF Ivory. By GERTRUDE ATHERTON. 73 × 5.<br />
496 pp. Murray. 6s.<br />
OUT OF THE NIGHT. By MRs. BAILLIE REYNOLDs.;<br />
8 × 5. 344 pp. Hodder & Stoughton. 6s,<br />
THE SECOND ELOPEMENT. By HERBERT FLOWERDEw.<br />
7# x 5. 320 pp. Stanley Paul. 6s.<br />
STAND AND DELIVER, By GERTRUDE WARDEN. 8 x 5.<br />
312 pp. F. W. White. 6s.<br />
CANADIAN BORN. By MRs. HUMPHRY WARD. 74 × 5.<br />
346 pp. Smith, Elder. 68.<br />
THE DEVOURERs. By A. VIVANTI CHARTREs.<br />
328 pp. Heinemann. 68.<br />
7# x 5.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#607) ################################################<br />
<br />
TISIE A DITISIOR,<br />
211<br />
ANCIENT PLANTS. Being a Simple Account of the Past<br />
Vegetation of the Earth and of the Recent Important<br />
Discoveries made in this Realm of Nature Study. By<br />
MARIE C. STOPES, D.Sc., Ph.D., F.L.S., Lecturer on<br />
Fossil Botany, Manchester University. 9’ x 6, 198 pp.<br />
Blackie. 4s. 6d. n.<br />
CAUSAL GEOLOGY. By E. H. L. SCHWARZ. 9 × 6.<br />
248 pp. Blackie. 7s.6d.<br />
THEOLOGY.<br />
RITUAL, FAITH, AND MORALs. Being two chapters from<br />
an Historical Inquiry into the Influence of Religion upon<br />
Moral Civilisation. By F. H. PERRY COSTE, B.Sc. 73 ×<br />
5%. 252 pp. Watts. 3s. 6d. n.<br />
THE BRITISH CHURCH. A Paper read by MAJOR F.<br />
SAMUELS before the Church Defence Association, Llan-<br />
fairfechan, Carnarvonshire. Dover : “ St. George's<br />
Press.” 6d.<br />
TRAVEL.<br />
DRUMS OF WAR. By H. DE WERE STACPooDE. 7# x 5.<br />
336 pp. Murray. 6s.<br />
RAVENSHAW of RIETHOLME. By BERTRAM MITFORD.<br />
7# × 5. 320 pp. Ward, Lock, 63.<br />
A SAINT IN MUFTI. By CARLTON DAWE.<br />
331 pp. Eveleigh Nash. 6s.<br />
TANGLED RELATIONS. By CoIONEL CUTHBERT LARKING.<br />
73 × 5. 300 pp. Nash. 63.<br />
MARGARET THE PEACEMAKER.<br />
7# x 5.<br />
By WALTER WOOD.<br />
7# × 5. 327 pp. Cassell. 68.<br />
THAT IS To SAY. By “RITA.” 7; x 5. 318 pp. Stan-<br />
ley Paul. 6s.<br />
WITH UNSEEN LIPs. By J. H. BRIGHouse. 153 pp.<br />
Stockwell. 1s. 6d.<br />
SECOND STRING. By ANTHONY HoPE. 73 × 5. 569 pp.<br />
Nelson. 2s. n.<br />
THE HISTORY OF MR. Polly. By H. G. WELLs. 74 × 5.<br />
374 pp. Nelson. 2s. n.<br />
A WINNow ING. By R. H. BENSON. 73 × 5. 323 pp.<br />
Hutchinson. 6s.<br />
FORTUNE. By J. C. SNAITH. 74 × 5. 447 pp. Nelson.<br />
28. m.<br />
A MARRIAGE UNDER THE TERROR. By PATRICIA WENT-<br />
worTH. 75 × 5. 382 pp. Melrose. 6s.<br />
THE CABINET MINISTER’s WIFE. By GEORGE R. SIMS.<br />
7+ x 4%. 192 pp. Stanley Paul. Is. n.<br />
BEWARE OF THE DOG. By MRS. BAILLIE REYNOLDS.<br />
7+ x 4%. 279 pp. Mills & Boon. Is. m.<br />
TROUBLED WATERs. By HEADON HILL.<br />
Stanley Paul. 6d.<br />
THE POWER OF THE KEYs. By S. C. GRIER. Cheap<br />
edition. 7} x 5. 360 pp. Blackwood. 18. n.<br />
156 pp.<br />
LAW.<br />
PRINCIPLES OF THE ENGLISH LAW OF CONTRACT AND OF<br />
AGENCY IN ITS RELATION TO CONTRACT. By SIR<br />
WILLIAM R. ANSON, D.C.L. Twelfth edition. Edited<br />
by M. L. Gwy ER, B.C.L. 9 × 5%. 412 pp. Oxford:<br />
Clarendon Press; London : Frowde. 10s. n.<br />
IITERARY.<br />
DEAD LETTERS. By MAURICE BARING. 7# × 5}. 243 pp.<br />
Constable. 4s. 6d. n.<br />
ON FADS. By LADY GROVE. 9 × 5%. 232 pp. Chapman<br />
& Hall. 5s. n.<br />
ORIENTAL,<br />
TALES OF BENGAL. By G. B. BANERJEA, 7% × 5.<br />
187 pp. Longmans. 3s. n.<br />
MILITARY.<br />
THE SECOND AFGHAN WAR, 1878–79–80. Its Causes,<br />
its Conduct and its Consequences. By COL. H. B.<br />
HANNA. 9 × 5%. 583 pp. Constable. 15s. n.<br />
MISCELLANEOUS.<br />
THE ANCIENT THERAPEUTS. By PRINCESS KARADJA.<br />
19 pp. Wodderson, 4, Great Russell Street, W.C. 6d.<br />
THE ESOTERIC MEANING OF THE SEVEN SACRAMENTS.<br />
By PRINCESS KARADJA. 54 pp. Wodderson, 4, Great<br />
Russell Street, W.C. 2s. Paper covers, 1s.<br />
REPRINTS.<br />
FULL FATHOM FIVE. A Sea Anthology in Prose and<br />
Verse. By HELEN and LEWIS MELVILLE. 63 x 4}.<br />
263 pp. Bell. 8s. 6d. m.<br />
SCIENCE.<br />
SCIENCE FROM AN EASY CHAIR. By SIR RAYLANKESTER,<br />
K.C.B., F.R.S. 73 x 5. 423 pp. Methuen. 68.<br />
A JOURNAL FROM JAPAN. A Daily Record of Life as<br />
seen by a Scientist. By MARIE C. STOPEs, D.Sc., Ph.D.<br />
8# x 5%. 280 pp. Blackie. 7s. 6d. n.<br />
THE MANTLE OF THE EAST. . By EDMUND CANDLER.<br />
7% × 5. 321 pp. Blackwood. 6s. n.<br />
ACROSS YUNNAN. By ARCHIBALD LITTLE. Edited by<br />
MRS. ARCHIBALD LITTLE. 7# x 5. 164 pp. Sampson<br />
Low. 3s.6d. n.<br />
THE BERNESE OBERLAND. Wol. 1. From the Gemmi to<br />
the Mönchjoch. Part II. The Groups N. and S. of<br />
the Main Range. New edition. By W. A. B. CooDIDGE.<br />
5} x 3%. 214 pp. Fisher Unwin. 10s.<br />
º —0–Q–e—<br />
BOOKS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA BY<br />
MEMBERS.<br />
IBOOKS FOR TELE YOUNG.<br />
BARBARA BELLAMY, A PUBLIC SCHOOL GIRL. By MAY<br />
BALDWIN, New York: Dutton. 316 pp. $1.50.<br />
ECONOMICS.<br />
ENGLISH Poor LAW POLICIES. By SIDNEY and BEATRICE<br />
WEBB. 379 pp. New York : Longmans, Green & Co.<br />
$2.50 m.<br />
THE INDUSTRIAL SYSTEM : An Inquiry into Earned and<br />
Unearned Income. By J. A. HOBSON. 328 pp. New<br />
York : Longmans & Co. $2.50.<br />
E DUCATIONAL.<br />
HALF THE BATTLE IN BURMESE : A Manual of the Spoken<br />
Language. By R. GRANT BROWN. 149 pp. New York:<br />
Oxford University Press. $2.<br />
FICTION.<br />
THE RETURN of THE NATIVE. By T. HARDY. 507 pp.<br />
New York : Harper. $1.25.<br />
THE PIE AND THE PIRATE. By ALBERT T.E.E. 96 pp.<br />
New York : P. F. Collier & Son. 50 cents.<br />
THE CARDINAL's PAWN. By K. L. MONTGOMERY. 293 pp.<br />
Chicago : A. C. McClurg & Co. 75 cents.<br />
THE INTRUDING ANGEL. By CHARLES MARRIOTT.<br />
316 pp. New York : John Lane Co. $1.50 n.<br />
THE SCAR. By WARRINGTON DAWSON. 381 pp. Boston :<br />
Small, Maynard. $1.50.<br />
EAST LONDON VISIONS. By O’DERMID LAWLER. 305 pp.<br />
New York : Longmans & Co. $1.75 m.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#608) ################################################<br />
<br />
212<br />
TFIE AUTHOR,<br />
GLORIA. By G. F. TURNER.<br />
Dodd, Mead. $1.50.<br />
THE HISTORY OF MR. Polly. By H. G. WELLS.<br />
New York : Duffield. $1.50.<br />
THE FASCINATING MRS. HALTON. By E. F. BENSON.<br />
285 pp. New York: Doubleday, Page & Co. $1.20.<br />
HISTORY. -<br />
INDIA THROUGH THE AGES. By FLORA ANNIE STEEL.<br />
368 pp. New York: Dutton. $1.25 n.<br />
MISCELLANEOUS.<br />
TELEPATHIC HALLUCINATIONS: The New View of Ghosts.<br />
By FRANK PopMoRE. 128 pp. New York: Fredk. A.<br />
Stokes Co. 50 cents. n.<br />
TECHNICAL.<br />
ENGLISH LEADWORK : Its Art and History. By LAWRENCE<br />
WEAVER. 268 pp. New York : Scribner. $10 n.<br />
TRAVEL.<br />
PEAKS AND GLACIERS OF NUN KUN : A Record of Pioneer<br />
Exploration and Mountaineering in the Punjab Himalaya,<br />
with a map and 92 illustrations. By FANNY BULLOCK<br />
355 pp. New York:<br />
283 pp.<br />
WORKMAN and W. HuntER WORKMAN. 204 pp. New<br />
York : Scribner. $4.50.<br />
—e—º-e— ,<br />
LITERARY, DRAMATIC, AND MUSICAL<br />
NOTES.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
E understand from the Publishers’ Weekly<br />
(New York) that the winner of the £300<br />
prize in the competition held by the<br />
Stratford-on-Avon Shakespeare Memorial Theatre,<br />
on the terms of which we commented in a recent<br />
issue of The Author, is Josephine Preston Peabody<br />
(Mrs. Lionel Marks). Mrs. Marks is an American<br />
lady who has already produced one or two<br />
plays, including “Marlowe, a Tragedy” (1905);<br />
and “Her Fortune and Men's Eyes,” the latter a<br />
play written round Shakespeare. -<br />
“Rita.” (Mrs. Desmond Humphreys) is at pre-<br />
sent in America, where she proposes to stay for two<br />
or three months and to visit various important<br />
cities and notable places.<br />
“Winifred Graham ” has a serial in the Daily<br />
Express, entitled “Can a Man be True 2 " It<br />
commenced at the close of March.<br />
Mary L. Pendered, is engaged upon a work deal-<br />
ing with the Mystery of Hannah Lightfoot, which<br />
Messrs. Hurst & Blackett announce among their<br />
forthcoming publications. For nearly a year she<br />
has been collecting all available information from<br />
various sources, and claims to have seen the only<br />
authentic documents relating to the “Fair Quaker”<br />
known to be in existence at present.<br />
The Princess Karadja's two lectures, “The<br />
Esoteric Meaning of the Seven Sacraments” and<br />
“The Ancient Therapeuts,” are now obtainable in<br />
print from Messrs. Wodderson, 4, Great Russell<br />
Street, W.C.<br />
The April number of the Celtic Monthly contains<br />
the first of a series of articles on “Gaelic Legends<br />
in the Light of Old Irish History,” from the pen of<br />
Mr. W. J. Edmonston-Scott.<br />
Mr. Wynford Dewhurst has presented to the<br />
Bucks County Council an oil-painting in token of<br />
his friendship for the Council, on which he served<br />
from 1907 till the present year. -<br />
Messrs. Watts have published a new book by<br />
Mr. F. H. Perry Coste, entitled “Ritual, Faith, and<br />
Morals.” It deals mainly with the influence of<br />
religion upon civilisation considered in its moral<br />
aspect.<br />
A shilling edition of Miss Mary C. Rowsell's<br />
romance, “The Friend of the People,” is announced<br />
by Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall & Co.<br />
Prof. E. H. L. Schwarz, of the Rhodes University<br />
College, Grahamstown, has written a book on<br />
“Causal Geology,” with special reference to the<br />
Planetismal Hypothesis of Professor F. T. C.<br />
Chamberlin, which Messrs. Blackie will shortly<br />
publish.<br />
“The Way Up,” a new novel by Miss M. P.<br />
Willcocks, author of “Widdicombe,” “The Wingless<br />
Victory,” and “A Man of Genius,” will be published<br />
this spring by Mr. John Lane. It deals with the<br />
question of the conflicting claims between a man's<br />
duty to the State and to the individual—in this<br />
instance, his wife. The leading figure is an iron-<br />
master, whose career recalls, in some respects, the<br />
life of Jean André Godin, the pioneer in industrial<br />
co-partnership. - - -<br />
Mrs. Cherrie (Jane) Rowland, who has lately lost<br />
her husband, has given up her home in South Wales<br />
and all her country pursuits in order to devote the<br />
remainder of her life to literature. She is now<br />
engaged in her home at Golders Green upon a novel,<br />
“An Understanding Woman,” which will be<br />
published by Mr. John Ouseley.<br />
The Oxford University Press have just issued the<br />
new edition of the Rev. Professor Skeat's (larger)<br />
Etymological Dictionary. Nearly every article<br />
has been revised and a large number rewritten.<br />
Mr. T. Werner Laurie announces “The Old<br />
Testament Story,” by Gladys Davidson. In<br />
writing this story of the Old Testament for young<br />
readers, Miss Davidson has endeavoured to present<br />
the stories and incidents in accordance with the<br />
views of those modern scholars who regard and<br />
teach the Bible from a wide and reasonable stand-<br />
point. At the same time, it has been her object,<br />
whilst avoiding the treatment of legendary and<br />
allegorical matter as history, to preserve the<br />
religious character and beauty of these wonderful<br />
stories of old time, and to set them forth with love<br />
and reverence. In the preparation of this work<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#609) ################################################<br />
<br />
TISIE AUTISIOR,<br />
213<br />
she has been greatly helped and encouraged by the<br />
Rev. C. A. Goodhart, M.A., of Lambourne<br />
Rectory, Romford, who has generously given<br />
her the benefit of advice on many points<br />
of difficulty. Miss Davidson is also pub-<br />
lishing, through Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, a<br />
children's natural history story book, which she<br />
calls “A Zoo Book.” The animals in the Zoo tell<br />
their own stories in amusing conversation. All<br />
are eager to appear in print, and so vie with one<br />
another in making interesting “copy.” All the<br />
principal animals are dealt with.<br />
In “Ruskin and His Circle "Miss Ada Earland<br />
tells the life story of Ruskin, with special regard<br />
to the influence of environment on the development<br />
of his genius. The “circle” includes Turner,<br />
Millais, Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones, D. G. Rossetti,<br />
Kate Greenaway, Coventry Patmore, Carlyle and<br />
many others. Messrs. Hutchinson & Co. are<br />
the publishers.<br />
Messrs. Digby, Long & Co. are publishing,<br />
early this month, a novel by Francis Bancroft,<br />
author of “Of Like Passions.” The title of the<br />
new volume is “Richard Beverley.” - -<br />
The last issue of the Irish Church Quarterly<br />
contains an article entitled “Ethical Foundations,”<br />
by the Rev. J. N. Shearman.<br />
“South African Snapshots for English Girls”<br />
is the title of a little volume appearing early this<br />
month. It is written specially for “superfluous<br />
daughters” by Miss Eleanor Tyrrell, and is illus-<br />
trated with photographs. Messrs. Gay & Hancock<br />
are the publishers.<br />
Messrs. J. M. Dent & Co. have just published<br />
a volume on “Nature Photography for Beginners ”<br />
by E. J. Bedford. It contains a coloured frontis-<br />
piece and one hundred stereoscopic photographs<br />
taken by the author. The chapters refer to the<br />
choice of suitable apparatus, developing, printing,<br />
lantern-slide making, stereoscopic photography,<br />
photography of birds and their nests, animals,<br />
insects, and flowers.<br />
The Dial (Chicago) of April 1st contains an<br />
article by Lewis Nathaniel Chase on “Bernard<br />
Shaw in France.”<br />
Mr. J. Bloundelle-Burton's new romance, “A<br />
Fair Martyr,” is about to be published by Everett<br />
& Co. It will have for its mainspring one of<br />
the numerous incidents to which the great Plague<br />
of Marseilles gave birth ; a plague which resulted<br />
in the death, or disappearance in several cases, of<br />
about 150,000 persons, and the effects of which,<br />
as regards the subsequent careers of many, were<br />
very far-reaching. The heroine, “the first martyr,”<br />
represents one of these latter, or, rather, many of<br />
the latter, and her history, though founded more<br />
or less on fact, lends itself to romance. Mr.<br />
Bloundelle-Burton dealt with this plague some<br />
years ago as a feature in his novel “Servants of<br />
Sin,” but in this case it serves as a prologue to<br />
the moving, true story which, with modifications,<br />
he has now to tell.<br />
Messrs. Sampson Low & Co. are publishing<br />
Mr. Archibald Little's posthumous work “Across<br />
Yunman.” The book, which Mrs. Archibald Little<br />
is editing, is illustrated.<br />
The Walter Scott Publishing Company are issuing<br />
a new and enlarged edition of Mr. Havelock Ellis's<br />
book “The Criminal.”<br />
The same publishers have also added to their<br />
“Great Writers Series " a volume on “John<br />
Ruskin,” by Ashmore Wingate.<br />
Gertrude Warden's new novel, “Stand and<br />
Deliver,” is published by Messrs. F. W. White & Co.,<br />
and contains a portrait of the author by L. Caswall<br />
Smith. The tale consists of twelve episodes in<br />
twelve different towns by which a clever and<br />
unscrupulous girl gets the better of her dupes while<br />
steering clear of the law.<br />
Messrs. Dent & Co. are bringing out in “Every<br />
Man's Library’ a new and largely revised edition<br />
of Lieut.-General Trotter’s “Life of Warren<br />
Hastings,” published in 1878 by W. H. Allen &<br />
Co.<br />
An article by Mr. W. G. Edmonston-Scott on<br />
“The German Basques of Britain'' will appear in<br />
the May number of Guth na Bliadhna.<br />
Miss Lily Grant Duff has recently completed a<br />
novel called “Vocation,” which will be published<br />
by Mr. John Murray.<br />
Under the heading “London's Unwanted<br />
Women,” Mr. Basil Tozer, in an article in<br />
Chambers's Journal for May, describes Miss Olive<br />
Christian Malvery's philanthropic scheme for<br />
opening at Charing Cross a night refuge for desti-<br />
tute women. Our readers will remember that Miss<br />
Malvery (Mrs. Archibald Mackirdy) is author of<br />
“The Soul Market,” “Baby Toilers,” and other<br />
works which deal with the underworld of London<br />
and other great cities.<br />
Miss Elizabeth Banks, one of our American<br />
members, has just brought out a volume of short<br />
stories entitled “The Luck of the Black Cat,”<br />
published by Messrs. George Allen & Sons. Miss<br />
Banks came to London about fifteen years ago and<br />
has written her experiences in several books. Ilast<br />
year she published “The Mystery of Frances<br />
Farrington,” her first novel, a dual personality story.<br />
Her latest book is made up of sixteen stories.<br />
They deal with various subjects and varied emotions.<br />
We do not know how many of them have appeared<br />
in magazines, but, apparently, Miss Banks has<br />
learned to retain her rights of book publication, for<br />
in her opening “mote ’’ she seems to have been<br />
obliged to “acknowledge the courtesy” of but three<br />
editors for allowing her to reprint in book form.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#610) ################################################<br />
<br />
214<br />
TISIES A UTEIOR.<br />
The three acknowledgments deal with the first<br />
three stories.<br />
E. Nesbit is publishing this month a book called<br />
“Fear,” which deals with various aspects of fear,<br />
of the supernatural and physical, which confront<br />
human beings in particular situations. The same<br />
author is also engaged upon a new novel, and a<br />
play for children. E. Nesbit's usual children's<br />
serial is now appearing in the Strand Magazine and<br />
will be published in volume form by Messrs. Mac-<br />
millan & Co. in the autumn. It is called “The<br />
Magic City.” A weekly column for children in<br />
the Daily Chronicle is also contributed by<br />
E. Nesbit.<br />
Mr. E. F. Benson is engaged upon a comedy.<br />
The same writer has also a serial which will start<br />
in the Queen next July, prior to its publication in<br />
book form in the winter.<br />
“The Other Side,” a story by Mr. H. A. Wachell,<br />
which has been running serially, will appear in<br />
book form on June 1st. During the past year<br />
Mr. Wachell has been working upon a political<br />
novel, entitled “John Werney,” which deals with<br />
the future of the hero of “The Hill.”<br />
