https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/273/1895-02-01-The-Author-5-9.pdf 563f6f8690f01e11c9b99647565c5cd0 PDF Text Text ���������������������������� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Author Subject The topic of the resource <em>The Author</em> Description An account of the resource A digitised run of the Society of Authors' monthly periodical, <em>The Author</em>, 1890<span>–</span>1914, made available together for the first time.<br /><br />Currently users can browse issues and <a href="https://historysoa.com/items/browse?search=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Index&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;tags=&amp;exhibit=&amp;date_search_term=&amp;submit_search=Search+For+Items&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CTitle">indices</a> (not available for all volumes). Full text search for all issues, and other additional search functionality, will be added in 2022. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1890–1914 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The-Author-Issues Publication Date The date of an event (in YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD format) 1895-02-01 Volume 5 Issue 9 Pages Page range in volume 225–252 Ngram Date Version of the date in YYYYMMDD format for use by the Ngram plugin 18950201 Ngram Text Version of the text with no HTML formatting for use by the Ngram plugin C be El u t b or, (The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.) CON DU CTED BY WALTER BESAN. T. VoI. W.-No. 9.] FEBRUARY 1, 1895. [PRICE SIXPENCE. For the Opinions eaſpressed in papers that are signed or initialled the Authors alone are responsible. None of the papers or para- graphs must be taken as ea pressing the collective opinions of the committee unless they are officially signed by G. Herbert Thring, Sec. HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and requests that all members not receiving an answer to important communications within two days will write to him without delay. All remittances should be crossed Union Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered letter only. Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub- jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS. *- A -º r- - - WARNINGS AND ADWICE, I. RAWING THE AGREEMENT.-It is not generally understood that the author, as the vendor, has the absolute right of drafting the agreement upon whatever terms the transaction is to be carried out. Authors are strongly advised to exercise that right. In every form of business, this among others, the right of drawing the agreement rests with him who sells, leases, or has the control of the property. 2. SERIAL RIGHTS.—In selling Serial Rights remember that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you object to this, insert a clause to that effect. 3. STAMP You R AGREEMENTS. – Readers are most URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree- ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The author may be assured that the other party to the agree- ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society, to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of members stamped for them at no ea'pense to themselves eacept the cost of the stamp. WOL. W. 4. ASCERTAIN WHAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVES To BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi- ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he reserved for himself. 5. LITERARY AGENTS.–Be very careful. You cannot be too careful as to the person whom you appoint as your agent. Remember that you place your property almost un- reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone. 6. CoST OF PRODUCTION.——Never sign any agreement of which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part, until you have proved the figures. 7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.—Never enter into any cor- respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad- vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced friends or by this Society. 8. FUTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever, bind yourself down for future work to anyone. 9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or responsibility whatever without advice. Io. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a M.S. has been re- fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises they may put forward, for the production of the work. II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the publisher, unless for a substantial consideration. 12. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper, either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright, without advice. 13. ADVERTISEMENTS. –- Keep some control over the advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in the agreement. 14. NEVER forget that publishing is a business, like any other business, totally unconnected with philanthropy, charity, or pure love of literature. You have to do with business men. Be yourself a business man. Society’s Offices :- 4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs. *—- - --" - - - HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY. I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub- lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his business or the administration of his property. If the advice Y 2  ## p. 226 (#240) ############################################ 226 THE AUTHOR. sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com- mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this without any cost to the member. 2. Remember that questions connected with copyright and publisher's agreements do not generally fall within the experience of ordinary solicitors. Therefore, do not scruple to use the Society first—our solicitors are continually engaged upon such questions for us. 3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in order to ascertain what has been the nature of your agree- ments, and the results to author and publisher respectively so far. The Secretary will always be glad to have any agreements, new or old, for inspection and note. The infor- mation thus obtained may prove invaluable. 4. If the examination of your previous business trans- actions by the Secretary proves unfavourable, you should take advice as to a change of publishers. 5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro- posed document to the Society for examination. 6. The Society is acquainted with the methods, and—in the case of fraudulent houses—the tricks of every publish- ing firm in the country. 7. Remember always that in belonging to the Society you are fighting the battles of other writers, even if you are reaping no benefit to yourself, and that you are advancing the best interests of literature in promoting the indepen- dence of the writer. 8. Send to the Editor of the Awthor notes of everything important to literature that you may hear or meet with. THE AUTHORS' SYNDICATE, EMBERS are informed : I. That the Authors’ Syndicate takes charge of the business of members of the Society. That it submits MSS. to publishers and editors, concludes agree- ments, examines, passes, and collects accounts, and, generally, relieves members of the trouble of managing business details. 