Miss A. E. Keeton will give two studies of<br />
Modern British Song on Thursday afternoon,<br />
June 2nd, at 3.30, and Thursday evening, June 9th,<br />
at 8.45, at the Imperial Club, 6, Lexham Gardens,<br />
S.W. (by kind permission of the management).<br />
Vocal illustrations by Miss Grainger-Kerr. The<br />
studies will include songs by Ernest Austin,<br />
Granville Bantock, Hubert Bath, Dora Bright,<br />
Josef Holbrooke, Frederick C. Nicholls, Norman<br />
O'Neill, Roger Quilter, Katherine Ramsay<br />
(Marchioness of Tullibardine), Percy Rideout,<br />
Cyril Scott, Ethel Smyth, Ernest Walker, William<br />
Wallace, R. H. Walthew, and Dalhousie Young.<br />
Tickets, 5s. each, or 7s. 6d. for the two studies,<br />
obtainable from Miss Keeton, 84, Redcliffe<br />
Gardens, S.W., or Miss Grainger - Kerr, 38A,<br />
Clanricarde Gardens, W.<br />
A new one-act play by Mr. Leon M. Lion,<br />
entitled “The Touch of the Child,” adapted from<br />
a story by Mr. Tom Gallon, was produced at the<br />
Grand Theatre, Blackpool, last month.<br />
“Prunella,” by Laurence Housman and<br />
H. Granville Barker, originally produced at the<br />
Court Theatre, was revived at the Repertory<br />
Theatre last month. Miss Dorothy Minto was in<br />
the title part.<br />
Another revival at the same theatre was Sir<br />
Arthur Pinero's early play, “Trelawney of ‘the<br />
Wells.’” This play has been in the bill for the past<br />
few weeks.<br />
We understand that early this month, at the<br />
same theatre, a comedy in three acts by Anthony<br />
Hope and Cosmo Gordon Lennox will be produced:<br />
The cast will include Miss Irene Vanbrugh and<br />
Miss Mary Barton ; and Mr. J. M. Barrie's<br />
“Twelve Pound Look’ still continues in the bill.<br />
“The Naked Truth,” by George Paston and<br />
W. B. Maxwell, is a farcical comedy which was<br />
produced at Wyndham's Theatre last month. It<br />
relates the effect of a ring possessing a property<br />
compelling the wearer to veracity of statement<br />
upon an individual hitherto accustomed to deviate<br />
from the truth. The cast included Mr. Charles<br />
Hawtrey, Miss Phyllis Embury, Mr. Eric Lewis,<br />
and Mr. Arthur Playfair.<br />
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's new one-act play, “A<br />
Pot of Caviare,” was produced at the Adelphi<br />
Theatre last month. Mr. Murray Carson played<br />
the principal part. • *:<br />
—e—º-e—<br />
PARIS NOTES.<br />
—t-sº-e—<br />
& 6 A BARRIERE" is another novel by René<br />
Bazin founded on the subject of religion.<br />
Marie Limerel is a charming and ex-<br />
tremely serious French girl who is determined<br />
never to marry a man whose religious ideas<br />
are not her own. Her cousin Félicien, who is<br />
devoted to her, has lost his faith. She is in<br />
love with him, but will not risk marriage under<br />
the circumstances. A young Englishman, who<br />
has become a Catholic, is also in love with her,<br />
and confides all his doubts and difficulties to<br />
her. His father, a rigid Protestant and Church-<br />
man, disinherits him. Marie is not convinced<br />
that they are destined for each other, and the<br />
book ends unsatisfactorily. Marie is left with<br />
her mother, having refused two men for the<br />
sake of her religion. She appears to be quite<br />
satisfied that she has done her duty. Such<br />
religion does not appear to her at all narrow, and<br />
the reader is left with more anxiety about the<br />
fate of the two men than this extremely religious<br />
girl appears to have.<br />
“L'Ombre de l’Amour,” by Marcelle Tinayre,<br />
is of as great literary value as “La Maison du<br />
Péché.” The figure that stands out in the book<br />
is that of Dr. Cayrol, just as the figure of the<br />
stern mother stood out in the earlier volume.<br />
The psychological study and the clever portrait<br />
of this man are masterful. The analysis, too, of<br />
the consumptive young man who is sent to be<br />
under the care of the noted doctor is also very<br />
clever. But, alas ! the inconsistency of the woman<br />
betrays itself in the portraiture of the principal<br />
woman in the story. The greater part of the book<br />
seems to be written from life, whilst the dénouement<br />
sounds like a mere slander. It seems that so fine<br />
a character would have remained fine to the end<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#611) ################################################<br />
<br />
TISIE AUTISIOR,<br />
215<br />
Otherwise we must have mistaken Denise Cayrol,<br />
and given her more credit than she deserved. In<br />
either case this dénouement is unsatisfactory and<br />
improbable. The little serving-girl is delightful<br />
and perfectly consistent. The book is certainly<br />
a strong one, the descriptions admirable, and the<br />
construction faultless.<br />
M. René Doumic, who has just succeeded<br />
M. Gaston Boissier at the French Academy, has<br />
been elected president of the Société des Gens de<br />
Lettres in place of M. Georges Lecomte. M. René<br />
Doumic has written several remarkable books, and<br />
he was one of the founders of the Lecture Society,<br />
which has now become quite an institution in Paris.<br />
At the general meeting of the Société des Gens de<br />
Lettres, M. Pierre Decourcelle spoke of its flourish-<br />
ing state from a financial point of view. It is at<br />
present worth 5,682,000 francs.<br />
With a view to getting America to agree to the<br />
Berne Convention, the Société des Gens de Lettres<br />
has for some time past been endeavouring to interest<br />
prominent Americans in the subject. At one of<br />
the dinners given by the Société Mr. James Hyde<br />
was invited to preside. Mr. Melville Stone was<br />
also a guest, and Mr. Bliss Perry. Mr. Hyde is the<br />
founder of a chair of French literature at Harvard<br />
College, and of American literature at the<br />
Sorbonne.<br />
M. Jean Julien recorded the deaths during the<br />
past year of the following members of the Société:-<br />
Albert Pinard, novelist ; Adolphe Pieyre, the<br />
historian of Nîmes; Adolphe Paban, poet ; Hugo<br />
Spiller, correspondent of Italian and Austrian<br />
papers; Paschal Grousset, the ardent revolutionist<br />
of 1871, afterwards on the staff of the Temps ;<br />
Henri de Parville, well known for his popular<br />
science writings; Adolphe Mony, doctor and<br />
-author'; Charles Diguet, the author of “Nos amis<br />
les bêtes”; Paul Guirand; Emmanuel Delbousquet;<br />
Elie Fourés, who has left his history of the Trouba-<br />
'dours unfinished ; Ernest Praron ; Adolphe Rosay :<br />
Charles Joliet ; Armand Lapointe ; Paul Rouget,<br />
and Charles Louie Philippe. To this long list the<br />
inames of Edouard Rod, Mme. Jeanne Marni, and<br />
Félix Nadar must also be added.<br />
Among the new prizes that have been founded<br />
are those by Jacques Normand, Paul Robiquet,<br />
Jean Revel, Mme. Barratin, M. Mourrier, M. Frantz<br />
Jourdain, and M. Rodocamachi. Prince Roland<br />
Bonaparte has also placed at the disposal of the<br />
Société five annuities of 3,000 francs. The first<br />
annuity has already been awarded to M. Rosny,<br />
the elder of the two authors of that name.<br />
Four members of the Société have been elected<br />
Academicians: Jean Aicard, Eugène Brieux, René<br />
JDoumic, and Marcel Prevost.<br />
The national literary prize has been awarded to<br />
JEdmond Pilon. Among members of the Société<br />
who have won Academy prizes are the following:—<br />
Fortunat Strowski, Ernest Gay, André Lichtenberger,<br />
Henri Bordeaux, and Hugues Lapaire.<br />
The death of Vicomte Melchior de Vogué occurred<br />
after only a few days’ illness. He was born in 1848,<br />
and during the war of 1870 he received a medal<br />
for his fine conduct. In 1871 he was secretary to<br />
the French Embassy at Constantinople. Later on<br />
he lived for a time at St. Petersburg, where he<br />
married a Russian wife. His celebrated book on<br />
the Russian novel appeared in 1886. Among<br />
his other volumes are “Souvenirs et Visions";<br />
“Heures d’histoire "; “Les Morts qui parlent ";<br />
“Le Maitre de la Mer”; “Sous l'horizon.” In<br />
1888 he was elected a member of the French<br />
Academy. His articles in the Revue des Deua.<br />
Mondes, the Journal des Débats, and the Figaro<br />
were always greatly appreciated, and he was himself<br />
most highly esteemed in French literary circles.<br />
The poet Jean Moréas died on March 30,<br />
at the age of fifty-four. He was a Greek by birth,<br />
but had lived in Paris for very many years. His<br />
first volume dates back to 1884 and was entitled<br />
“Syrtes.” This was followed by “Cantilènes.”<br />
Moréas started as a symbolist. In 1891 he pub-<br />
lished “Le Pelérin passionné" and declared sym-<br />
bolism dead. His “Stances * are his best-known<br />
and most admired poems.<br />
A gold medal has just been presented to Henri<br />
Fabre, the celebrated entomologist, whom Victor<br />
Hugo called the “Homer of the insects,” and<br />
whom Darwin styled the “inimitable observer.”<br />
Henri Fabre is now eighty-seven years of age, and<br />
he has devoted sixty years of his life to the study<br />
of insects. On the committee which was formed<br />
to do him honour are the names of Prince Roland<br />
Bonaparte, W. M. Doumergue, Lord Avebury,<br />
Maeterlinck, Mistral, Hébrard, Salomon Reinach,<br />
Professor Pozzi, and many others.<br />
Mr. Percival Lowell gave a lecture last month<br />
on “Mars and its Vegetation.” M. Baillaud,<br />
Director of the Observatory, took the chair, and<br />
M. Camille Flammarion also spoke.<br />
Mr. George Moore also gave a lecture last month<br />
in Paris.<br />
In the Revue hebdomadaire there are articles on<br />
“Mlle. Clairon et le Baron de Staël,” by Comte<br />
d'Haussonville ; on “Les Idées de l’Alliance<br />
républicaine démocratique,” by M. Paul Deschanel;<br />
on “Théodore de Banville,” by Jean Richepin ;<br />
and a curious article entitled “Lettre d'un pro-<br />
testant détaché à un catholique anxieux.”<br />
In La Revue Louise Cruppi writes on “La<br />
Duchesse Cajanello”; Comtesse de Puliga (Brada)<br />
on “La Maison d'Amour et de Mort ’’; G. Saint-<br />
Aubin on “Le Roman Américain”; and Auguste<br />
Rodin on “La Pensée dans l’Art.”<br />
ALYS HALLARD.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#612) ################################################<br />
<br />
216<br />
TISIES A PrºTIFIOR.<br />
THE EDITORIAL ATTITUDE.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
BY AN EDITOR.<br />
S one who has the temerity to be an editor,<br />
as well as a member of the Incorporated<br />
Society of Authors, I hope to be allowed to<br />
make some reply to the article “The Editorial<br />
Attitude,” by “A Contributor.” With an editorial<br />
experience of eighteen years, I have yet to meet an<br />
editor, and I know many, of the discourteous, dis-<br />
honest, and unbusinesslike species to which, as<br />
“A Contributor’’ courteously alleges, all editors<br />
belong.<br />
Let me deal with some points in this amazing<br />
attack upon those engaged in work which, though<br />
interesting, is as harassing as that of any other<br />
calling upon those who have earned their positions<br />
in a field in which there is much competition, and<br />
in which fools are not suffered at any price. Why,<br />
in the name of all that is businesslike, should an<br />
editor acknowledge the receipt of contributions f<br />
It would be sheer waste of time and of the pro-<br />
prietor's stamps. Even if the precious MS. has<br />
been lost in the post, what has that to do with an<br />
editor P With a paper that receives many contri-<br />
butions it is necessary to number them, though<br />
personally I have this done on the envelopes. And<br />
certainly no MS. has ever had to be re-typed<br />
through my harsh treatment (assuming that it is<br />
typed, and not in a handwriting which it is an<br />
insult to expect to be read, even by an editor).<br />
It is certainly possible that a suitable contribu-<br />
tion may be rejected on one occasion when it<br />
would be accepted on another. Last week I<br />
rejected an excellent story dealing with a high-<br />
born chauffeur who won the heart of his parvenu<br />
employer's daughter. The theme is not particu-<br />
larly novel—if only themes for novels were novel<br />
themes, how happy the lot of the poor editor —<br />
but the story was a good one. I refused it because<br />
only the preceding week I had accepted a story,<br />
not quite so well written, on the same lines. The<br />
MS. went back with the usual printed form ; I<br />
gave no reasons for rejection. Why should I?<br />
Ilike the curate, I have “all the time there is,” but<br />
my periodical has to appear at certain stated<br />
intervals. As for MSS. of unknown writers not<br />
being read, that is all nonsense. Naturally writers<br />
who have “won through * are often commissioned,<br />
and I take it that most writers would like to be<br />
one of this kind. While on this matter, I may say<br />
that never a day passes without the receipt of a<br />
MS. from an “unknown '' one that is hopelessly<br />
unsuitable, either through length, treatment, or<br />
topic ; yet there is my paper for would-be con-<br />
tributors at least to glance at before entrusting me<br />
with their masterpieces.<br />
The money question is, from the author's point<br />
of view, probably the most important one. Now I<br />
claim that the magazine writer does get his mone<br />
when it is due, i.e., when his work is published.<br />
With a big publishing firm no other practice is<br />
possible, and it would be easy to show that this<br />
benefits the author. The “waiting for years”<br />
notion is far from being anything like the rule,<br />
sporadic cases notwithstanding, and with it may<br />
be bracketed the notion that editors publish con-<br />
tributions and try to wriggle out of paying for<br />
them. I am writing of responsible editors of<br />
established journals. Mr. X. Y. Z. seems to<br />
assume, too, that the editor is, as a rule, the pro-<br />
prietor; as a matter of fact, this is very rarely the<br />
case, so that even were the editor willing to<br />
defraud a contributor it would not benefit his own<br />
pocket, and I have never come across a proprietor<br />
who wishes to make money by such means.<br />
Mr. X. Y. Z. should send his contributions to<br />
reputable journals, but as he seems to have got in<br />
with such a queer lot it is possible that his con-<br />
tributions would be dear even if paid for in cigars<br />
or whisky. I am judging Mr. X. Y. Z. by his<br />
experiences as related in his article.<br />
After all, the editor is more useful to the author<br />
than the latter is to the former. An editor could<br />
always fill his journal by commissioning writers of<br />
proved merit. That so many new writers are<br />
continually coming along proves that the work of<br />
the unknown ones is read. But there are too<br />
many authors, and many of them would do better<br />
at French gardening—or paper-making.<br />
There is much more that I could say with<br />
regard to editors and authors, and the subject is<br />
certainly an interesting one. I have been led to<br />
write these remarks by the continual unjust and<br />
ignorant diatribes of those who wish to have their<br />
contributions accepted by editors, and who use<br />
The Author as a vent to their disappointment.<br />
And the splenetic attack of courteous Mr. X. Y. Z.<br />
was the “limit”—-if I may be permitted the<br />
unwonted luxury of using slang in print. As a<br />
matter of fact, the average writer has most<br />
extraordinary notions about the production of a<br />
journal, and entirely overlooks the fact that an<br />
editor really desires to make his production attrac-<br />
tive. I could fill a number of The Author with<br />
examples, and very funny many of them are.<br />
I withhold my name and that of the journal I<br />
edit, fearful lest the excellent editorial qualifica-<br />
tions I have doubtless revealed should induce “A<br />
Contributor’’ to call upon me with a bundle of his<br />
MSS. I believe I should grudge him even a<br />
cigarette, and my cup of tea—the sole refreshment<br />
I permit myself in the office—I refuse to give up,<br />
even in exchange for an appreciation of myself<br />
from the gifted pen of Mr. X. Y. Z.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#613) ################################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
217<br />
VICTOR HUGO AND CHARLES DICKENS.<br />
THEIR MEETING IN PARIs.<br />
LTHOUGH Dickens made numerous and<br />
occasionally lengthy sojourns in Paris, and<br />
Victor Hugo was for twenty years a refugee<br />
on British soil, the meeting of the two great nine-<br />
teenth century authors was brief and unique.<br />
The scene of this interview—Hugo's Parisian<br />
residence of 1846—is now, so to speak, public<br />
property, the Municipality of Paris having organ-<br />
ised and opened a “Victor Hugo Museum ” in this<br />
fine old mansion in the corner of the Place des<br />
Vosges. The square itself is worthy of a special<br />
visit, not only as one of the architectural features<br />
of Paris—a spacious quadrangle of Louis XIII.<br />
houses, with steep slate roofs and cheerful red-and-<br />
white frontages of intermingled brick and stone<br />
work—but as the historical “Place Royale.” It<br />
has often been stated that the poet's house Was<br />
actually inhabited by the heroine of one of his<br />
dramas—Marion de Lorme, but it is probable<br />
that the real residence of the seventeenth century<br />
beauty was in the cul-de-sac Gueménée, just behind<br />
the mansion, as the house itself seems to have been<br />
occupied by the de Rohan family at this epoch.<br />
There is, however, a quaint old-world aspect<br />
about this charming little corner of Paris which<br />
may well have tempted the leader of the romantic<br />
school to take up his residence here in 1832. For<br />
fifteen years he inhabited the house, only leaving<br />
it shortly before his exile. Here he wrote “Ruy<br />
Blas” and “Marie Tudor ’’ and several other<br />
historical dramas, as well as three volumes of poems.<br />
Here he married his daughter “Didine,” then a<br />
girl of eighteen ; here, not many months later, he<br />
mourned over her premature death, drowned,<br />
together with her husband, while boating in<br />
Normandy.<br />
When Dickens came to spend the Winter of<br />
1846–7 at Paris, he rented a house in the rue de<br />
Courcelles, on the other side of the city, but during<br />
Forster's visit (he spent a fortnight in France in<br />
January) the two made numerous literary and<br />
historical pilgrimages—amongst others, an evening<br />
call on Victor Hugo.<br />
The French poet of that epoch had little<br />
resemblance to the hoary-haired bushy-bearded<br />
idol of more modern Republican France. Author<br />
of several ultra-Royalist “odes,” newly created a<br />
Peer of France, he was then a close-shaven, long-<br />
haired man of forty-four, and held a veritable little<br />
literary court in the “grand salon” hung with<br />
immense curtains of red damask and adorned with<br />
the curious mirrors, gilt chandeliers, and the<br />
mediaeval carved furniture in which he delighted,<br />
several specimens of which are preserved in the<br />
Museum. His “appartement’’ or flat was on the<br />
Second floor, where the relics more intimately con-<br />
nected with the poet's personalty (including a re-<br />
constitution of his death chamber) are now gathered.<br />
Maclise's drawings have rendered us familiar with<br />
the personal appearance of the young and beard-<br />
less Dickens ; he was, of course, Hugo's junior by<br />
ten years. His French was never fluent, but<br />
usually sufficient, and Victor Hugo's quiet and dis-<br />
tinct enunciation on this occasion seems to have<br />
Smoothed over all linguistic difficulties. The<br />
conversation ran on the theatrical topics dear to<br />
Dickens, and the recollections of the First Empire<br />
and his childish souvenirs of Spain, which were ever<br />
two of Hugo's favourite themes. Both men had<br />
now reached a position of comparative fame and<br />
ease, though neither had gained their latter pinnacle<br />
of international popularity. Yet each could look<br />
back on stern trials during youth, for almost at<br />
the same time that Dickens was odd boy in a<br />
blacking factory Victor Hugo was living (on £28<br />
a year or SO) in a garret in the rue du Dragon.<br />
The gaunt ancient house now bears a gilt inscrip-<br />
tion recording the date of residence, but naturally<br />
Omitting these more intimate details,<br />
Ten years later Dickens made another long stay<br />
in Paris, but it was then the capital of the Second<br />
Empire, and Victor Hugo was in exile in the<br />
Channel Islands. In 1871, when the French poet<br />
returned in triumph to his native land, the author<br />
of the “Tale of two Cities” was already laid to<br />
his last rest in Westminster Abbey.<br />
F. ASHFORD WHITE.<br />
—e—º-e—<br />
MAGAZINE CONTENTS.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
BOOKMAN.<br />
Maeterlinck. By Alfred Sutro.<br />
Maurice Maeterlinck: The Man and His Work.<br />
Holbrook Jackson.<br />
The Mysticism of Maeterlinck.<br />
By<br />
By Jane T. Stoddart.<br />
ENGLISH REVIEW.<br />
A Singer Asleep. A poem by Thomas Hardy.<br />
Les Dieux asiatiques aux première Siècles de l’Ere<br />
chrétienne. By Anatole France.<br />
Strauss’s “Elektra,” and the Future of Music-Drama.<br />
By E. A. Baugham.<br />
Reviews: On Humanism. By R. A. Scott James.<br />
Two Women Poets. By Edward Storer.<br />
FORTNIGHTLY.<br />
The Tragedy of “Macbeth.” By Maurice Maeterlinck,<br />
Alfred de Musset, after George Sand. By Francis Gribble.<br />
The Worship of Beyle. By A. F. Davidson.<br />
NATIONAL REVIEW.<br />
Laureate Whitehead. By Austin Dobson.<br />
Dr. Wallace's “New Shakespeare Discoveries.” By George<br />
Greenwood, M.P.<br />
<br />
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218<br />
TISIES AICTEIOR-<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
—e—º-0–<br />
1. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. The<br />
Secretary of the Society is a solicitor; but if there is any<br />
special reason the Secretary will refer the case to the<br />
Solicitors of the Society.<br />
deem it desirable, will obtain counsel's opinion without<br />
any cost to the member. Moreover, where counsel's<br />
opinion is favourable, and the sanction of the Committee<br />
is obtained, action will be taken on behalf of the aggrieved<br />
member, and all costs borne by the Society.<br />
2. Remember that questions connected with copyright<br />
and publishers' agreements do not fall within the experi-<br />
ence of ordinary solicitors. Therefore, do not scruple to use<br />
the Society.<br />
3. Before signing any agreement whatever, send<br />
the document to the Society for examination.<br />
4. Remember always that in belonging to the Society<br />
you are fighting the battles of other writers, even if you<br />
are reaping no direct benefit to yourself, and that you are<br />
advancing the best interests of your calling in promoting<br />
the independence of the writer, the dramatist, the composer.<br />
5. The Committee have arranged for the reception of<br />
members' agreements and their preservation in a fire-<br />
proof safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as<br />
confidential documents to be read only by the Secretary,<br />
who will keep the key of the safe. The Society now offers:<br />
(1) To stamp agreements in readiness for a possible action<br />
upon them. (2) To keep agreements. (3) To enforce<br />
payments due according to agreements. Fuller particu-<br />
lars of the Society’s work can be obtained in the<br />
Prospectus.<br />
6. No contract should be entered into with a literary<br />
agent without the advice of the Secretary of the Society.<br />
Members are strongly advised not to accept without careful<br />
consideration the contracts with publishers submitted to<br />
them by literary agents, and are recommended to submit<br />
them for interpretation and explanation to the Secretary<br />
of the Society.<br />
This<br />
7. Many agents neglect to stamp agreements.<br />
The<br />
must be done within fourteen days of first execution.<br />
Secretary will undertake it on behalf of members.<br />
8. Some agents endeavour to prevent authors from<br />
referring matters to the Secretary of the Society; so<br />
do some publishers. Members can make their own<br />
deductions and act accordingly.<br />
9. The subscription to the Society is £1 1s. per<br />
annum, or £10 10s. for life membership.<br />
—e—º-0–<br />
WARNINGS TO THE PRODUCERS<br />
OF BOOKS.<br />
ERE are a few standing rules to be observed in an<br />
agreement. There are four methods of dealing<br />
with literary property —<br />
I. Selling it Outright.<br />
This is sometimes satisfactory, if a proper price can be<br />
Further, the Committee, if they<br />
obtained. But the transaction should be managed by a<br />
competent agent, or with the advice of the Secretary of<br />
the Society.<br />
II. A Profit-Sharing Agreement (a bad form of<br />
agreement).<br />
In this case the following rules should be attended to :<br />
(1) Not to sign any agreement in which the cost of pro-<br />
duction forms a part without the strictest investigation.<br />
(2.) Not to give the publisher the power of putting the<br />
profits into his own pocket by charging for advertisements<br />
in his own organs, or by charging exchange advertise-<br />
ments. Therefore keep control of the advertisements.<br />
(3.) Not to allow a special charge for “office expenses,”<br />
unless the same allowance is made to the author.<br />
º Not to give up American, Colonial, or Continental<br />
rights.<br />
(5.) Not to give up serial or translation rights.<br />
(6.) Not to bind yourself for future work to any publisher.<br />
As well bind yourself for the future to any one solicitor or<br />
doctor |<br />
III. The Royalty System. -<br />
This is perhaps, with certain limitations, the best form<br />
of agreement. It is above all things necessary to know<br />
what the proposed royalty means to both sides. It is now<br />
possible for an author to ascertain approximately the<br />
truth. From time to time very important figures connected<br />
with royalties are published in The Author.<br />
IV. A Commission Agreement.<br />
The main points are :—<br />
(1.) Be careful to obtain a fair cost of production.<br />
(2.) Keep control of the advertisements.<br />
(3.) Keep control of the sale price of the book.<br />
General.<br />
All other forms of agreement are combinations of the four-<br />
above mentioned.<br />
Such combinations are generally disastrous to the author.<br />
Never sign any agreement without competent advice from<br />
the Secretary of the Society.<br />
Stamp all agreements with the Inland Revenue stamp.<br />
Avoid agreements by letter if possible.<br />
The main points which the Society has always demanded<br />
from the outset are:—<br />
(1.) That both sides shall know what an agreement.<br />
In ea.IlS.<br />
(2.) The inspection of those account books which belong.<br />
to the author. We are advised that this is a right, in the<br />
nature of a common law right, which cannot be denied or<br />
withheld.<br />
(3.) Always avoid a transfer of copyright.<br />
—e—Q-e—<br />
WARNINGS TO DRAMATIC AUTHORS.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
EVER sign an agreement without submitting it to the<br />
W Secretary of the Society of Authors or some com-<br />
petent legal authority.<br />
2. It is well to be extremely careful in negotiating for<br />
the production of a play with any one except an established<br />
manager.<br />
3. There are three forms of dramatic contract for plays.<br />
in three or more acts:—<br />
(a.) Sale outright of the performing right. This<br />
is unsatisfactory. An author who enters into .<br />
such a contract should stipulate in the contract<br />
for production of the piece by a certain date<br />
and for proper publication of his name on the .<br />
play-bills.<br />
<br />
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<br />
TFIE A DITFIOR.<br />
219<br />
(b) Sale of performing right or of a licence to<br />
perform on the basis of percentages on<br />
gross receipts. Percentages vary between 5<br />
and 15 per cent. An author should obtain a<br />
percentage on the sliding scale of gross receipts<br />
in preference to the American system. Should<br />
obtain a sum in advance of percentages. A fixed<br />
date on or before which the play should be<br />
performed. •<br />
(c.) Sale of performing right or of a licence to<br />
perform on the basis of royalties (i.e., fixed<br />
nightly fees). This method should be always<br />
avoided except in cases where the fees are<br />
likely to be small or difficult to collect. The<br />
other safeguards set out under heading (b.) apply<br />
also in this case.<br />
4. Plays in one act are often sold outright, but it is<br />
better to obtain a small nightly fee if possible, and a sum<br />
paid in advance of such fees in any event. It is extremely<br />
important that the amateur rights of one-act plays should<br />
be reserved.<br />
5. Authors should remember that performing rights can<br />
be limited, and are usually limited, by town, country, and<br />
time. This is most important.<br />
6. Authors should not assign performing rights, but<br />
should grant a licence to perform. The legal distinction<br />
is of great importance.<br />
7. Authors should remember that performing rights in a<br />
play are distinct from literary. copyright. A manager<br />
holding the performing right or licence to perform cannot<br />
print the book of the words.<br />
8. Never forget that United States rights may be exceed-<br />
ingly valuable. They should never be included in English<br />
agreements without the author obtaining a substantial<br />
consideration.<br />
9. Agreements for collaboration should be carefully<br />
drawn and executed before collaboration is commenced.<br />
10. An author should remember that production of a play<br />
is highly speculative : that he runs a Very great risk of<br />
delay and a breakdown in the fulfilment of his contract.<br />
He should therefore guard himself all the more carefully in<br />
the beginning.<br />
11. An author must remember that the dramatic market<br />
is exceedingly limited, and that for a novice the first object<br />
is to obtain adequate publication.<br />
As these warnings must necessarily be incomplete, OD<br />
account of the wide range of the subject of dramatic con-<br />
tracts, those authors desirous of further information<br />
are referred to the Secretary of the Society.<br />
sº -*—a<br />
w-v- vºy<br />
REGISTRATION OF SCENARIOS AND<br />
ORIGINAL PLAYS.<br />
—e-º-º-<br />
CENARIOS, typewritten in duplicate on foolscap paper<br />
S forwarded to the offices of the Society, together with<br />
a registration fee of two shillings and sixpence, will<br />
be carefully compared by the Secretary or & qualified assis-<br />
tant. One copy will be stamped and returned to the author<br />
and the other filed in the register of the Society. Copies<br />
of the scenario thus filed may be obtained at any time by<br />
the author only at a small charge to cover cost of typing.<br />
original Plays may also be filed subject to the same<br />
rules, with the exception that a play will be charged for<br />
at the price of 2s. 6d. per act.<br />
DRAMATIC AUTHORS AND AGENTS,<br />
RAMATIC authors should seek the advice of the<br />
Society before putting plays into the hands of<br />
agents. As the law stands at present, an agent<br />
who has once had a play in his hands may acquire a<br />
perpetual claim to a percentage on the author's fees<br />
from it. As far as the placing of plays is concerned,<br />
it may be taken as a general rule that there are only<br />
very few agents who can do anything for an author<br />
that he cannot, under the guidance of the Society, do<br />
equally well or better for himself. The collection of fees<br />
is also a matter in which in many cases no intermediary is<br />
required. For certain purposes, such as the collection of<br />
fees on amateur performances, and in general the trans-<br />
action of frequent petty authorisations with different<br />
individuals, and also for the collection of fees in foreign<br />
countries, almost all dramatic authors employ agents; and<br />
in these ways the services of agents are real and valuable.<br />
But the Society warns authors against agents who profess<br />
to have influence with managers in the placing of plays, or<br />
who propose to act as principals by offering to purchase<br />
the author's rights. In any case, in the present state of<br />
the law, an agent should not be employed under any<br />
circumstances without an agreement approved of by the<br />
Society.<br />
[NOTE.—At the request of Mr. W. Morris Colles we<br />
state that the above notice is framed as the result of a<br />
general consideration of the present state of the law of<br />
agency, and without any intention to make particular<br />
reference to any case or individual. Its sole purpose is to<br />
give what is deemed useful advice to the dramatic authors<br />
who are members of the Society.]<br />
—e—º-e—<br />
WARNINGS TO MUSICAL COMPOSERS.<br />
—e—º-º-<br />
ITTLE can be added to the warnings given for the<br />
L assistance of producers of books and dramatic<br />
authors. It must, however, be pointed out that, as<br />
a rule, the musical publisher demands from the musica}<br />
composer a transfer of fuller rights and less liberal finan-<br />
cial terms than those obtained for literary and dramatic<br />
property. The musical composer has very often the two<br />
rights to deal with—performing right and copyright. He<br />
should be especially careful therefore when entering into<br />
an agreement, and should take into particular consideration<br />
the warnings stated above.<br />
*<br />
STAMPING Music.<br />
The Society undertakes to stamp copies of music on<br />
behalf of its members for the fee of 6d. per 100 or part<br />
of 100. The members’ stamps are kept in the Society’s<br />
safe. The musical publishers communicate direct with the<br />
Secretary, and the voucher is then forwarded to the<br />
members, who are thus saved much unnecessary trouble.<br />
*—º-a<br />
v-u-w<br />
THE READING BRANCH,<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
- EMBERS will greatly assist the Society in this<br />
branch of its work by informing young writers<br />
of its existence. Their MSS. can be read and<br />
treated as a composition is treated by a coach. The term<br />
MSS. includes not only works of fiction, but poetry<br />
and dramatic works, and when it is possible, under<br />
special arrangement, technical and scientific works. The<br />
Readers are writers of competence and experience. The<br />
fee is one guinea.<br />
<br />
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220<br />
TISIES A UITISIOR.<br />
GENERAL NOTES.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
THE ANNUAL DINNER.<br />
THE Annual Dinner of the society will be held<br />
at the Criterion Restaurant, Piccadilly, W., on<br />
Thursday, June 9, at 7 for 7.30. The chair will<br />
be taken by the chairman of the Committee of<br />
Management. Tickets can be procured at the<br />
offices of the society, the price being 7s. 6d.<br />
exclusive of wine. Formal notice of the dinner<br />
will be sent to all the members early this month.<br />
THE CHAIRMAN, 1910.<br />
THE Committee of Management have elected<br />
Mr. Maurice Hewlett chairman for the current<br />
ear. We must congratulate the Society on<br />
Mr. Hewlett's re-election. The ordinary member<br />
can have no idea how arduous and exacting<br />
are the duties of the position. In addition to<br />
presiding at all the meetings of the Committee<br />
of Management, the chairman has much work on<br />
the sub-committees, and the settlement of many<br />
of the minor questions are left entirely in his<br />
hands and subject to his authority ; in conse-<br />
quence the secretary has to be in almost daily<br />
correspondence with him.<br />
With a full knowledge—having conducted the<br />
affairs of the society successfully through the<br />
past year—Mr. Hewlett has consented again to<br />
undertake the duties.<br />
Members of the society should be grateful to Mr.<br />
Hewlett for devoting so much of his attention and<br />
valuable time towards supporting the aims and<br />
objects of the society, and maintaining the rights<br />
and property of its members.<br />
COLONIAL SALES.<br />
IN the réport of the Publishers’ Association of<br />
Great Britain and Ireland we find the following<br />
paragraph :-<br />
“At the request of the Authors' Society, who complained<br />
of a great drop in the sale of Colonial editions, a committee<br />