2. That the terms upon which its services can be secured will be forwarded upon detailed application. 3. That the Authors' Syndicate works only for those members of the Society whose work possesses a market value. 4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiations whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia- tions are placed ea clusively in its hands, and that all communications relating thereto are referred to it. 5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by appointment, and that, when possible, at least two days' notice should be given. 6. That every attempt is made to deal with all communi- cations promptly. That stamps should, in all cases, be sent to defray postage. 7. That the Authors' Syndicate does not invite MSS. without previous correspondence; does not hold itself responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice; and that in all cases MSS. must be accompanied by stamps to defray postage. 8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for lectures by some of the leading members of the Society; that it has a “Transfer Department” for the sale and purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register of Wants and Wanted" is open. Members are invited to communicate their requirements to the Manager. There is an Honorary Advisory Committee, whose services will be called upon in any case of dispute or difficulty. It is perhaps necessary to state that the members of the Advisory Committee have no pecuniary interest whatever in the Syndicate. _* ,-- - - NOTICES, HE Editor of the Author begs to remind members of the Society that, although the paper is sent to them free of charge, the cost of producing it would be a very heavy charge on the resources of the Society if a great many members did not forward to the Secretary the modest 6s. 6d. subscription for the year. The Editor is always glad to receive short papers and communications on all subjects connected with literature from members and others. Nothing can do more good to the Society than to make the Author complete, attractive, and interesting. Will those who are willing to aid in this work send their names and the special subjects on which they are willing to write P Communications for the Author should reach the Editor not later than the 21st of each month. All persons engaged in literary work of any kind, whether members of the Society or not, are invited to communicate to the Editor any points connected with their work which it would be advisable in the general interest to publish. Members and others who wish their MSS. read are requested not to send them to the Office without previously communicating with the Secretary. The utmost practicable despatch is aimed at, and MSS. are read in the order in which they are received. It must also be distinctly under- stood that the Society does not, under any circumstances, undertake the publication of MSS. The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at 3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary for information, rules of admission, &c. Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they have paid their subscriptions for the year P If they will do this, and remit the amount, if still unpaid, or a banker’s order, it will greatly assist the Secretary, and save him the trouble of sending out a reminder. Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why then hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them- selves into literary bondage for three or five years P Those who possess the “Cost of Production ” are requested to note that the cost of binding has advanced 15 per cent. This means, for those who do not like the trouble of “doing sums,” the addition of three shillings in the pound on this head. In other words, if the cost of binding is set down in our book at eight pounds, to this must now be added twenty-four shillings more, so that it now stands at £948. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.  ## p. 227 (#241) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 227 Some remarks have been made upon the amount charged in the “Cost of Production” for advertising. Of course, we have not included any sums which may be charged for inserting advertisements in the publisher’s own magazines, or in other magazines by exchange. As agreements too often go, there is nothing to prevent the publisher from sweeping the whole profits of a book into his own pocket, by inserting any number of advertisements in his own magazines, and by exchanging with others. Some there are who call this a form of fraud; it is not known what those who practise this method of swelling their own profits call it. *- ~ *-* s= * * LITERARY PROPERTY. I.—THE HICKs CoPYRIGHT BILL. "TYPHE Hicks Copyright Bill, against which Mr. William Agnew has written to the Times, has no chance of passing through the House. Protests have been filed against it by the American Copyright League of Authors and Publishers, the American Artists' Society, the Fine Arts Society, the New York Etching Club, and others. The chairman of the House Com- mittee on Patents, which has charge of the Bill, considers that it will be abandoned.—Times, Jan. 2 I. II.-NET PRICEs. In response to the circular about met prices, the secretary has received a great many replies, but not so many as might have been expected on a subject which touches our members in a twofold manner. That is to say it affects them as buyers of books as well as makers of books. In the former capacity they should ask whether they will lose or gain by the pro- posed change. Of course the answer is obvious. They will no longer get the discount and they will not be able to buy so many books. A rise in price from 4s. 6d. to 6s. is a rise of 33; per cent. “Oh but we are not going to charge so much. Trade competition will come in.” Perhaps. But trade competition has done very little so far to cheapen books. The book-buying public is small: 1t must remain small, because people cannot think of buying books whose incomes are under £2OO a-year. The interest of trade com- petition is to keep up the price of books. Book buyers will infallibly lose by the change. “But the author will have more.” Will he P Suppose 3OOO copies of a 6s. book to be sold at 4s. 6d. That means an expenditure of £675 by the public. If that book is sold net at 6s., the same expenditure would only buy 2.250. “But the royalties would be adjusted to meet the difference.” Would they P. The preponderance of opinion was in favour of the net price, and generally on the ground that one would know how much had to be paid. Another objection is that the buyer would still demand and still obtain his discount; not openly, as at present, but secretly, which would be worse, and so the later position of the bookseller would be worse than the former. What it comes to is that something must be done for the booksellers if they are to continue. They have more than one association. They are surely united enough to agree upon what they want, and strong enough to demand it. Publishers cannot do without booksellers. Authors could do without publishers, but they cannot do without booksellers. The question rests entirely with the booksellers. Let them agree, and find an answer. The net system, it is believed, will not be dis- cussed much longer. There are already a good many net books, and there will be more, especially of the class whose circulation is bound to be limited, and whose price is too high for the book- seller to take thirteen as twelve. A good man of the leading publishers have refused to take the proposed action submitted to them, and it is not likely that those who advocate the change will be able to set up a six-shilling book at net, against a six-shilling book at 4s. 6d. III.--ARTISTIC CoPYRIGHT.-MR. WILLIAM AGNEw. In the issue of the Times of Jan. I6 there is a long letter from Mr. William Agnew with regard to the artistic copyright in engravings and etchings. He states that a Bill has been intro- duced by a certain member of the Congress in the United States to bring etchings and engrav- ings under the manufacturing clause, and com- plains, and rightly so, that this is seriously detri- mental to artistic copyright, It is no doubt of the utmost importance to keep artistic copyright apart from the manufacturing clause, and the same remark applies in a lesser degree to literary works. For all the civilised nations of Europe at the Berne Convention recognised that copyright property should not be trammelled with trade burdens. The retrogres- sive policy of the Americans in having established a manufacturing clause to the literary copyright is the real cause of the present disturbance now being made in Canada with regard to Canadian copyright; and this disturbance may perhaps prejudice the whole system of copyright as it at present exists in England. It may be worth while, therefore, if steps are going to be taken to oppose the manufacturing clause with regard to artistic copyright, that authors should raise their voices in opposition to the present manufacturing  ## p. 228 (#242) ############################################ 228 THE AUTHOR. clause bearing on the reproduction of books. This clause is no doubt opposed to the whole idea of copyright property as at present existing. TV.-A CANADIAN PAPER ON CANADIAN CoPYRIGHT. I. As every intelligent person knows, copyright is the method by which law guards the right of property which authors, artists, musicians, and designers have in their intellectual productions. It is for the defence of authors and for their defence alone. It is to secure their right to the profit of the reproduction and multiplication of their own works. A copyright law pure and simple would secure to the author the right to say who and who alone should publish his work and on what terms, leaving him free to make the best terms possible for himself. This, in effect, is what free trade Great Britain does, and what even protectionist France, Germany, Austria, and most of the great countries do where intellectual production is respected. But this is not what protectionist countries like the United States do. There the manufacturers, who are ever clamour- ing for the privilege of enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of the people, compelled Congress to turn the copyright law intended for the defence of authors against pirates into a protective law for themselves, requiring the book copyrighted to be printed or reprinted in the United States. There must be, in the words of the Tammany corruptionists, “something in it for them” to be got at the expense of the author and of his American readers. The United States Government gave British authors this privilege on the pledge obtained from Great Britain that United States copyright should be good all over the British empire as well as in Great Britain, and as British copyright holds everywhere throughout the empire that was granted, and as a result authors, British or American, can dispose of their right to United States publishers for the United States and Canada, and the books cannot be reprinted here. Canada, which follows the United States in most of its international legislation, good and bad, reciprocated by following the United States in its course in turning a copyright Act for the defence of authors into a protection Act for the protection of manufacturers in Canada. The effect of this Act would be to compel authors to have their works reprinted in Canada, to the probable loss and injury of themselves and of their Canadian readers; the only people who would profit by it would be a few Canadian publishing and printing firms. The present inter- national arrangement between Great Britain and the United States, which serves all the purposes of copyright in securing the rights of English, Canadian, and other foreign authors to the con- trol of their works published in America, and which has made English authors, to their great profit, more popular and more widely read in the United States than even United States authors, would be imperilled if Canada should assert the right of reprinting which the United States has done, seeing that Great Britain has coolly thrown her colonies into the bargain as part of her copyright domain. Nothing could be more contemptible than the denunciations of Canada by the Americans for doing what they themselves selfishly did. Nothing could be more unfair than for the English to reproach Canada for wanting to do what she has consented to the United States doing. Nothing could be more ill-informed than the rude expressions of intelligent men of both countries with regard to Canada's course. All this is very galling, but no reason why Canada should, under pretence of securing the rights of authors, pass a law to embarras them. It must be remembered that the authors are agreed that their interests are served by the present arrangement, and it is authors’ interests that copyright laws are made to protect. These should not be sacrificed to the interests of the mere manufacturer. The immense market of the . United States affords them large profits as authors now that pirating is stopped. It is because that market is so big and the Canadian market is so comparatively small that English authors sell the right to publish in both countries to United States publishers, thus saving the extra cost involved in printing and publishing two editions. There authors’ interests are served by the present British copyright law, and it is authors’ interests that copyright laws are made to protect. These should not be sacričced to the interests of the mere manufacturer. There has not been a whisper of complaint from either Canadian authors or readers. Only Canadian manufacturers, and but a few of them are inte- rested. It is the knowledge of this that makes the British Government slow to interfere with a copyright arrangement which suits those whom copyright is made to defend, and which would be endangered in order to turn a copyright law into an engine of protection. Here, again, the false pretence and injustice of protectionism creates bitterness and poisons the relations of the peoples. We are home rulers, and believe that Canadians should legislate for themselves in the matter of copyright as well as of everything else which affects themselves. But when a few persons desire, in the name of home rule and of  ## p. 229 (#243) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 229 patriotism, to tax both authors and readers for their own benefit, we are not anxious to play into their hands. The United States has undoubtedly got an unrighteous advantage, but she has been given it because her market is of the first import- ance to the authors, who have the first claim to consideration, and her advantage works no injury either to Canadian authors or Canadian readers, who probably get better made and cheaper books under it than they would under the protective conditions demanded by the manufacturers.