was appointed to investigate this matter. The Authors'<br />
Society were, however, unable to substantiate the state-<br />
ment that there had been an unusual drop or to bring any<br />
tangible evidence on the subject, though it was suggested<br />
that the reduction, if any, in Colonial sales was due to<br />
the production of cheap cloth reprints, and this opinion has<br />
recently been emphasised by one of our New Zealand<br />
agents.”<br />
It is not quite true that the Authors’ Society was<br />
unable to substantiate the statement mentioned.<br />
It never endeavoured to do so. The point to<br />
which it did draw attention was not that there<br />
was a great drop in the Colonial sales, but that<br />
there ought to have been a great increase in past<br />
years, considering the large markets that are<br />
covered, and that there had been no sign of such<br />
increase. Many statements of account come to the<br />
society's office, and it is curious to notice how small<br />
are the Colonial Sales compared with the sales in<br />
England. It is quite evident that something is<br />
wrong. The publishers are inclined to think that<br />
the fault does not lie with them, but the result of<br />
the inquiries made by the society in Australia, New<br />
Zealand, South Africa, and Canada tends to show<br />
that the English publishers are exceedingly slack<br />
in pushing the Colonial sales, while the travelling<br />
agents of the great American houses are constantly<br />
present, pushing their wares into all out of the way<br />
corners as well as in the more familiar places. We<br />
are inclined to think that it is not the cheap<br />
reprints so much as the energy of the American<br />
book agent that accounts for the lack of circulation<br />
of English books in the Colonial markets.<br />
We feel bound, however, to give considerable<br />
weight to the opinion of one of the foremost<br />
publishers in England. He states distinctly, in a<br />
letter lying before us, that it is the cheap seven-<br />
penny editions that are killing the Colonial sales,<br />
as the Colonial booksellers refuse to stock Colonial<br />
editions which are liable to be undersold at any<br />
moment. At the beginning of last year the<br />
society issued a circular with regard to the seven-<br />
penny reprints and recommended that their<br />
publication should be delayed as long as possible,<br />
if not altogether abandoned, after the publication of<br />
the six-shilling edition. If the publisher's opinion<br />
is correct, it would be as well to insist that the<br />
sevenpenny reprint should not be exported to the<br />
Colonies.<br />
The matter deserves serious consideration from<br />
all members of the society.<br />
TRANSLATION RIGHTS.<br />
WE have often complained in these columns that<br />
authors will transfer a great many of their subsidiary<br />
rights to their publishers. We have pointed out<br />
that by this not only do they lose a large percentage<br />
on the returns, as the publisher generally claims<br />
50 per cent. if these rights are placed instead of the<br />
usual agency, 10 per cent., but they also lose, in<br />
many cases, the chance of placing these rights<br />
satisfactorily, as the publisher, not being an agent<br />
himself, often omits to market these rights, or, if<br />
he does market them, takes no trouble to keep up<br />
the authors’ prices.<br />
We have just been favoured with a note from a<br />
gentleman in Sweden, who has, for some time past,<br />
been endeavouring to keep up the prices of<br />
English authors, and has very largely succeeded in<br />
doing so; but he constantly finds the market being<br />
<br />
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## p. (#617) ################################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
22].<br />
undersold by English publishers who are offering the<br />
Swedish rights of English authors at half the price<br />
he is able to obtain on the Swedish market when<br />
acting independently.<br />
He asks us to give publicity to his complaint,<br />
and we gladly do so, as it is scarcely necessary to<br />
point out that it is for the authors' benefit not to<br />
be undersold in their various markets.<br />
Again, therefore, we would impress upon authors<br />
never to allow their publishers to control the<br />
translation rights.<br />
ſºm-º-º-º-º-º-ºº ºmºmºn<br />
TECHNICAL WRITERS.<br />
A CASE has come before the society recently in<br />
which a publisher asked a technical writer to write a<br />
book of 80,000 to 90,000 words for the sum of £50.<br />
The subject was a difficult one and needed some<br />
study and could only be written by a specialist.<br />
The author consulted the society and the secretary<br />
suggested that £100 was the very lowest that he<br />
should think of accepting. The letter the author<br />
received from the publisher was a refusal to accept<br />
the offer, and the following remarkable sentence<br />
finished the letter : “As a matter of fact it will be<br />
easy for us to get another competent writer to do<br />
it for what we had arranged with you.” Over and<br />
over again we have remarked in The Author that<br />
there is a danger that technical writers will under-<br />
sell their own markets. Many technical writers do<br />
not look to live by their writing, but, living by their<br />
work, like to obtain a slightly increased income by<br />
their writings. They are, in consequence, ignorant<br />
of market values, and, further, forget the years it<br />
has taken them to acquire their special knowledge,<br />
thinking only of the ease with which it is possible<br />
for them to write the book required.<br />
Was the publisher's statement correct or a mere<br />
piece of bluff 2 We should be sorry to think that<br />
it was the former.<br />
*mº ºmºmºmº<br />
MUSICAL COMPOSERS AND THEIR CONTRACTs.<br />
WE have much pleasure in printing in another<br />
column of The Author an agreement which has<br />
been settled by the Copyright Sub-committee and<br />
approved by the Committee of Management on<br />
behalf of composers. For many years the society<br />
has been struggling to gather composers into a<br />
united body in order that by such a combination<br />
they may obtain some increased advantages from<br />
the publication of their compositions, but in every<br />
attempt the efforts of the society have been frus-<br />
trated. At length a firm of publishers, Messrs.<br />
Stainer & Bell, who were anxious to draw up a<br />
more equitable agreement, approached the Society,<br />
and, after discussion extending over Some months<br />
With the Copyright Sub-committee, the agreement<br />
printed in another column has been finally settled<br />
and approved.<br />
While great credit is due to Messrs. Stainer &<br />
Bell, the Society of Authors must also be con-<br />
gratulated on the work done by its sub-committee<br />
for the benefit of that branch of the society with<br />
Which composers of music are specially concerned.<br />
We only hope that the composers will recognise<br />
this, and will come into the society and support<br />
the work which it has so ably begun.<br />
WE regret exceedingly that we did not mention<br />
in the last number of The Author that the photo-<br />
gravure reproduction of the society's president,<br />
Mr. Thomas Hardy, was made from a photograph<br />
by Messrs. Elliott & Fry. We hasten to correct<br />
the omission and to give the credit to these photo-<br />
graphers for the excellent likeness of Mr. Hardy.<br />
S. L. CLEMENS.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
R. S. L. CLEMENS (Mark Twain) has died<br />
in the fulness of years. From all his work<br />
as a writer perhaps two books stand out<br />
beyond the rest as illustrations of his inimitable<br />
style, that mixture of humour and pathos. We<br />
refer to “Tom Sawyer" and “ Huck Finn.” It is<br />
no disparagement to the rest of his work to draw<br />
these two from the bundle. Humour, no doubt,<br />
there is in abundance in the other works, such as<br />
“The Mississippi Pilot,” “The Tramp Abroad,” and<br />
“The New Pilgrim's Progress,” but in these books<br />
the humour is not so closely blended with the life.<br />
as in the two first mentioned. It is needless to<br />
repeat in these pages the struggle of his early<br />
years; their history has been fully chronicled in<br />
all the papers; nor is there need to dwell upon that<br />
sad time when as a publisher he lost all his money.<br />
Then well on in years, he refused all aid and assist-<br />
ance, and with indomitable vitality started work<br />
again to wipe off his debts. Perhaps his keen<br />
sense of the ludicrous made him appreciate more<br />
keenly the irony of fate in his own position.<br />
Perhaps the same sense helped him to be up and<br />
doing when others would have thrown up the<br />
Sponge.<br />
Every fellow-member of the profession of letters<br />
must have watched that struggle with interest and<br />
marked the triumphant issue with pleasure.<br />
Only once had we the pleasure of meeting Mark<br />
Twain, but as the occasion was interesting, it may<br />
be worth while to tell the story. When Sir Walter.<br />
Besant was alive he brought Mark Twain to one of<br />
the dinners of the Old Authors’ Club. The dinner:<br />
<br />
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<br />
222<br />
TISIES A UſTISIOR,<br />
was crowded, and Mr. Clemens as one of the guests<br />
was made much of.<br />
His health was proposed with enthusiasm, and<br />
in his dry manner, with much sly humour, he<br />
thanked those present for the welcome he had<br />
received.<br />
His speech was finished, and he was about to take<br />
his seat, but rising again, he stated that, as he had<br />
been called a humorist, he thought perhaps that<br />
it was incumbent upon him to maintain his<br />
reputation and make some kind of joke.<br />
At that time Mr. Rudyard Kipling was seriously<br />
ill in America, and the United States papers had<br />
been full of concern regarding his recovery. It<br />
is impossible to reproduce either Mark Twains<br />
exact words or manner. If the story then loses<br />
point in the telling it is our fault.<br />
In hesitating voice he said that the American<br />
people had been seriously concerned about the ill-<br />
ness of Mr. Kipling, that great English author.<br />
He hoped that, as the two nations had been joined<br />
together in Kipling, they would not be sundered in<br />
Twain.<br />
The evening will not easily be forgotten by<br />
those present. No one could look upon Mr.<br />
Clemens, with his dark eyes and long grey hair,<br />
without feeling there was a personality before<br />
him, and no one could speak to him and hear<br />
his kindly voice without feeling assured that his<br />
first judgment was confirmed.<br />
Mr. Clemens was elected to the society in 1897,<br />
and joined its council in 1908.<br />
* —dº-<br />
w - wº<br />
THE SOCIETY, THE COMPOSER, AND<br />
MESSRS. STAINER & BELL.<br />
; HE agreement printed below has been settled<br />
by the Copyright Sub-committee of the<br />
Society of Authors in consultation with the<br />
firm of Messrs. Stainer & Bell.<br />
The Committee of Management have adopted the<br />
decision of the sub-committee, and have much<br />
pleasure in giving their approval and their active<br />
support to the methods proposed by Messrs. Stainer<br />
& Bell in the conduct of theirbusiness, as exemplified<br />
in this agreement. They believe that Messrs.<br />
Stainer & Bell are the first firm of music publishers<br />
to make any serious attempt to meet the composer<br />
on an equitable basis, and the committee consider<br />
that every credit should be given to the firm on<br />
that account.<br />
As we have already stated, the document has<br />
been settled after consultation between the Copy-<br />
right Sub-committee and Messrs. Stainer & Bell. It<br />
is so far ahead of any agreement which has been<br />
put before composers by responsible firms of music<br />
publishers that at the present time, at any rate, the<br />
committee are not only willing to approve it, but<br />
cordially recommend any composer to sign a contract<br />
containing these terms. -<br />
In order to show the contrast between the old<br />
common form of agreement put forward by other<br />
houses and the present draft accepted by Messrs.<br />
Stainer & Bell, and in order to justify the strong<br />
approval expressed by the Committee of Manage-<br />
ment, we print a form of agreement (if, indeed,<br />
it can be called an agreement) which is a common<br />
form put forward by some of the big publishing<br />
houses in London. We understand that it was<br />
drawn up under counsel’s advice, that it is con-<br />
sidered a sufficient safeguard for both parties,<br />
and that the publishers seldom experience any<br />
difficulties arising out of its signature. This is<br />
the document :—<br />
I hereby assign to you the whole of my copyright<br />
(including the right of public performance) for Great<br />
Britain and Ireland and the Colonies, in my song entitled<br />
{ % ,” in consideration of your paying me a royalty<br />
of per copy on all sold of the same ; 13 copies to be<br />
considered as 12, and the first 200 copies not to be subject<br />
to royalty.<br />
Members of the society may recollect that when<br />
publishers of books had a series of agreements<br />
Settled they made a similar statement ; but it<br />
is quite clear to any one who knows anything<br />
about legal matters that if instructions are placed<br />
before counsel, counsel will only draft an agree-<br />
ment which is favourable to his clients. The fact<br />
then that this agreement has been settled by<br />
counsel, though it may sound of great importance<br />
to an ignorant composer, is really of no value<br />
whatever from the composer's point of view. The<br />
Statement that it is a sufficient safeguard for both<br />
parties is too palpably absurd on the face of it to<br />
need any refutation, and the statement that the<br />
publishers have never had any difficulties is merely<br />
an argument in favour of a more strenuous asser-<br />
tion, on the part of composers, of the rights which<br />
they possess in their property. Attention should<br />
first be drawn to the fact that this document is an<br />
assignment by one party only of all his rights,<br />
subject to the payment of a royalty, and according<br />
to this equitable document the publisher, who<br />
Ought to be the Second party, undertakes no<br />
responsibilities whatever. Indeed, he could refuse<br />
to publish and laugh at the composer's remon-<br />
strances; he does not bind himself to publish at<br />
all, but if he had done so it would have been<br />
necessary that a time should have been fixed when<br />
the work should be properly dealt with. In fact,<br />
this document is as equitable as “heads I win, tails<br />
you lose.” In other words, the composer gives<br />
everything and the publisher promises nothing.<br />
In a musical composition there are two rights:<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#619) ################################################<br />
<br />
TISIES A UſTISIOR,<br />
223<br />
the right of performance and the copyright, or<br />
the right of reproduction in printed form. In no<br />
circumstances should the composer assign either of<br />
these rights. It is, perhaps, needless to refer again<br />
to the case of Warwick Deeping, which the society<br />
carried through. This case is sufficient to show<br />
the danger of the transaction, but it is not the only<br />
danger for authors who transfer all their rights.<br />
It is quite sufficient, both for the protection of the<br />
publisher and of the composer, if the latter grants<br />
to the publisher a licence to produce the work in a<br />
certain form only at a certain price only, with<br />
limitations as to country, and, if necessary, as to<br />
number. This grant can be made an exclusive<br />
grant to the publisher, and the publisher can easily<br />
protect himself against other grants by the com-<br />
oser. It must be a personal contract with the<br />
publisher, but it can be made for the whole term<br />
of copyright, subject to sufficient protection of the<br />
composer in case the publisher refuses to keep the<br />
work on the market or advertise it properly in his<br />
lists. There are other minor points which might<br />
be urged in order to make the contract equitable<br />
between the parties, but, in the first instance, we<br />
should like to impress upon composers this point,<br />
the most important point of all—never transfer<br />
your copyright, never transfer your performing<br />
right.<br />
Members of the society can now compare the<br />
two forms of agreement and study the differences<br />
carefully. In the agreement proposed after con-<br />
sultation with Messrs. Stainer & Bell the<br />
performing right remains the property of the<br />
composer, subject to certain conditions, and the<br />
copyright is not assigned. The licence to publish<br />
applies to certain countries only. If desired by<br />
both parties, it can be widened to include other<br />
countries. The publishers use their best endea-<br />
vours to print and publish. In the other contract<br />
the publishers do not undertake to do anything.<br />
Messrs. Stainer & Bell undertake to publish in<br />
a certain form and at a certain price. In the<br />
assignment the publishers are free to publish in<br />
any form and at any price they think fit. Indeed,<br />
it is hardly necessary to draw further attention to<br />
the obvious advantages which the composer gains<br />
under this new form of agreement. We only hope<br />
that the move made by Messrs. Stainer & Bell in<br />
this direction will bring them the advantage that<br />
it deserves. -<br />
Agreement made this day of , between 5<br />
hereinafter called the composer, of the One part, and 5<br />
hereinafter called the publishers, of the other part, in respect<br />
of a musical composition intituled “ ,” hereinafter<br />
referred to as the composition the copyright and performing<br />
right of which belongs to the said composer, whereby it is<br />
agreed as follows:–<br />
1. The copyright and performing right shall remain the<br />
property of the composer.<br />
2. Subject to the provisions of paragraphs 9 and 10 of<br />
this agreement, the publishers shall have for the full term<br />
of copyright (renewal or future extension included) the<br />
sole licence to make, print, publish, and sell copies of the<br />