- Montreal Weekly Witness, Dec. I I, 1894. II. The following manifesto on this subject was issued from the London Chamber of Com- merce, after combined action with the Society of Authors and the Copyright Association :- Copyright is now uniform throughout the whole of the British Dominions, including, of course, Canada. It is based on the following principles:— I. That a work shall be first or simultaneously published therein. 2. That copyright shall be independent of the place of printing, and of every other condition as to place and manner of manufacture. 3. That the use of it as property shall, whilst it is copyright, be within the author's control. Canada, now seeks to alter these principles, and has asked the British Government to sanction arrangements to take away copyright in Canada from all British authors but Canadians. If such an imperial sanction be obtained, Canada offers to legislate so as to give British authors copyright in the Dominion there for twenty-eight years, if they reprint and republish the work in Canada within one month of its original publication. But if an author does not reprint and repub- lish his work there within a month, the Canadian Government may grant to any applicant a licence to print an edition without the author's consent, on his agreeing to pay to the Canadian Govern- ment, for the author, ten per cent. of the retail price of such edition. The retail price of every such edition is to be fixed by the publisher without consulting the author. The proposed Bill is silent as to whether the royalty is to be paid on copies sold or copies printed. The Canadian Government is not to be responsible for the collection or payment of any royalties. ... The following reasons show some of the in- juries the proposed legislation would inflict on British authors:— It undermines the general recognition of the rights of copyright property, which has now be- come almost universal. It interferes with the law of vendor and pur- chaser which prevails throughout the British Empire in respect to copyright, equally with all other personal property. It requires registration in Canada, a condition of copyright abandoned by the leading nations of Europe at the Berne Convention. It takes from the author the control of his own property, and hence hinders his improving or correcting or enlarging his own writings. It injures his reputation by allowing the con- tinued circulation of unimproved editions, even after the author has enlarged his work. It would enable Canada to reprint, without permission, articles and stories from reviews, magazines, and encyclopædias, and thus seriously to injure the sale of the publications in which they appeared. It injures the value of his British edition, because the Canadian edition could be imported into the United Kingdom and the other colonies, and compete with it. It forcibly deprives him of the benefit now belonging to him in Canada under the Imperial Copyright Acts. It sanctions the appropriation of his property by others without his, the legal owner's, consent. It weakens his title to his own property. It substitutes for trade contracts, on agreed terms, an inadequate royalty not guaranteed. It clogs his property with the condition of local manufacture. It was not recommended by the Royal Com- mission for cases where readers were adequately supplied. It is at variance with the free trade principles of the United Kingdom. Any such dealing with copyright property in Canada will affect future arrangements with the Australian and all other English-speaking colonies and possessions. It would almost certainly destroy our present means of securing copyright in the United States of America. It diminishes the copyright interests of all who have given their adherence to the terms of the Berne Convention. Two million Canadians are IFrench. - To this manifesto it may be added that the Society will immediately issue an Appeal to the people of Canada upon the whole subject. *~ a 2–º g- * =  ## p. 230 (#244) ############################################ 23O TIII. A UTHOR. NOTES FROM NEW YORK. [The first part of these notes should have appeared in the last number, but we had to go to press early on account of the Christmas holidays.] New York, Dec. 15, 1894. N the December number of the Bookman appear two paragraphs declaring that Mr. Meredith’s “Lord Ormont and his Aminta.” had met with “extraordinary success in America,” and that “among the other markedly successful recent books in America” were Mr. Hall Caine's “Manxman.” and Mr. Stanley Weyman’s “My Lady Rotha.” And to these statements was appended this comment: “In fact it seems as if English fiction were almost entirely supplant- ing American. Nearly all the great American successes in the last year or two have been English books.” Any one who really knew the facts of the case could not but smile at these statements and at this comment. The great success of the winter has been a British book, Mr. du Maurier’s “Trilby”; but the great success of last winter was an American book, Mr. Lew Wallace’s “Prince of India,” which, although published when times were harder than now and sold at a higher price, reached a larger sale than “Trilby’’ and in a shorter time. Mr. Meredith’s “Lord Ormont ?’ has been well received in America, but the Bookman grossly exaggerates the number of copies sold; and the Bookman cºnveys an entirely erroneous impression of the condition of the book-marketin America. Mr. Weyman’s “My Lady Rotha" has done well in the United States, but not so well as his “Gentle- man of France.” In fact, the really successful works of fiction in the year 1894 in the United States have been Mr. Crawford’s “ Katherine Lauderdale’’ and Miss Wilkins’s “Pembroke,” — both of American authorship, and Mr. Weyman's “Gentleman of France,” Mr. Caine’s “Manxman,” Mr. Hope’s “Prisoner of Zenda,” Mrs. Ward's “Marcella,” and Mr. du Maurier's “Trilby.” Probably every one of them had a sale varying between twenty and fifty thousand copies (except- ing “Trilby” of course, the sale of which already exceeds one hundred and ten thousand). Three books of American authorship were published too late in the winter to enter fairly into the com- parison, but both Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's “Piccino,” and Mr. Charles Dudley Warner's “Golden House” began with editions of ten thousand each, while Mrs. Deland’s “Philip and his Wife” got into a fourth edition before the end of its first month. I have spoken here of copyrighted books only, because each one of these is in the hands of a single publisher; and it is possible, therefore, to ascertain precisely the number of copies sold. But during the past year or so three British works of fiction were not copyrighted —Miss Harraden’s “Ships that Pass in the Night,” Mr. Benson’s “Dodo,” and Mrs. Caffyn’s “Yellow Aster.” All three of these were seized by the pirates immediately, and reprinted right and left in cut-throat competition until they are now to be had for fourpence each. And, no doubt, the sale of these three British books has been enormous, owing partly to their own merits and partly to the furious energy of competing pirates. But the sale of these non-copyrighted stories of British authorship has been greatly surpassed, I think (of course, exact figures for comparison are not available) by the sale of certain stories of American authorship which have just come out of copyright. Our term of copyright here is twenty-eight years with one renewal of fourteen, making forty-two years in all; it is the shortest term of any of the leading countries of the world. Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” was published in 1850, his “House of Seven Gables” in 1851, and his “ Blithedale Romance ’’ in 1852 ; and also in 1852 was published Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom's Cabin.” On these four stories the re-printers rushed as usual, and with unusual success. I have been told that one house alone has sold more than a hundred thousand copies of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” And this is in the lifetime of the author, for Mrs. Stowe is still alive, although she is no longer interested in the life about her; probably she will never know that her story has had a second youth on its attaining its majority twice over. Perhaps it is well to recall here that she received little or nothing from any of the British publishers who have sold countless thousands of “Uncle Tom's Cabin’’ during the last two score years. American pirates have more sins to answer for than the British pirates but the British pirate was never slow in helping himself to every American book he thought worth stealing. At the very time when the editor of the Author has been holding the American magazine editor up as an example to his British brother, an American humorist was preparing to make fun of the American magazine, and of its editors and of its principles. Mr. James L. Ford, who may be known to some English readers as the author of a volume of broadly comic sketches, called “Hypnotic Tales,” and who was one of the earliest contributors to Puck, the oldest and strongest of our comic papers, has now just put forth a volume called “The Literary Shop,” in which he considers the successful periodicals of the United States from the point of view of a young writer who has “copy " for sale. The  ## p. 231 (#245) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 23 I attack he makes on the magazines has been made before both in Great Britain and in the United States. The sum and substance of it is that the American magazines being intended for family reading, the editors very wisely reject anything which could “offend the taste of the most fastidious.” Mr. Ford praises the “business sense” of the editors who have applied this theory so adroitly as to give the Century and Harper's a circulation of 200,000 copies a month; but he declares that American literature is being strangled by this restriction of it to themes suit- able for the contemplation of the Young Person. He affirms that only an emasculated literature is possible under these conditions; and he directs special attention to the fact that the great city of New York is teeming with subjects for fiction, and that these subjects are not getting the treat- ment they deserve because the magazine editors are “down on low life.” Mr. Ford makes his points very sharply and with a sub-acid humour which is pleasing, except, no doubt, to those who are pierced by his shafts; but he has wilfully taken a false view. At the very time he was saying that no American magazine would publish stories of low life in New York, Harper's had just concluded a series of sketches of New York scenes, up town and down town, high life and low life; and it has since begun another series of sketches of New York characters, frankly low-life, all of them. Nevertheless, there is a great deal of truth in Mr. Ford’s little book, and an abundance of humour, shown most abundantly, perhaps, in the satiric sketches which fill the final pages of the volume. Of these “The Poet's Strike,” depicting a sad occurrence at Harper and Bros, and “The Society Reporter's Christmas,” are the most comical. Of the three British authors we have had here this winter lecturing and reading from their own works, one, Dr. Conan Doyle, returned to Eng- land last week laden with dollars. Dean Hole continues in the field and so does Mr. Christie Murray. At the meeting of the “Uncut Leaves” to-night Mr. Murray is to be one of the readers. I understand that the practice of the “Uncut Deaves” of reading from their own unpublished words has been introduced into your Authors’ Club in London. It is not a custom in the Authors’ Club here. The “Uncut Leaves '' is a private enterprise of Mr. L. J. B. Lincoln, who engages various authors to appear before his sub- scribers. Those who attend the meetings Mr. Lincoln conducts pay for the privilege ; and there are sometimes eight and nine hundred pre- sent. Those who read Mr. Lincoln pays, and pays liberally. So successful has this scheme WOL. W. been, that Mr. Lincoln conducts series of “Uncut Leaves,” every winter, not only in New York, but also in Brooklyn, in Philadelphia, in Baltimore, and in Washington. The Authors’ Club here, which has been home- less for nearly a year, is to be housed at last in quarters specially prepared for it in the recent addition to the sumptuous Carnegie Music Hall. It expects to get into these new rooms early next month. In the meantime its fortnightly meetings have been held this fall in the ample halls of the Architectural League in the noble building of the Fine Arts Society. By a purchase of plates and stock from Messrs. Harper and Brothers, the New York branch of Longmans, Green, and Co., has become the American publishers of all of Mr. Rider Haggard’s novels. They have recently published here his “People of the Mist,” and they will have another tale ready in January. They are also steadily enlarging their list of American authors, as, of course, any British house must do if it wishes to have close relations with American bookbuyers. In one week, as it happened, Longmans, Green, and Co. issued in New York four different books of American origin. By a purchase of plates and stock, they have also become the publishers of Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, whose “Young Folks' History of the United States” has now nearly attained a circulation of two hundred thousand copies. To St. Nicholas during the coming year Mr. Theodore Roosevelt will contribute a series of “Hero Tales of American History.” He is en- gaged on what may be called a continuation of Parkman's great history; it is an account of the “Winning of the West,” the slow expansion of the English-speaking people from the Atlantic coast, over the Alleghanies and across the plains. The third volume has just appeared, and a fourth will follow in about eighteen months. Mr. H. C. Bunner, the poet who wrote “Airs