Said composition in Great Britain and Ireland, her colonies<br />
and dependencies. During the currency of this agreement<br />
neither the composer, nor his heirs, executors, or assigns<br />
shall print, publish, or sell any copies of the said composi-<br />
tion, or of any part thereof, or of any adaptation or arrange-<br />
ment thereof within the said limits, and the publishers<br />
shall not publish any arrangement of, alteration in, or<br />
Yariation in or of the music of the said composition without<br />
the consent in writing of the composer.<br />
3. The publishers shall use their best endeavours to<br />
print and publish the said composition on or before y<br />
and to sell copies of the same in accordance with their<br />
usual course of business.<br />
4. The composition shall be printed in form, at the<br />
price of , or, if occasion requires, in such other form,<br />
or at Such other price as may be mutually agreed between<br />
the composer and the publishers.<br />
5. The publishers agree to pay the composer, his heirs<br />
or assigns, the royalty of in the shilling on the full<br />
published price of all copies sold (or on all copies sold<br />
after the sale of copies), 13 copies being counted as<br />
12 *; it being further agreed that no royalty is to be paid to<br />
the composer on copies given away for the purpose of<br />
advertisement, and the publishers undertake to stamp<br />
º music with the Words “specimen copy presented<br />
y .”<br />
NOTE. –” This is, at present, the usual custom of the<br />
trade. Whether it is right or not, it can probably only<br />
be altered by general agreement between composers and<br />
publishers.<br />
6. Should the publishers obtain any fee from the hire of<br />
copies of the said music, or any parts thereof, then in that<br />
case the fee shall be divided between the composer and the<br />
publishers in the following proportions: per cent. to<br />
the composer, and per cent. to the publishers.<br />
7... If required in writing by the composer, before the<br />
signing of this agreement, the publishers shall comply with<br />
the provisions of the law relating to notice of reservation<br />
of performing rights.”<br />
NOTE.- Under 45–46 Vict. ch. 40, if a composer desires<br />
to retain the right of public representation or perform-<br />
ance, a notice to that effect must be printed on every<br />
copy of the composition, as in the absence of such notice<br />
his exclusive performing right is lost. Composers are<br />
referred to the Act. In the case of songs public perform-<br />
ance is usually free.<br />
In the case of scores and parts it is usual to print the<br />
notice reserving the right of public performance, together<br />
with an intimation that the purchase of the scores and<br />
barts gives the purchaser a licence to perform the music<br />
of the scores and parts in public. If the parties desire<br />
to adopt this course, the written notice from the composer<br />
contemplated by this clause should require the publisher<br />
to print the notice accordingly. -<br />
8. The publishers undertake to make up the statement<br />
of accounts semi-annually to the day of , and<br />
the day of in each year, and to render the account<br />
and pay the composer the amount due within three calendar<br />
months from the said dates.<br />
9. If at any time during which there is a bond fide<br />
demand for the composition the publishers allow the same<br />
to be out of print or off the market, then, if within three<br />
months after receipt of written notice from the composer<br />
they do not print an edition of at least Copies, or use<br />
the ordinary methods for putting the work again on the<br />
market, the licence hereunder to make, print, publish, and<br />
sell shall cease, and the composer shall have the option of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#620) ################################################<br />
<br />
224<br />
TISIES A lºſſ`ISIOR.<br />
purchasing the plates of the said composition and all<br />
unsold copies at a valuation.<br />
10. In the event of the publishers, or any of them, becom-<br />
ing bankrupt (in the case of a limited company substitute<br />
“going into liquidation *) the licence hereunder to make,<br />
print, publish, and sell shall cease from the date of the<br />
adjudication (or in the case of a limited company substitute<br />
“winding-up order ’’).<br />
11. The composer undertakes to correct the proofs of his<br />
work within days of their receipt. Should he fail to<br />
do so, then the publishers shall be at liberty to make the<br />
usual proof corrections.<br />
12. If either party has reasonable cause for believing<br />
that the copyright in the said composition has been<br />
infringed, he or they shall give immediate notice to the<br />
other party. If the composer takes proceedings in respect<br />
of the infringement and if the publishers desire to be joined<br />
in the action, they may give written notice to the composer<br />
to that effect, and on an undertaking on their part to pay<br />
an equal share in the entire costs of the litigation the com-<br />
poser shall join them as parties. In such case the composer<br />
shall diligently prosecute the action, but shall retain control<br />
of the proceedings, and may make any reasonable Settlement<br />
with the defendants in the interests of composer and pub-<br />
lisher, and the damages, if any, recovered shall be firstly<br />
applied in payment of costs, and if there is any surplus,<br />
shall be divided equally between composer and publisher.<br />
If the composer, after the infringement has come to his<br />
notice, refuses or neglects to take proceedings in respect<br />
thereof, the publishers shall be entitled to take proceedings,<br />
and, on giving the composer a sufficient and reasonable<br />
indemnity against liability for costs, shall be entitled to<br />
use the composer's name as a party to such proceedings.<br />
In such case the publishers shall retain control of the pro-<br />
ceedings and may make any reasonable settlement in the<br />
interest of composer and publisher, and the damages, if<br />
any, recovered shall be firstly applied in payment of costs,<br />
and if there is any surplus, shall be divided in the propor-<br />
tion of one-third to the composer and two-thirds to the<br />
publishers.<br />
—e—sº-o-<br />
IDEAS, AND HOW TO PROTECT THEM.<br />
—t-º-º-<br />
BY CRUSADER.<br />
I.<br />
HERE are many tragedies in the history of<br />
letters, and among the greatest is the fact<br />
that men and women with ideas have seldom<br />
had that other form of capital which is able to<br />
write big cheques and to buy brains in the open<br />
markets of the world. A person with ideas may<br />
be compared, as a rule, to a piece of common land<br />
upon which all animals may graze, or to a public<br />
fountain into which any one may dip a cup and<br />
drink—and walk away refreshed. But in these<br />
times of wild-cat rivalries in trade, none can afford<br />
to lose any part whatever of a marketable idea with-<br />
out adding to his or to her means of self-support.<br />
For it is with ideas alone that authors pay their<br />
rents, rates, taxes, and other household expenses,<br />
which constitute the main working costs of a<br />
literary life. Every writer knows to a penny, the<br />
minimum supply of money upon which he and his<br />
family can live for a year, and he knows, too, what<br />
kind of life is best fitted for his particular outlook<br />
in literature. It may be essential for him to go<br />
from place to place, seeking fresh local colour and<br />
new types of character, but, whatever special call<br />
may be made upon his purse, he is dependent on<br />
three forms of capital :—<br />
(a) The realised ideas known as books and the<br />
profits they bring in over a space of time ;<br />
(b) The ideas that he wants to make real; and<br />
(c) Health, which at any moment may fail him<br />
and put a stop to work. Then he becomes depen-<br />
dent on his old efforts and their financial results;<br />
and if his realised ideas have not been exploited to<br />
the utmost of their commercial value, or if he has<br />
been fooled under profit sharing agreements, his<br />
lot becomes a terrible one. He is caught in a<br />
storm, he ought to lie quietly in harbour, but he<br />
has no anchor nor is he able to command his own<br />
boat outside in the rough waters.<br />
These are trite things to say, perhaps, but trite<br />
things are often neglected truths to the meaning of<br />
which we are made dull by custom ; and very few<br />
young authors have a clear conception of any phase<br />
of business in the perilous calling out of which<br />
they must earn their bread. It is not usual for<br />
them to know even the difference between their<br />
trade outlook and that of a publishing firm. “We<br />
have no capital expenditure,” they say, often with<br />
pride, as if their education counted for nothing ;<br />
as if their apprenticeship were a thing to be thrust<br />
aside as of no value ; as if the use of ideas during<br />
months of hard work were a bagatelle ; and as if,<br />
by an effort of will, they could escape from all<br />
household expenses during the writing of a book.<br />
No capital expenditure indeed It is precisely the<br />
capital of the world’s authors—their own ideas<br />
invested day by day in work done—that keeps<br />
publishers, newspapers, printers, booksellers, book-<br />
binders, paper-makers, periodicals, and all other<br />
trades and traders connected with the literary life.<br />
Let an edict prevent all authors from writing for<br />
a year, and this cessation in the flow and circula-<br />
tion of ideas would stop all contemporary progress<br />
in the transference of new thought from print<br />
to mind. None but dead copyrights and work<br />
already published could be used. Not even the<br />
day’s news could be published, for it has to be<br />
written, and so made a part of our current traffic<br />
in literary ideas. Yet authors, for the most part,<br />
are unaware of their extraordinary power, and<br />
hesitate to act together in their self-defence. Any<br />
trading company is able to beat them down, and<br />
into submission. There is, for example, at this<br />
moment a steady fall in the prices paid for the<br />
capital of ideas invested week by Week in short<br />
stories. And yet, where is the combination of<br />
active protest against this cruel injustice P Suppose,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#621) ################################################<br />
<br />
TFIE A CITISIOR,<br />
225<br />
by way of contrast, that the jerry-furnishers of<br />
England had set themselves to lower the trade<br />
union rates for chair-making and cabinet-making,<br />
a general strike would follow, and those jerry-<br />
furnishers would be taught a lesson not at all easy<br />
to forget. Yet the trade unions for furniture-<br />
making have but a trifling power in comparison<br />
with that which authors could wield if they united<br />
and acted together in downright good-fellowship.<br />
My first point, then, is this—that ideas rule the<br />
world, and have done so since men of the Mammoth<br />
Time made the first great inventions—pottery,<br />
engraving, sculpture, wall-painting, and stone<br />
weapons of self-protection. This was the birth of<br />
art, and all ideas of value are intimately connected<br />
with art. Tradesmen have never been anything<br />
more than servants to the ideas which artists have<br />
put into circulation ; and as servants have seldom<br />
loved their masters, tradesmen have generally been<br />
hostile to the producers of necessary ideas. They<br />
have formed the big battalions, and, not unlike<br />
bacteria, have lived by destroying lives infinitely<br />
more valuable than their own.<br />
It is true that civilisation has tried to set limits<br />
to this preying of inferior minds on those whom<br />
nature has endowed with creative abilities. The<br />
Church was the first to protect the arts; then<br />
social pride and rivalries between towns gave birth<br />
to a lay patronage of ideas; afterwards, but very<br />
slowly, the law threw into a bemuddled shape its<br />
Patent Acts and its Copyright Legislation ; but<br />
during all this halt-footed progress, from the<br />
earliest time to our own, the tradesman has been a<br />
watchful outsider, not only waiting to pounce upon<br />
whatever artist he could catch, but to get that<br />
artist's own capital, his ideas, without paying a<br />
just price. Nor is this game of grab in business<br />
at all difficult to play with success when the artist,<br />
the producer of ideas, has no experience of trade,<br />
and a wide acquaintance with poverty and dis-<br />
appointment. Any sort of offer for his time and<br />
work seems good to a starving author. When his<br />
poverty, not his will, consents, he will sign a<br />
thievish contract just to help him to buy food for<br />
a few weeks or months. The bad times passed, he<br />
understands what he has done, and bemoans<br />
his servitude. A mere tradesman has got him<br />
under a cruel contract, and all the laws of the land<br />
cannot free him while that contract lasts. Perhaps<br />
he has sold a novel for £15, and arranged to write<br />
six others for that princely wage apiece. What<br />
then 2 The law says that he acted as a free agent,<br />
and must make what he can out of his tragic<br />
bargain. He has sold cheap what is most dear,<br />
only to learn that an author may starve and yet be<br />
very useful to his publisher.<br />
This privilege, indeed, is one which is forced<br />
upon authors to-day by business agencies of a very<br />
powerful kind. I am speaking, of course, about<br />
authors in the lump, their rank and file. Popular<br />
favourites are able to defend themselves, but the<br />
rank and file haven’t a chance unless they keep<br />
shoulder to shoulder and fight in regiments,<br />
because they have to face the serried ranks of keen<br />
tradesmen, bound together not only by partnerships<br />
and companies, but by a routine of business<br />
trickery and discipline which the practice of<br />
generations has evolved. Also—and this has a<br />
great importance of its own—a host of outsiders,<br />
under the title of shareholders, now claim their full<br />
share of profit on the ideas that authors invent and<br />
make fit for all the many markets in the trade of<br />
letters. Once in a way an author alone can face<br />
all this and yet win his just measure of success and<br />
reward; but the lottery is so vast, so complex, and<br />
So uncertain, that it is best to lay down the rule that<br />
no author ought ever to fight without known<br />
Support from the whole brotherhood and sisterhood<br />
of literary workers. For it is impossible ever to<br />
say what the British public will like or dislike, and<br />
the British public and its waywardness are the only<br />
protective force between the mass of authors and<br />
the tradesmen who exploit their ideas. One of the<br />
most popular comedies of the last three years was<br />
laughed at during rehearsals, and another play<br />
was put in rehearsal to meet the probability of<br />
failure, for it was considered hopeless. The most<br />
unlikely things often succeed, while the most<br />
promising may fall flat and die in a week or two.<br />
Nor is this at all surprising when we remember how<br />
the popular mind is fevered by a daily carnival of<br />
news from all parts of the world. What with the<br />
yelp of headlines and the shriek of contents bills,<br />
what with the unfocussed importance given to any<br />
event that can be made sensational, the people have<br />
lost all sense of reasoned judgment in their outlook<br />
on life, and soon find novelties both old and stale.<br />
An earthquake of Messina attracts them for a day<br />
or two, like a cricket match, and is then forgotten ;<br />
and the last South African campaigns now seem<br />
even more remote from their interest than the<br />
battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo. The popular<br />
memory has grown lax and flabby, like india-rubber<br />
when stretched beyond its reach of elasticity ;<br />
and all this tells against the appeals made by<br />
authors in their books. How can novelists and<br />
dramatists hope to retain the people's suffrage<br />
when events of the most vital kind to the nation<br />
soon fade out of recollection ? As to other authors,<br />
historians, essayists, art-writers, and so forth, they<br />
must either unite and help themselves or remain as<br />
pawns in the game of finance played by publishers.<br />
A most interesting game—that. It consists in<br />
rolling over the same capital three or four times in<br />
a year, so that it may gather interest with each<br />
turnover, often without much benefit to writers,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#622) ################################################<br />
<br />
226<br />
TISIES A DITFSIOR,<br />
For, indeed, that game of finance is in fundamental<br />
opposition to the just needs of authors, though few<br />
Writers have had experience enough to enable them to<br />
understand that this assertion of mind is quite true.<br />
It seems incredible at a first glance that a<br />
publisher may be very prosperous while the bulk of<br />
his authors may not know how to pay for their next<br />
night's lodging. Yet, though this looks impossible,<br />
it is well within the sphere of modern publishing,<br />
as a little practical thought will make evident.<br />
Writers, like other artists, when they look at a<br />
question of business, are handicapped by their<br />
native honesty in work. “We’ve done our level<br />
best,” they say ; “we’ve spared neither time nor<br />
pains; we wanted to get certain results, and we<br />
went on trying till those results came, more or<br />
less. Surely a publisher knows all this, and he,<br />
like we, stands to lose or gain. Why, then, should<br />
he be careless in his part of book production ?<br />
Why should he fail to push our work 2 °<br />
One hears this run of arguments week after<br />
week, and recently it appeared in print. An<br />
author wrote anonymously to a journal and said<br />
that although he had written and published a long<br />
row of books, all very well received, he earned less<br />
than a farm labourer, his subject being one which<br />
the public did not like, so that the publishers could<br />
not afford to pay him well. Balderdash There is<br />
a public for all special subjects if publishers take<br />
pains to find it ; but they prefer to use authors,<br />
not as men who must live and pay their debts, but<br />
as mere items in the game of finance, and, this<br />
being so, let us look carefully at that game and see<br />
what it is in its relation to ourselves.<br />
First, then, a publisher has a certain amount of<br />
working capital to be rolled over three or four<br />
times in twelve months. This, of course, presents<br />
no difficulties when the capital is small, but when<br />
the capital is vast the difficulties are enormous too,<br />
and have to be met by starting new sources for the<br />
investment of money—new magazines, for example,<br />
and books and papers on many different subjects.<br />
As long as you deal personally with a “ small ”<br />
publisher you have some control over him, and<br />
neither he nor his few assistants will steal your<br />
ideas and projects ; but no sooner do you begin to<br />
launch your work in one of those giant companies<br />
having many departments than you know not pre-<br />
cisely where you are. The game of finance is now<br />
So big and so greedy that you are less important to<br />
it than is a sack of flour to a great mill. Your book<br />
may have cost a year of hard work as well as many<br />
years of preparation ; but all that is your affair, and<br />
has no effect whatever on the routine methods of<br />
finance. Your book is valuable only because, in<br />
an edition of 1,000 copies, it will give a single<br />
turnover to a tiny sum of money. It is a novel of<br />
ordinary length, let us say, which can be published<br />
and advertised for about £115. Now, under a just<br />
agreement, you should earn about £25 if the<br />
Whole edition of 1,000 copies be sold, while the<br />
publisher on a single turnover earns about £25<br />
interest on £115. He has reason to be satisfied,<br />
While you have hungry days in front of you. And<br />
there's no trade reason why he should push to get<br />
a second edition ; he has got his turnover, and<br />
another novel is waiting to be treated in the same<br />
routine Way, and another after that one, and<br />
perhaps even a fourth before the end of the year.<br />
Do you understand now 2 If three novels are<br />
published in twelve months with the same bit of<br />
capital (i.e., £115), and if the tradesman on each<br />
turnover gets the same interest (i.e., 4:25), his total<br />
profits are £75 on a capital of £115, whereas each<br />
of the three novelists gets only £25. And suppose<br />
two of the novels run into a second edition ? What<br />
then * Why, the publisher risks nothing at all,<br />
for the public has called for the second edition on<br />
the book's merits, so your book is now self-support-<br />
ing and should bring you a higher royalty than<br />
you get on the first 1,000 copies.<br />
(To be continued.)<br />
*-º-º-º-mºs<br />
OF THE MAKING OF Books.<br />
“Success is in the silences,<br />
Though Fame be in the song.”<br />
CCLESIASTES says that of the making<br />
E many books there is no end. That surely<br />
would depend on how many ; but I take it<br />
that he means if once you begin, you can't stop.<br />
And the moral of that appears to be, Don't begin,<br />
—since to do anything endlessly, even to draw<br />
breath, must pall in the long run.<br />
Personally, I believe the only possible hope of<br />
stopping people from writing books is to prevent<br />
them from beginning ; as doubtless Ecclesiastes<br />
found out too late, hence the note of extreme<br />
Weariness. -<br />
Unfortunately, I began ; and I have been going<br />
On ever since.<br />
I am one of those in whom Ambition's gnawing<br />
tooth doth ever goad to malcontent. I have called<br />
it ambition for want of a better word ; as a matter<br />
of fact I believe it is no more that than it is<br />
ambitious of grass to push, or hens to lay. Certainly<br />
I want to see my book lying bound (and cut), on<br />
Somebody else's table ; certainly I want to open a<br />
banking account in consequence of that beatific<br />
vision ; but I have an intuition that if I knew that<br />
to the end of time I should never be printed, I<br />
<br />
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## p. (#623) ################################################<br />
<br />
REPORT OF THE SUB-COMMITTEE<br />
ON THE PRICE OF NOVELS,<br />
PASSED MARCH 11, 1910.<br />
APPROWED BY THE COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT<br />
APRIL 4, 1910.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#624) ################################################<br />
<br />
REPORT OF THE SUB-COMMITTEE ON THE<br />
PRICE OF NOVELS.<br />
WE, the Sub-Committee appointed to consider the question of the price at which<br />
new novels should be issued, beg to submit our conclusions to the Committee. -<br />
In an interim report made to the Committee on December 6th, 1909, and published in<br />
The Author in January, 1910, we explained that the collecting of evidence from the booksellers<br />
would take some time and that its result would require sifting and classification. We also<br />
alluded to the fact that we were promised the outcome of certain definite experiments in the<br />
change of price of new novels, which experiments were then being conducted ; and we said that<br />
we would elicit further information from novelists. For these reasons it was necessary that<br />
there should be some delay before we could make a final report, but the serious nature of the<br />
situation appeared to us to warrant the laying before the Committee an interim opinion. We<br />
have now received the further information for which we were waiting, and are enabled to<br />
submit our conclusions.<br />
We have collected since the issue of the interim report evidence from other novelists as to<br />
the advisability of an initial reduction of their prices from the usual figure of 6s. Twenty<br />
authors replied. Seventeen were opposed to reduction, two were indefinite, and one thought<br />
that he would benefit by the lowering of price. In the interim report the figures were thirty<br />
opposed to reduction and seven more or less in favour of it. Forty-seven, therefore, are opposed<br />
to reduction and eight in favour.<br />
Through the courtesy of Mr. H. W. Keay, we have been placed in possession of the<br />
replies of 243 booksellers to the four questions which he submitted to them. . The questions<br />
have served to elicit valuable, if doubtful, expressions of opinion. The figures placed beside the<br />
questions indicate the views taken —<br />
Questions. Yes. JW0.<br />
1. In your opinion would you obtain a larger sale for a new<br />
copyright novel of the Ordinary length at 2s. Or 38, net<br />
than for one at 6s. subject º o e tº<br />
. If an author brings out a new copyright novel at 28, or<br />
3s. net, in your opinion weuld his sale of a subsequent<br />
novel at 6s. subject be liable to be prejudiced 2 . dº 156 56<br />
. Would the increase (if any) in the sales at a cheaper rate -<br />
compensate for the smaller figure received per copy. In<br />
other words, would the larger circulation (if that is so)<br />
149 72<br />
2<br />
3<br />
compensate for the reduction in price 2 & g 111 84<br />
4. Would you get sufficient return out of which to make a<br />
good living wage if the author reduced the prices of<br />
publications 2 . cº & o e ge tº tº 84 93<br />
The booksellers, therefore, believe that a larger sale would be obtained for a new copyright<br />
novel of the ordinary length at 2s. or 38. net than for one at 68. Subject to discount ; that the<br />
issue of a new novel at the lower rate would damage the chances of an author desiring to return<br />
to 6s. ; and that the bookselling trade would make as much or more under original issues.<br />
at the lower prices. But the opinion is by no means unanimous, the minority replies being<br />
substantial in number. The fourth question was answered from such various points of view<br />
that we are justified in considering that the bookselling trade as a whole has no opinion. The<br />
conclusion most generally expressed was that for the selling of fiction to be a remunerative<br />
business to the bookseller it was necessary for him to be able to sell at a profit of at least<br />
25 per cent, an important point to which further allusion will be made. º<br />
Mr. Heinemann has communicated to us the result of his interesting experiment in changing<br />
the price at which new novels should be issued. He was obviously unable to give us the exact.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#625) ################################################<br />
<br />
(, 3 )<br />
figures in respect of each of the books without the permission of their authors, and it has not<br />
seemed to us either right or necessary to beg him to obtain the permission. We are satisfied<br />
that the want of success attending his interesting and enterprising plan of making the price of<br />
a new novel depend roughly upon its length is a most powerful argument against a general<br />
change from the hitherto accepted price of 6s. There were circumstances apart from its novelty<br />
which certainly fought against the plan, but these do not lead us to regard the result as<br />
anything but a warning to authors not to lower their price of issue. One author, on the other<br />
hand, whose book was published at a higher price than 6s., but in two volumes, met with con-<br />
siderable success. The raised price was based on the length of the work, and the success was<br />
obtained in spite of the refusal of the libraries to supply it. We wish to record our sense of<br />
Mr. Heinemann's courtesy in giving us all the assistance that he could, while he respected the<br />
confidential nature of the relations with his clients.<br />
Our conclusions, it will be seen, are so close a confirmation of the interim report that we<br />
have thought it advisable to publish the two reports together.<br />
Conclusions.<br />
We find that novelists would be unwise to allow themselves, or their agents for them,<br />
to enter into any contract whereby it is agreed that the initial price of the new novel should be<br />
lower than 6s.<br />
There is no evidence from authors or publishers that the lowering of the initial price leads<br />
to any substantial increase in circulation ; while there is evidence that in certain circumstances<br />
the opposite has occurred. The opinion of the booksellers on the question is too inconclusive<br />
to alter our view. The majority of the booksellers believe that the lowering of the original<br />
price would lead to a larger sale, but if their profit is to come by an improvement of their terms<br />
with the publishers, as appears to be their suggestion, the author will have difficulty in main-<br />
taining his royalties at their proper figure. The booksellers' evidence confirms our previous<br />
view that where authors lower the original prices of their novels they will not be offered the<br />
same proportionate royalties as they have hitherto received.<br />
We strongly advise authors to maintain 6s. as the standard price of issue of new fiction<br />
save in special cases.<br />
We feel that these conclusions need be in no way modified by the temporary success of any<br />
publishing scheme where far lower prices of issue are employed. In one prominent venture of<br />
this sort the large prices which are understood to have been obtained, are what might have<br />
been expected from the status of many of the authors.<br />
We suggest that a certain deterioration in the outward aspect of novels, the cheaper paper<br />
and the catch-penny cover, often insecurely sewn, is partly responsible for the cry for cheaper<br />
books. If the 6s. novel, quite apart from its merits as a novel, looked better value for 68, and<br />
were in fact better “turned out ’’ than it is possible to turn out a 2s. novel, we are of opinion<br />
that it would be distinctly easier to maintain the higher price.<br />
. M. A. BELLOC-LOWNDES.<br />
CHARLES GARVICE.<br />
E. W. HORNUNG.<br />
W. W. JACOBS.<br />
S. SQUIRE SPRIGGE.<br />
INTERIM REPORT.<br />
WE, the sub-committee appointed to consider the question of the price at which new novels should be<br />
issued, think that we ought to make an interim report, having regard to the serious nature of the present<br />
situation. We feel, also, that a conclusive and comprehensive report upon the matter can hardly be expected<br />
from us, remembering the variety of directions in which evidence must be sought, and the distinct understand-<br />
ing that we have received that the results of certain experiments in the change of price of new novels—which<br />
experiments are now being conducted—will be given to us.<br />
Our first step was to invite the opinion of seventy-eight novelists, almost all being members of our society,<br />
who were selected as far as possible because they seemed to us to represent varying degrees of position as men<br />
and women of letters and greatly different conditions of popularity. Further, we gave preference in our first<br />
letter of inquiry to those authors whose works we knew had been made the subject of some experiments in the<br />
lowering of the original price of issue. The result of that inquiry was that thirty authors declared themselves<br />
uncompromisingly opposed to any systematic reduction of the usual publishing price of the new novel, viz., 6s.,<br />
believing that the reduction would bring to them, having regard to the reduced royalties offered, no return<br />
which would compensate them for the loss which they would sustain by not receiving the larger royalty upon<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#626) ################################################<br />
<br />
( 4 )<br />
the larger prices; seven authors believe the reverse of this, but their convictions were not expressed with any<br />
great force in all instances.<br />
Of the remaining authors to whom we wrote, fourteen were non-committal in their statements, certain of<br />
them giving information in answer to our questions, but without expressing opinions and leaving us to make<br />
deductions from the facts; nine stated that they were unable to give useful information, and from the<br />
remainder we have not yet heard. Much of this unclassified evidence was informatory to ourselves, and the<br />
deduction we have drawn from it is that it contains no definite arguments in favour of the lowering of the<br />
original ſº of the new novel from 6s. either for the benefit of the author, the publisher, the bookseller, or<br />
the public.<br />
We propose to collect further evidence from novelists during the time that must elapse before we can<br />
report finally.<br />
Our interim conclusion, that novelists would be unwise to allow themselves, or their agents for them,<br />
to enter into any contracts whereby it is agreed that the initial price of the new novel should be lower than 6s,<br />
is much strengthened by the replies which we have received from the list of publishers to whom we addressed<br />
a letter asking whether the circulation obtained for novels published originally at a lower price than 6s. would,<br />
in their opinion, result in a proportionate increase if the price were lowered. The basis on which we asked for<br />
information was a 6s. novel of the ordinary length of about 80,000 to 100,000 words with a circulation of at<br />
least 3,000 copies; and, further, we asked if it would be practicable to pay an author royalties on a 2s., a 2s. 6d.<br />
or a 3s. net book at so high a rate as on a 6s. book; and if it would be practicable to consider raising the Original<br />
price in certain cases.<br />
We desire to record our sense of the valuable and courteous manner in which our questions, necessarily of<br />
a searching nature, were responded to by the publishers.<br />
Several publishers said that at the present moment they were not prepared to answer definitely, while one,<br />
who may be mentioned by name, because his position has been made public by his own letter to The Publishers’<br />
Circular, viz., Mr. Heinemann, pointed out to us that he was at the present moment engaged in an important<br />
experiment in the alteration of the prices at which new novels should be issued, of the results of which he would<br />
be in a position to inform us in February. Other publishers who have issued new fiction at lower prices than<br />
6s. have given us details showing that the experiments had failed.<br />
The consensus of opinion from the publishers is to the effect :<br />
(1) (a) that from 9,000 copies at least, to 12,000 (the highest figure mentioned) must be sold at 2s. net ;<br />
(b) that 8,000 must be sold at 2s. 6d. net ; and -<br />
(c) that 6,000 copies must be sold at 38. net before the author would receive the amount equivalent to that<br />
which he usually receives on 3,000 copies at 6s., i.e., 4s. 6d. net.<br />
(2) That leaving exceptional cases out of count, it does not appear probable that the author's circulation<br />
would be proportionately enhanced by a reduction in the price of the original issue. On this point figures<br />
relating to particular cases have been submitted in proof of the opinion.<br />
(3) That the same proportionate royalty could not be offered upon the lower prices. On this point the<br />
publishers are all very clear.<br />
Regarding these publishers, as we do, as thoroughly cognisant of the business side of the publication of<br />
fiction in the present conditions, and as competent to guide us as to the probable result of modifications or<br />
developments of those conditions, we think that their opinions constitute a grave warning to authors who may<br />
be invited to issue new novels of the ordinary length at any price below 68.<br />
With regard to the issue of new novels in cloth binding at the initial price of 2s., we hope that this<br />
innovation is not likely to affect any large number of writers. Few publishers will make the attempt to<br />
produce a new work of fiction in such enormous quantities for a first edition as would be required to pay the<br />
author and recoup themselves. There can be no guarantee that the large prices which have been offered to<br />
authors as payment for serial rights and royalties in advance under this system will be maintained.<br />
We have definite information that, with regard to the 7d. reprints, the publishers are already offering far<br />