from Arcady,” is also the editor of Puck, and he has just reprinted from that popular weekly a second series of the ingenious and delightful comic tales he calls “Short Sixes.” Later in the winter he will have ready a volume of “Urban and Suburban Sketches,” reprinted from Scribner's Monthly. In February, Messrs. Dodd, Mead, and Co. begin to publish an American edition of the Bookman, to be conducted by Professor H. T. Peck, of Columbia College. The American edition will be wholly independent of the British, which it will not even resemble in shape. Another Columbia man, Professor Cattell, is to be the editor-in-chief of a new series of Science Z  ## p. 232 (#246) ############################################ 232 THE AUTHOR. (which may be described as an American emu- lator of the British Nature). Professor Cattell is already one of the editors of the Psychological Review ; he has called about him a staff of extra- ordinary strength, representing nearly every department of science and almost every institu- tion of learning in America. New York, Jan. 12, 1895. The death of Robert Louis Stevenson has occasioned real grief in America, and to express this in a slight degree a memorial meeting was held in this city on Jan. 4, under the auspices of the Uncut Leaves Club. It was a most notable crowd that gathered together to listen to the homage paid the great romancer by the speakers; and it was thoroughly representa- tive of the literary and artistie circles of the city. (See p. 248.) Perhaps a short account of the organisation of one of our greatest magazines may prove of interest to the readers of the Author. In 1865 a. primitive “family magazine,” called Hours at Home, was started, and this soon led Charles Scribner, founder of the publishing house of that name, to consider the possibilities which lay in issuing a periodical that would appeal to a wider audience and be on a much larger scale. With this idea in view Dr. Holland, author of the famous “Timothy Titcomb's Letters,” was con- sulted as to taking the editorship of the new venture. Thus in 1870 the firm of Charles Scribner announced from the office of Hours at Home that they had organised the Magazine Department into a separate company, with Dr. J. G. Holland and Roswell C. Smith as part owners, under the name of Scribner and Co., and that the periodical should be known as Scribner's Monthly. From the start it set a new standard for the popular magazine. It introduced many fresh writers, who had great influence in American literature, and on the artistic side it gave impetus to wood engraving. When the death of Mr. Scribner occurred the magazine continued to increase in prosperity, but in 1881 a disagreement arose between the partners, which finally resulted in the sale of the monthly to a new corporation, headed by Dr. Holland and Mr. Smith. This transfer was effected under the stipulation that the Scribners should abstain from publishing a magazine which could be a rival in the same field, while on their side the new company agreed to withdraw the name Scribner; and the periodical was henceforth known as the Century Magazine. The old magazine under its new name continued its prosperous career, and after the appearance of the war series in its pages the circulation was actually doubled within a twelvemonth. From the start, the Century Company agreed to allow its editorial staff to acquire shares of the stock, thus consolidating the interest of the magazine with those in whose charge it is. Another custom is the giving at Christmas time to all employées, not holding shares, a percentage of the year's profits in proportion to their salaries. On the death of Dr. Holland, in 1881, Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, who had long been his assistant, became editor-in-chief. He has filled his post most ably, and has gathered about him men of unusual capability. The associate editor is Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, who was secretary of the Copyright League, and was rewarded for his work by the French Government with the Legion of Honour. The assistant editor is Mr. Clarence Clough Buel, who was formerly a journalist, and who suggested the famous war series. Among others in the editorial office are Mr. Frank H. Tooker and Mr. William Carey, to whose care is due the make up of the tasteful pages and the arrangement of the illustrations. Besides these, three women clerks are employed; and there is also a special staff to whom is com- mitted the preliminary reading of all the manu- scripts, some 20,000 of which are passed on every year. The art department has a special staff of its own, at the head of which is Mr. Alexander W. Drake, with Mr. W. Lewis Fraser as his chief assistant. It is owing to the efforts of Mr. Drake that the art of wood engraving has received so much encouragement from this magazine, and it is through him also that the development of that art has been speeded. The Century was among the first to try photographic engraving processes, and with a success certainly not yet surpassed by any other publishing house, even in France. The half-tone process, although mechanical, and thus supposedly true to the original, is but what its name represents it to be—a half tone, and hence lacking the darkest and lightest shades. In the January number of the Century is a block, which originally was a half-tone plate, and which has been worked over by a wood engraver until about one-half of its surface has felt the tool. Thus this new reproduction frankly substitutes engraving where the mechanical process fails. The Century aims solely at getting as near the Original as possible, and the question of cost is not allowed to interfere with what is the best method for obtaining the desired results. There have been cases where etchings were made simply that they might be processed ; and wood- engravings found to be too large have been processed down to half size. Also it is well to  ## p. 233 (#247) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 233 note that the superiority of the American magazine is due to a great extent to the care taken with its printing. Infinite thought is taken by De Winne, the artist printer, to keep the presswork of the Century up to the level of its text and illustrations. The Century Company also issue a juvenile monthly called St. Nicholas. This, again, has its own staff. Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge is editor- in-chief, and Mr. W. F. Clarke is assistant editor. There are also two editorial assistants, Messrs. Tudor Jenks and Chapin, and besides these several clerks. With this magazine, as with the Century, every manuscript received is carefully read and examined. The printing is of the same high standard, and the illustrations proceed from the same art department. In addition to the staffs of the two magazines, there is a third entirely separate staff, having charge of the Century Dictionary. At the head of this is Mr. Benjamin E. Smith. Since the first page of that stupendous undertaking was cast the work has never stopped, for it is constantly under- going revision, and a supplement will eventually be inevitable. Mr. Smith has recently brought out a seventh volume, the Century Cyclopædia of Names. A large part of the success of the Century is due to its publishers. They have pushed the sales judiciously, and have shown such enterprise in the advertising department, that the magazine often contains a hundred pages of advertisements. The business sense which has characterised the management of the Century is a heritage from Roswell Smith, the first president of the com- pany, whose position is now adequately filled by Mr. Frank H. Scott, Mr. Charles F. Chichester having succeeded the latter as treasurer. In its early years the Century found many advantages in the fact that it was not connected with a pub- lishing house, as it was never obliged to receive any author on account of his relations with the house. But of late, as book material accumu- lated, it was found expedient not to allow it all to leave the Century office, and hence the Century company has been for several years now a pub- lisher of books also. The Century pays for all manuscripts on acceptance. Indeed, this is the custom of all reputable magazines here, and the editor of Harper's has been heard to remark “that it was immoral to accept an article without paying for it at once.” This naturally leads to the accumulation of material, and the Century has always several thousand pounds worth on hand; in fact, during the past year it has been largely drawing on that stock. Thus articles on “Book- bindings,” by Brander Matthews, which were VOL. W. accepted and paid for some four or five years ago, are only now appearing. “Folk-speech in America,” by Mr. Edward Eggleston, had been lying by eight or ten years; and Mrs. Oliphant's papers on the period of Queen Anne waited ten or twelve years for publication ; while Mr. Marion Crawford’s article on “The Gods of India,” which was printed only early last winter, had been accepted and paid for before he wrote his first novel, “Mr. Isaacs.” --- The Century occupies several floors of a fine large building overlooking Union-square. Its rooms are most luxuriously and beautifully fitted up. The walls are decorated with the original drawings of its illustrations, and to the outsider it would seem almost like a picture gallery were it not for its home-like appearance. The organisation of other American magazines is not unlike that of the Century. Besides their enormous book-publishing business, Harper and Brothers issue also four periodicals—the magazine and three weeklies. Mr. Henry M. Alden, author of “God in His World,” is editor-in-chief of Harper's Magazine. Mr. John D. Adams is his assistant ; and at the head of the art department is Mr. Horace Bradley. The other periodicals are Harper’s Young People, edited by Mr. J. H. Sears; Harper's Weekly, edited by Mr. Henry L. Nelson, with Mr. Henry Gallup Paine as managing editor; and Harper's Bazaar, a weekly, princi- pally intended to appeal to a feminine audience, but really containing so much of general interest as not to be restricted to one sex, and edited by Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster. In 1887, Charles Scribner's Sons started a magazine of their own, and placed it under the editorship of Mr. Edward L. Burlingame. It was a new publication in every sense, and in no way a revival of any tradition of the past. Mr. Robert Bridges is associate editor, and the art department is in the hands of Mr. A. F. Jaccacci. The magazine (with the rest of the publishing business of Charles Scribner and Sons) has recently been moved to a new building on Fifth- avenue, near Madison-square, which is one of the best built and best equipped edifices ever erected for exclusive use of a publishing firm. Mr. Charles Dudley Warner is spending the winter just outside of Florence in Landor's Willa, as the guest of Professor Willard Fiske. Mr. A. M. Palmer has made arrangements with Mr. Du Maurier to have Mr. Paul Potter dramatise “Trilby,” and it will shortly be produced at Mr. Palmer's own theatre. This dramatisation shows how, in one respect, American copyright is more favourable to foreign authors than the British law. In the United States the novelist has reserved to him the right to dramatise, whereas z 2  ## p. 234 (#248) ############################################ 234 THE AUTHOR. in Great Britain he has to give an absurd regis- tering performance of his dramatisation before the novel appears. Thus a British author having a novel successful in America can reap the profit of the play taken therefrom ; but an American author having a novel successful in England would stand little chance of making anything from the dramatisation ; and, as a fact, Mrs. Stowe never received a penny from England for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin " as a play. Mr. Laurence Hutton, than whom no American has more friends in Great Britain, and whose father and mother were Scotch, refused to act as treasurer of the American committee for the purchase of Carlyle's house in Chelsea, seeing no reason why any American should help to make a monument for a contemporary British author like Carlyle, who certainly never showed any goodwill towards the United States. In one of his Literary Notes in Harper's for January—notes unfortunately not included in the London edition of the magazine—Mr. Hutton gives vent to his feelings as follows: “There seems to exist in the mother country a curious notion that while we have shaken off all personal and national allegiance to the British Crown, we are still rank Tories and Royalists in our loyalty and devotion to British literature ; that while we are politically a free and independent people, we are still an intellectual province of Great Britain; and that we must still pay taxes to the great and royal British mind! They would laugh to scorn any effort on our part to raise money, in England, for the Curtis memorial in New York, or for the preservation of Poe's home at Fordham, even if we were willing to ask others to help us, in a pecuniary way, to honour our own dead; and they do mock our generosity in contributing to the building of a memorial theatre to Shakes- peare at Stratford, to the buying of a bust for Pepys in St. Olave's, or to the raising of stained glass windows to the memory of Raleigh and Izaak Walton in St. Margaret's and St. Dunstan's. Shakespeare and Pepys and Walton and Raleigh are ours, as well as theirs; and it is our right, as well as our privilege, to show our respect and affection for our own ; but we ought to throw the tea into Boston Harbour once more, before we consent to pay tribute to a class of post-revolu- tionary British heroes who paid no tribute to us; or before we offer to help the Britons to glorify their own land by erecting monuments—in their land— to poets and scholars who in their lifetime never cared to glorify anything, or anybody, but Great Britain or themselves.” It may be suspected that Mr. Hutton thus voices a feeling not ucommon among American men of letters. HALLETT ROBINSON. LETTER FROM PARIS, NEVER felt more confirmed in my pre- ference for an artistic life as contrasted to the pursuit.of politics, never did I so cordially agree with what Daudet has written about his detestation of politics, than as I sat at breakfast on Thursday last in the grand hall of the Hotel des Reservoirs at Versailles, just before the opening of