smaller sums in advance than in the first instance ; and that even in the cases of authors whose books have<br />
practically earned these advances they are not now willing to make new contracts on the old terms.<br />
We possess a large amount of evidence from the booksellers upon the various questions involved, but this,<br />
which has only just reached us, requires sifting and classification,<br />
We have received scattered information from several authors who have actually experienced the results of<br />
the issue of new novels at prices lower than 6s. In every case the author has suffered.<br />
Having, then, regard to the weight of opinion from those novelists whom we have consulted, to the<br />
responsible remarks of leading publishers, and to details which we have received of the actual experience of<br />
authors, we repeat the recommendation that the novelist should maintain the price of the original production<br />
of his works at 68. There is no evidence that a low price means a large circulation.<br />
ADDENDUM.<br />
One of us, having particular knowledge of the business side of literature in France, wishes to point out<br />
that even in the days when the regular price of the new novel in France was Fr. 3.50, all the leading French<br />
novelists, Daudet and Zola among them, greatly regretted the lowering of the standard price to that figure.<br />
France has since been flooded with new novels at 9%d., and the result has been most disastrous to French<br />
literature as well as to French authors. It has meant that the great mass of writers have now to produce<br />
novels that are short and sensational, and dependent for their popularity upon their violent appeal. .<br />
(Signed) M. A. BELLOC-LOWNDES.<br />
CHARLES GARVICE.<br />
E. W. HORNUNG.<br />
W. W. JACOBS.<br />
S. SQUIRE SPRIGGE.<br />
J)ecember 27-d, 1909.<br />
<br />
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## p. (#627) ################################################<br />
<br />
TISIES A CITISIOR,<br />
227<br />
should not be able to help going on making<br />
manuscript.<br />
Ambition— most kinds of ambition, it seems to<br />
me—is just the push of inherent energy; the<br />
insistence of the ego on spreading itself. Not until<br />
those who have storage of this energy have<br />
expressed themselves in the manner proper to their<br />
nature can there be peace for them ; and even S0,<br />
it is peace in snatches. The cosmic energy accu-<br />
mulates anew, and then there is a fresh explosion,<br />
and the air is clear again ; but only for a time, and<br />
times, and half a time.<br />
This is how motors mote, and birds sing, and<br />
poets poetise, and musicians make music, and<br />
painters pictures, and authors books. If some<br />
artists never cease creating, the theory does not<br />
break down. It simply means that they have<br />
terrific and unusual power of accumulating energy,<br />
and so the explosions are more or less continuous.<br />
And this is why, when you have made one book,<br />
there is a blank time, while fresh energy is getting<br />
stored; and then, at a certain moment, which the<br />
psychologists of the future will be able exactly to<br />
predict, by special stations established for the pur-<br />
pose, the storage bursts bounds, and you make a<br />
second book—quite apart from whether you think<br />
it is good business or not.<br />
It is about the worst business in the world.<br />
My heartfelt advice to the literary aspirant is—<br />
if his inherent energy be so positive that it must<br />
up and out—let him pick from the unlimited choice<br />
of more hopeful channels into which it can be<br />
directed. Stone-breaking is a profession which<br />
requires considerable strength and moral courage,<br />
and also an element of physical danger which<br />
goggles do not wholly exclude : the néedful dex-<br />
terity soon becomes mechanical, which is soothing<br />
to the nerves, and the mind is left free to meditate<br />
with humble pleasure on the fact that one is smooth-<br />
ing the path of civilisation. Success in stone-<br />
breaking, granted moderate ability, is assured ; the<br />
same cannot be said of the writing of books. And<br />
surely it is better to make good roads than to pro-<br />
vide for good bonfires when we go hence and are<br />
{\O IOOTe SééI).<br />
But the aspect of the case is altered when you<br />
have once begun to write. It would be affectation<br />
on my part to suggest, under these circumstances,<br />
that the energy should be directed into more hope-<br />
ful channels. I know that it cannot be. Doggedly,<br />
dourly, dumbly, with brief spells of sweetness and<br />
light caused by the nibble of a publisher, you cast<br />
your bread upon the waters, praying with all your<br />
might that you will not receive it after many days.<br />
But the publishers have no idea of swallowing ; the<br />
bread always comes back, slightly the worse for<br />
being nibbled.<br />
One never can tell until things happen to one's<br />
Very self; but I have strained imagination to the<br />
limit, and am positive I could cheerfully contem-<br />
plate making books without end (which after all is<br />
a figure of speech, in spite of tales of ghost-worked<br />
typewriters)—if only they materialised now and<br />
then between cardboard covers, with their name<br />
and mine in gilt letters.<br />
I should not like to pay anything towards this<br />
apotheosis; I should not like to have to make up<br />
publishers' deficits after production ; but barring<br />
actual loss, even if I did not make one penny profit<br />
on each book, I should still joyfully continue to<br />
write them, if only they blossomed into PRINT.<br />
Articles, short stories, and one poem have so<br />
blossomed ; but what gardener who has been<br />
Successful with mustard-and-cress on a flannel<br />
does not stake his all on pumpkins in a tub 2<br />
Ye gods,--the secret, warming bliss of finding a<br />
Copy of one's own book on someone else's table,_<br />
even one's charwoman's. . . . As I say, one never<br />
can tell, and I might still greedily cling to life;<br />
but I feel that I could see that and never require<br />
a charwoman again. . . . -<br />
And then, sitting over the fire in the twilight<br />
and dreamily wondering how many people had read<br />
It ; and whether any of them liked It to the extent<br />
of describing It in letters to friends; or put It<br />
down, underlined, when someone asked them for a<br />
list of good — or even “nice” books. . . . And<br />
whether anyone copied anything out of It ; and if<br />
anybody read it twice ; and how many bought It<br />
to give away. . . . And if anyone felt they would<br />
like to know the author. . . . And if they<br />
thought he was a man or a woman—or perhaps<br />
an infant prodigy. . . .<br />
I am aware that it sounds vain and childish as<br />
it is set down ; but these, to my mind, are the<br />
exquisite concomitants of publishing a book.<br />
After all, one's thoughts are one's children ; and<br />
one does not blame a mother for wondering whether<br />
people will think her offspring interesting, or clever,<br />
or pretty, nor for hoping someone will fall in love<br />
With it.<br />
Somebody once told me that when a certain<br />
world-famed English novelist at last made her<br />
mark, she was a changed woman ; that is to say,<br />
from not being good to live with, she became the<br />
reverse; which I suppose is a variant of Becky<br />
Sharp's aphorism, “It is so easy to be good on a<br />
thousand a year !”<br />
I have given birth to three thought-children in<br />
ten locust-eaten years.<br />
It is not easy to be good when the locusts<br />
are busy all the time eating off every sprout you<br />
grow. -<br />
To spend long months in carefully, lovingly<br />
fashioning to the best of one's power a little<br />
image of Life, and, after hawking it assiduously<br />
<br />
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## p. (#628) ################################################<br />
<br />
228<br />
TISIES A DITFIOR.<br />
round the market-place, to have to put it perma-<br />
ºnently on the shelf, is not conducive to a sunny<br />
temper. The reflection that possibly one's little<br />
image is not very well made is curiously devoid of<br />
consolation. -<br />
The literary microbe cannot be hid, and generally<br />
appears early in life ; with me, the disease, mani-<br />
fested itself at the tender age of ten. All one’s<br />
relations and friends know when one is writing<br />
a book ; it “outs” like murder; and from time<br />
to time one has to bear up under kindly enquiries<br />
as to what is happening to the child. Can it run<br />
alone yet 2 Has it a nice disposition ? What does<br />
it get its teeth into ? . . . Gradually, after the<br />
lapse of several locusty years, they learn tact, and<br />
do not mention it ; and the parent bitterly hopes<br />
they have forgotten that she is the author of a<br />
paralysed infant. More hateful far than a Dead<br />
Sea Apple in the mouth are the reflections which<br />
this aspect of failure breeds. To continue for ten<br />
years to batter the doors of publishers and never<br />
to be let in bears on the face of it the stamp of<br />
incapacity. . . . And yet, what of the stacks of<br />
futility which are printed—aye, and read “Dis-<br />
appointed Mother” knows that her own work is as<br />
a swan to these geese ; but her children remain<br />
paralytics; and her friends are sorry for her, while<br />
concluding that the fault is hers. . . . It is this<br />
crude and humiliating fact—that you have aimed<br />
at a mark, and missed—which cankers like a Worm<br />
i’ the bud. It is much worse than being a briefless<br />
barrister, or a jobless architect, or even a bankrupt<br />
horse-dealer, for that sort of failure can always be<br />
entered to Bad Luck. Only a limited number of<br />
people employ barristers ; a majority prefer to live<br />
in ready-made houses; and only one person out of<br />
ten can afford a horse. But everybody in the<br />
world reads books; so that if you are any good at<br />
all, there is room for you ; if there is no room, you<br />
are no good.<br />
Yes; after ten years' failure to sell a single one<br />
of your commodities—otherwise than mustard-and-<br />
cress—you get up in the morning, you go about all<br />
day, and you lie down at night with the realisation<br />
sitting on your chest like a half-done suet pudding,<br />
that you are No Good.<br />
No good at the one thing you have strained<br />
every nerve to be good at ; at the one thing which<br />
is the instinctive, imperative expression of yourself,<br />
at the one thing your soul delights in.<br />
Realisation, did I say ? Not quite that. If<br />
the suet pudding once settled down into such<br />
a bed-rock I, should advertise my typewriter in<br />
the Exchange and Mart, and found a Society for<br />
the Suppression of Superfluous Books. It is just<br />
the indestructible, semi-conscious conviction that<br />
it is the publishers who are no good which prevents<br />
the suet pudding from proving fatal.<br />
After all, I have had something more encouraging<br />
than native obstinacy to keep me keeping on. It<br />
is unusual for my “works” to come back with a<br />
bare note of refusal. Some publishers would<br />
evidently take the plunge if they had an ounce<br />
more of the sporting spirit ; others wish me and<br />
themselves to share the sporting spirit between<br />
them ; others again wish me to have it all ; instead<br />
of which, I am not having any.<br />
Success may be in the silences, but I am<br />
beginning to find silence a little monotonous. I<br />
would barter it for a mere snatch of song—the song<br />
of the modest fame of a couple of thousand<br />
readers.<br />
But I shall continue to write, whether there is<br />
silence or song ; firstly, because I cannot help it ;<br />
and Secondly, on principle.<br />
The principle is, that to stop trying to do a<br />
thing because you haven’t done it yet is to sink<br />
below the level of a spider, which always tries<br />
again. To say that the spider always does it in<br />
the end is neither here nor there ; it can’t know<br />
it is going to do it.<br />
Another part of the principle is, that Failure is<br />
such excellent ethical discipline. I might have<br />
been nicer to live with if I had published all my<br />
works, but it would have been no effort to me, and<br />
therefore of no value. I have had to practise jujitsu<br />
in order not to be more fractious than I am ; and<br />
the resiliency which results from bounding up<br />
again after being hurled to the floor with violence<br />
is an acquirement only won by becoming the foot-<br />
ball of fate. The stoical exterior with which one<br />
learns to receive parcel after parcel of returned<br />
manuscript as though they were samples of house-<br />
hold linen is a thing not to be learnt in the School<br />
of success. The dogged pertinacity with which<br />
you pour forth stamps like a tape-machine, and<br />
renew your orders to the Army and Navy Stores<br />
for foolscap, is a quality akin to that shown by<br />
arctic explorers of old, who for ever bought pro-<br />
visions and never found the Pole. The grim and<br />
secret struggle with the giant whose name is<br />
Despond, and whose henchmen are the discouraging<br />
remarks of Those who Don't Understand, is excellent<br />
for the moral muscles.<br />
In fact, I am convinced that success is very<br />
unwholesome. g<br />
So are sour grapes, of course.<br />
Still, if I could reach the grapes, I would risk a<br />
pain; it can't be worse than the pain of not having<br />
amy.<br />
L. T. BAGNALL.<br />
—OP-e—“G-<br />
<br />
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## p. (#629) ################################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
229<br />
INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.<br />
—º-º-º-<br />
- E print from a recent number of Le Droit<br />
V V d'Auteur a statement of the steps which<br />
are being taken by the different countries<br />
for the ratification of the revised Convention of<br />
Berne, better known as the Berlin Convention.<br />
As far as the United Kingdom of Great Britain<br />
and Ireland is concerned, Le Droit d'Auteur merely<br />
republishes a statement taken from a recent issue<br />
of the Times. This does not give at all a full<br />
account of the work that has been done by the<br />
Government to prepare the way for the ratification<br />
of the Berlin Convention as far as Great Britain is<br />
concerned. It is unnecessary to repeat in detail<br />
the steps which have been taken. They have been<br />
chronicled in past issues of The Author, to which<br />
we would refer our readers. . .<br />
GERMANY.—A Bill respecting the confirmation<br />
of the revised Convention of Berne was deposited<br />
with the Reichstag on March 12th. The Association<br />
of German music dealers had already, on March 2nd,<br />
addressed a petition to the Reichstag asking for<br />
the suppression of the modification suggested in<br />
the Bill dealing with article 14 of the law of 1901.<br />
In accordance with this article, the rights of trans-<br />
lation, adaptation, and arrangement are reserved to<br />
the author in the case of the assignment of his<br />
rights, and in the absence of provision to the con-<br />
trary, to which is now added by the Bill the right<br />
of utilising the workfor reproduction by mechanical<br />
musical instruments. The Association opines that<br />
the adaptation of musical works to mechanical<br />
instruments, in the form of rouleaux, discs, etc.,<br />
constitutes an integral part of the right of repro-<br />
duction. According to their view the two kinds<br />
of reproduction are being continually more and<br />
more closely assimilated, and they can with difficulty<br />
be distinguished in principle, constituting a single<br />
method under different aspects; so that the assign-<br />
ment of the said rights would comprise one kind of<br />
reproduction as well as the other.<br />
The Reichstag discussed the Bill at a first reading<br />
in its sitting of the 12th of April, and on the<br />
recommendation of M. Lisco, Secretary of State,<br />
referred it for examination to a committee of<br />
fourteen members.<br />
BELGIUM.–At the sitting of March 15th, 1910,<br />
a Bill approving the revised Convention of Berne<br />
was deposited by the Government with the Chamber<br />
of Representatives. The text of the Convention<br />
in French and Flemish accompanied this Bill,<br />
which is preceded by a report, signed by M.<br />
Davignon, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and by<br />
M. Descamp, Minister of Arts and Sciences. The<br />
Ministers lay particular stress upon “the work of<br />
unification and simplification ” of the Berlin<br />
Conference, upon the “excellent and lucid provisions<br />
of the text,” which has resulted from the delibera-<br />
tions of the Conference, and upon the happy results<br />
obtained, inasmuch as “the domain of the inter-<br />
national protection of intellectual works has been<br />
extended without rendering more difficult the<br />
accession to the Berne Convention of States<br />
which have not hitherto joined it.” The report<br />
shows that the Convention, in the course of its<br />
progressive evolution, approaches ever more and<br />
more closely to the work realised by the Belgian<br />
legislation of 1886 ; as the new Convention does<br />
not affirm any provision which goes beyond that<br />
national law, there will be no occasion to make use<br />
of the reservations permitted by article 27.<br />
This same fact and these same conclusions are<br />
asserted in the very full report which the member<br />
M. P. Wauwermans (one of the Belgian delegates<br />
at the Conference) deposited with the Chamber at<br />
the sitting of April 5th, 1910, in the name of the<br />
preconsultative commission of five members, pre-<br />
sided over by M. Bernaert. At its conclusion it<br />
asks that the Government should be authorised to<br />
adhere to the Convention, also for the Belgian<br />
Congo ; whilst, at the same time, this declaration<br />
of adhesion would be deferred until the protection<br />
of authors’ rights has been assured by the internal<br />
legislation of the colony.<br />
FRANCE.-The explicit report which M. Théodore<br />
Reinach has deposited with the Chamber “in the<br />
name of the commission of instruction and the<br />
fine arts * charged with the examination of the<br />
Bill approving the revised Convention of Berne<br />
has met with warm and universal praises. Whilst<br />
making several serious critical remarks on the new<br />
text, the Commission recommends its ratification,<br />
but invites the Government to enter immediately<br />
into new negotiations with England and Switzer-<br />
land to persuade them to withdraw their opposition<br />
to the obligatory protection of works of art applied<br />
to industry and thus to bring about at the date of<br />
the ratifications an exchange of notes, or an addi-<br />
tional declaration regarding the protection of works<br />
of art “irrespectively of their merit or destination.”<br />
If these negotiations should not lead to a successful<br />
result, the French Government ought, with respect<br />
to the last paragraph of article 2 of the new Con-<br />
vention, to avail itself of the opportunity of making<br />
reserves provided by article 27. With respect to<br />
works of industrial art France would then be bound<br />
by the older texts of the Convention of 1886, revised<br />
in 1896, including article 2, paragraph 2, respect-<br />
ing the accomplishment of the conditions and<br />
formalities required by the country of origin.<br />
“The provisional maintenance of this arrange-<br />
ment would signify that there would be protected in<br />
France only works of applied artwhich were protected<br />
in the country of origin, and that this protection<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#630) ################################################<br />
<br />
230<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
would be accorded these works of art only in such<br />
measure and under such conditions as the foreign<br />
country itself gave in return protection to our<br />
artists; that is to say, on terms of an absolute<br />
reciprocity.” The Chamber after ashort deliberation,<br />
and without opposition, adopted the Bill already<br />
mentioned at its sitting of April 1st, at which<br />
sitting M. Louis Rénault, the eminent reporter<br />
of the Berlin Conference, assisted in the quality<br />
of commissioner for the Government. It is in<br />
consequence of his declarations, in reply to M.<br />
Prache, that the Government has engaged to<br />
proceed in the manner indicated below ; that is to<br />
say, “if, as is possible, the Government should not<br />
succeed, between this and the month of June, in<br />
obtaining a declaration or something else which<br />
may place works of art applied to industry on the<br />
same footing with other works of art, the Govern-<br />
ment will make use of the power afforded it by<br />
article 27, and will make a reserve.” According<br />
to M. Rénault, this article furnishes a safety-valve,<br />
and there may be occasion to make use of it, but<br />
only regarding this one particular point ; for an<br />
absence of reciprocity here will be disadvantageous<br />
to France. This has occasioned some bitter<br />
criticisms on the part of “art industries and the<br />
artists who are their auxiliaries.”<br />
GREAT BRITAIN.—According to the Times of<br />
April 7th, 1910, the conference of the representa-<br />
tives of the British Government and of the self-<br />
governing colonies (Australia, New Zealand, South<br />
Africa, etc.) will take place in London next month,<br />
probably on May 18th, under the presidency of<br />
Mr. Sydney Buxton, President of the Board of<br />
Trade. This conference will have to examine the<br />
revised Berne Convention, and the attitude which<br />
the British Empire will take with regard to the<br />
rights of authors. The principal question to be<br />
determined will be to settle whether it is preferable<br />
to elaborate an Imperial law of copyright, which<br />
shall be applicable to the whole Empire, which<br />
the Commission suggests, or an Act dealing only<br />
with Great Britain (a British domestic Act) to<br />
which the colonies may ultimately adhere. The<br />
Times considers it possible that a measure which<br />
shall permit the adhesion of Great Britain to the<br />
revised Convention of Berne might be submitted<br />
to Parliament in the present session, but that, in<br />
the present situation of public affairs, it can be<br />
hardly anticipated that any progress could be made<br />
with this Bill during the present year.<br />
SWITZERLAND.—At its sitting of April 14th,<br />
the Council of the States ratified, as the National<br />
Council had already in December ratified, the<br />
revised Convention of Berne. The Federal Council<br />
will, therefore, be able to give its adhesion to the<br />
diplomatic act without any reserve.<br />
* –". *.<br />
y ~-<br />
THE FEMININE NOTE.3%<br />
N extract from the preface will best indicate<br />
A the scope of Miss Whitmore's work: “The<br />
Writings,” she says, “ of many of the women<br />
considered in this volume have sunk into an oblivion<br />
from which their intrinsic merit should have pre-<br />
served them. This is partly due to the fact that<br />
nearly all the books on literature have been written<br />
from a man's standpoint.” Woman's work in<br />
fiction, that is to say, has been jealously kept in<br />
the background by man's work in criticism. The<br />
book, it is not unjust to say, is exactly the kind of<br />
book that one would expect to follow that kind of<br />
preface. It assembles a good many out-of-the-way<br />
facts about such forgotten novelists as Mary<br />
Manley, Sarah Fielding, Eliza Haywood, Charlotte<br />
Lennox, Clara Reeve, Sophia Lee, Mary Brunton,<br />
Lady Caroline Lamb, Anna Eliza Bray; but the<br />
value of the criticism is negligible. The feminine<br />
note is sounded on a rather shrill instrument; that is<br />
all that there is to be said. The book, we gather,<br />
was originally put together as a “thesis” for an arts<br />
degree at an American university, and it confirms<br />
us in our opinion that this system of awarding<br />
degrees (in Arts at all events, though not neces-<br />
sarily in all other subjects) is a bad one. It results<br />
in the production of books which are not wanted<br />
by persons whose talents better fit them for some<br />
other occupation. We have noticed the same thing<br />
in connection with some theses for the doctorate<br />
at the University of Paris, and the standard of this<br />
sort of thing is considerably lower in the United<br />
States than in France.<br />
*&^*** f tams -º-º-e—<br />
CORRESPONDENCE.<br />
- —º-º-º-<br />
MAGAZINE EDITORS.<br />
DEAR SIR,--The suggestion of your contributor<br />
that a pillory should be set up (in the columns of<br />
The Author) for inefficient and unconscientious<br />
editors is a good one enough. It might, however,<br />
be difficult of realisation. I do not know whether<br />
it would be libellous or not. Bnt it would be<br />
hardly just unless both sides were heard, and<br />
the impugned editors could scarcely be expected to<br />
attend for cross-examination at 39, Old Queen<br />
Street. Where correspondence showed the true<br />
state of the case, some action (at least by way of a<br />
“black list”) could perhaps be taken.<br />
* “Woman's Work in English Fiction,” by Clara H<br />
Whitmore, A.M. Putnam.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#631) ################################################<br />
<br />
TISIES AUTISIOR.<br />
231<br />
Meanwhile a list might be published of the<br />
literary record of editors of magazines or of<br />
periodicals that deal in literature. My own experi-<br />
ence has been that editors who had any claim to<br />
be called men of letters were nearly always pleasant<br />
to have to do with. But of some among the<br />
others I will reserve my knowledge until that<br />
“pillory” is in working order.<br />
Yours truly,<br />
C. F. KEARY.<br />
—º-º-e—-<br />
REVIEW COPIES.<br />
SIR,-Might it not be to the advantage of pub-<br />
lisher and author if the publisher stamped free<br />
copies of books sent out for Press reviews 2<br />
While I was in a bookseller's shop the other day<br />
a lady came in and handed four books to the<br />
bookseller. The bookseller read over the titles,<br />
names of authors and publishers, and consented to<br />
purchase at a low figure the books for his circulating<br />
library. The books were review copies, which the<br />
lady sells at a cheap figure for circulating libraries.<br />
I have received an account from my publisher<br />
for a book brought out at Christmas, at 68. net,<br />
and find that some eighty free copies have been sent<br />
to the Press for review. I wonder how many of<br />
these have been sold to libraries P Do those who<br />
feel how difficult it is to realise a paying circulation<br />
of their books know of and approve of the above<br />
system of retailing free Press copies to libraries<br />
where authors look for the purchase of a copy of<br />
their books 2 Perhaps some of the readers of The<br />
Author would answer the question.<br />
I am, Sir,<br />
ONE WHO KNOWS.<br />
P.S.—I was told this lady sold twenty-one review<br />
copies to this bookseller for his library.<br />
—e—sº-e—<br />
THE “GREAT UNACTED.”<br />
DEAR SIR,-May I take up a small amount of<br />
your space in order to ventilate the grievances of<br />
“The Great Unacted,” which I am sure a great<br />
number of your members can endorse ?<br />
The average London manager seems to be<br />
surrounded by a prickly hedge of conventions, in<br />
which he dwells serenely unapproachable like the<br />
Sleeping Beauty, while the unfortunate aspirant to<br />
his favour loses time and money, and not infre-<br />
quently his work, vainly trying to penetrate to that<br />
holy of holies.<br />
Much is talked and written in the papers that<br />
every young dramatist has his chance of succeeding<br />
now, through the assistance of the various play-<br />
societies. Yet what does it all amount to ? That,<br />
with one exception, he must pay, and pay heavily,<br />
for the chance of seeing his work produced, and<br />
most beginners are unfortunately possessed of more<br />
brains than money.<br />
Then, again, the Authors’ Society warns us ex-<br />
pressly, and no doubt wisely, against dramatic<br />
agents, so what remains but our own blundering<br />
efforts 2 If we are very lucky perhaps this results,<br />
after many weary months of waiting, in a charming<br />
letter of praise, regretting only that “your play is<br />
not precisely suited to our requirements, etc.”<br />
Now, Mr. Shaw has said “that members should<br />
use the Society.” Would it be “abusing ”it, therefore,<br />
to suggest that the Readers’ Department might<br />
extend its scope and become a sort of Dramatic<br />
middle-man 2 No doubt some more businesslike<br />
author than myself could indicate the exact manner;<br />
the fees and royalties, etc., could be determined by<br />
the Committee.<br />
It seems to me that in this way a sort of “Labour<br />
Bureau’’ would be established, putting the right<br />
authors in touch with the right managers and<br />
saving years of hopeless waiting.<br />
I hope the question may be taken up by some of<br />
your other readers, as I am sure there must be<br />
many who feel like myself, yet who do not wish to<br />
advertise their wares in the literary market in the<br />
same desperate way as the lady who yesterday<br />
patrolled the West End as a sandwich-man,<br />
announcing to all and sundry that she had a play<br />
for sale.<br />
Apologising for trespassing on your valuable<br />
space, and trusting that some more able pen than<br />
mine may continue this vexed question,<br />
Yours faithfully,<br />
X. Y. Z.<br />
—t—sº-º-<br />
THE REVIEWING OF BOOKS.<br />
SIR,--The remarks of “Authoress” on reviewing<br />
are true. It is becoming rare for reviewers to read<br />
the books they describe. Perhaps in some cases it<br />
is really needless, they would not understand<br />
them.<br />
Sometimes the critic is an author, who dips his<br />
critical pen in jealousy. In many other instances<br />
he may be only an aspirant. Froude complained<br />
that in literature the raw aspirants sat at once on<br />
the judicial bench, whereas in law they had to<br />
serve a long apprenticeship first.<br />
Properly, a critic should not only read an<br />
author’s work, but also make a genuine attempt to<br />
find out the author's point of view. The right of<br />
a critic even to insist at large on his own opinions<br />
is doubtful. He may attack style or condemn<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#632) ################################################<br />
<br />
232<br />
THE A DTEIOR.<br />
conclusions, but a true criticism is not an essay in<br />
rivalry with the author's essay. .<br />
So far, however, have we got from true criticism<br />
in some quarters that a whole review may be<br />
devoted to the ridiculing of an author's style,<br />
without a word as to what the subject-matter of<br />
the book is. This may be because the reviewer<br />
hates the author's opinions, but dares not try and<br />
refute them, and therefore ignores them altogether.<br />
In other cases an amusing method has crept in<br />
of alleging that the author has imitated various<br />
other writers (some of whom, perhaps, he has never<br />
read at all), and ignoring, as before, the matter<br />
of the book under pretence of dealing with its<br />
manner. This, perhaps, is not very amusing to the<br />
author, but even he cannot resist a smile when he<br />
comes across a notice in the following style :-<br />
“In this book we recognise the outcome of the<br />
celebrated work of our fellow-townsman Horatio J.<br />
Jiggins, entitled ‘Down in the Dumps.’ True,<br />
the writer of the work before us has missed the<br />
felicities of Jiggins and has loaded his book with<br />
mistakes of his own,” etc., etc.<br />
The reviewed one best sees the fun of this sort of<br />
thing when he has never heard of Jiggins before.<br />
If your book is reviewed in a paper the function<br />
of which is to disseminate political or social views<br />
opposed to your own, you will probably be snubbed.<br />
This will be done by extracting from your book a<br />
single line which, taken by itself, has a ludicrous<br />
aspect, and quoting it, with three lines of comment,<br />
tending to show that the whole work (which has<br />
cost you years of toil) is a farce or a piece of<br />
lunacy.<br />
Towns, cities, and other collections of possible<br />
readers of your book, people to whom you are<br />
especially appealing on matters of the last im-<br />
portance, are by these ingenious arts prevented<br />
from buying your book, or learning the truths<br />
which you wish to convey.<br />
I am, etc.,<br />
- AN OBSCURE WRITER.<br />
e-Q-9–<br />
THE LITERARY YEAR-BOOK.<br />
DEAR SIR,-May I be allowed to draw your<br />
readers' attention to an error on the part of your<br />
reviewer in his notice of the “Literary Year-Book ''<br />
in the March issue of The Author, which, in view<br />
of his criticism, is important. He says: “Last<br />
year’ (i.e., 1909) “343 pages were devoted to<br />
authors. As the list this year occupies only one<br />
page more” . . . etc. If your reviewer will again<br />
refer to the 1909 and 1910 issues, he will find that<br />
this year's edition contains over 30 pages more in<br />
the list of authors, equivalent to an increase of<br />
about 200 new names, allowing for obituaries<br />
during the past twelve months. This is a larger<br />
increase than in any other past year, and I can<br />
assure your reviewer that it is not by any means<br />
the easy task to get particulars of new writers to<br />
add to this list that he seems to imply. I can also<br />
assure him that no large sections are merely<br />
reprinted from year to year without alterations, but<br />
are corrected each year as necessary, though I do<br />
not claim no mistakes appear, as I do not suppose<br />
any referenge book is quite free in this respect.<br />
Considering that the Year-Book is nearly double<br />
in size to What it was when first issued at 5s. net.,<br />
and that the paper and binding are much better,<br />
the increase of a shilling in price is, I think,<br />
justified.<br />
Yours faithfully,<br />
B. STEWART.<br />
We are only too glad to have this error pointed<br />
out by Mr. Basil Stewart. It arose thus:–In the<br />
1909 edition “Authors” extend to p. 345. From<br />
that two were deducted, giving 343. Unwittingly,<br />
the forme numeral “2 ” was mistaken for the<br />
reader's page number “33.” But, in the 1910<br />
edition, in which “Authors” extend to p. 377,<br />
the page-number “33” (at the beginning of<br />
the list) was correctly subtracted, making 344;<br />
QI, as We then believed, only one page more.<br />
While apologising for the mistake, we heartily<br />
Congratulate him on the additional names inserted.<br />
Nevertheless, despite this improvement, the list is<br />
still Sadly inadequate. Dead writers appear as if<br />
living, and there are numerous omissions of names<br />
of meritorious living authors. -<br />
A. R.<br />
MEMBERSHIP OF THE SOCIETY.<br />
SIR,--I should like to use your columns in<br />
order to put forward a suggestion in regard to<br />
the membership of the Society. I understand that<br />
there are some five thousand and, perhaps, more<br />
authors in the United Kingdom of Great Britain<br />
and Ireland. Would it not be possible for every<br />
present member of the society to endeavour to<br />
bring in one of those who stand outside It seems<br />
to me that there can only be three reasons why the<br />
profession is not completely represented in the<br />
society : (1) ignorance of its aims ; (2) extreme<br />
poverty ; (3) selfishness, or what, perhaps, in a<br />
more kindly mood I might designate the ungre-<br />
garious habit. For myself, 1 will certainly under-<br />
take to bring in my additional member.<br />
Yours, etc.,<br />
A WELL-WISHER.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. (#633) ################################################<br />
<br />
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## p. (#634) ################################################<br />
<br />
vi<br />
ADVERTISEMENTs.<br />
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On e of the oldest members of The Authors’<br />
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º 99 •<br />
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*W at 10, Bouverie Street, London, E.C.<br />
(INCORPORATED), | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/405/1910-05-02-The-Author-20-8.pdf | publications, The Author |