the Congress for the election of a new President. The room was full of senators, deputies, political journalists, and all the vague camp followers of all great political events. And what a crowd it was, a mass of strangely dressed, noisy, red-faced individuals, with greedy twinkling eyes and fevered gestures, and the strangest manners at table. When one looked at them and thought of the man of letters, of the poet, of the painter, or the musician, and the ambitions of these as compared with the longings of those, one might well say—and be no Pharisee at that —that one thanked God not to be as these. I am asked to announce that Monsieur Léon Daudet will very shortly commence the publica- tion of a series or “cycle” of three novels, which will be as “The Battle of Dorking of the Social Revolution,” and an attempt to give, in anticipa- tion, pictures of that great event, whose comin is so eagerly expected, and so fondly hoped for by not a few. The first of these novels will be called “De Precurseur,” and will describe a kind of Tolstoi apostle, visiting the faubourgs, helping the poor, and preaching the gospel of Revolt. The second will be called “Les Porteurs du Feu,” and the action of this book will take place in Tondon, Amsterdam, and Paris. The third novel will be called “The City of Bread and of Fire.” Monsieur Léon Daudet is at present arranging for their appearance in serial form in England and America, previous to their publica- tion in book-form in France. Monsieur Jules Massenet is at present engaged on an opera to be called “Griselidis,” the libretto of which has been drawn by Armand Silvestre from the romantic play of the same name which was performed with so much success at the Comédie Française, of which Monsieur Armand Silvestre was co-author. Speaking about composers, it may be of interest to note that in France authors’ royalties in an opera are divided equally between the composer of the music and the writer of the libretto. Nor does this rule apply only in the matter of grand operas, but even in songs, a system which for the benefit of our minor poets might profitably be introduced into England. Only the very best writers of words for songs in England can hope for as much as four, or at the outside, five guineas  ## p. 235 (#249) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 235 for their words, whilst the average price paid to the poet is, I believe, 5s. In France the poet takes half the royalties, and the author of the music the other half. The royalties on musical works are, of course, not so large as on literary productions. Thus the royalties paid to the authors on a grand opera, never exceed 6 per cent. of the receipts. Of this the composer takes half, or 3 per cent., and the librettist the other half. With a successful opera both musician and librettist may count on an average receipt of £1.8 per performance. Speaking of theatrical matters, it was amusing to learn from what transpired the other day in one of the Paris Police-courts that a person who recently contributed the dramatic criticisms to La Cocarde used to pay £16 a month to the pro- prietors of this paper for doing so. It is fair to add that this was before M. Maurice Barrés took over the management and proprietorship of this paper. I have heard of similar things in England. A certain London publishing firm has inaugu- rated a system of paying for contributions to its various periodicals with cheques, on the back of which is printed a statement that the payee acknowledges receipt of amount on the other side for contributions and copyright of same. His signature forms the indorsement to the cheque, and, of course, if he will not indorse the cheque it cannot be cashed. I am not clear about the legality of such a contract, but I understand that the matter is going to be looked into by the Institute of Journalists. For my part, I never will sign away copyright. The other day I met a gentleman who holds a high official position in Turkey, and we had a long talk together about life in Constantinople. I was much interested to hear that the favourite book in the harem was—what would you say P- Ringsley’s “Westward Ho!” in translation. To-morrow, Jan. 25, is the fortieth anniversary of the suicide of poor Gerard de Nerval, in the Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, a street which, thanks to Baron Haussmann, has long since disappeared from the face of Paris. It was a horrible and a sinister street this Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, a street about which a French writer, wise in Paris street lore, has written as follows: “Ah! this street above all was most sinister amongst the most sinister, most hideous amongst the most hideous. In the thirteenth century it was called Scorching-street, later on, Washing-street, and in the nineteenth as in the thirteenth century it more resembled a sewer than a public way. As a matter of fact little traffic passed through it, its inhabitants being reputed the most dangerous malefactors. The ground, unceasingly drenched by rain and the overflow of the gutter, formed a thick black mud, which oozed up under-foot between the cobble stones that paved this leprous street. At one end, towards Rue de la Tuerie (Killing-street), it had a broken-down flight of steps, which led up from darkness into light, from filth to what is clean. Up and down this flight of steps all day long there hopped gravely and with dignity a black crow. At the foot of the steps an iron grating rather more than of man’s stature in height rose, and opposite was a stable which was the nightly refuge of nameless vagabonds, while a few paces lower down was a police sus- pected furnished hotel, or common lodging-house. Further, nothing save houses wrapped in silence, ominous and gloomy, and dead walls sweating forth misery and abjection.” It was here on the morning of Jan. 25, 1855, that there hanged himself on that iron grating the exquisite poet, whose name was Gerard de Nerval. He was not dead when he was discovered by one of the “workmen’’ who issued forth at an early hour from the common lodging- house, and might have been saved but for the fear of the mob which gathered round him, as he hung choking and wriggling, lest murder might be charged against them. So he was allowed to continue his hideous and convulsive dance of death. His feet were but two inches from the muddy soil. The onlookers recognised from the man’s head and hands and face that this was a gentleman in spite of the fact that his dress was ragged and Sordid beyond the raggedness of the extremest and most sordid poverty. Papers of manuscript peeped out from his torn pockets, and these, con- sidered together with certain stains of ink on the dirty blouse and the fingers, revealed in the victim a man of letters. It is reported that once or twice the struggling man raised his hand to his neck in feeble mute appeal, as though to point out to them, miserable dullards, what was torturing him, what was the life of him. But no response was made. It was a crowd of men wary and cautious of habit. I think that in its public shame, this death, with all its surroundings of all that is vile in man and in the works of man, was a hundred times more sad than even the arsenic convulsions of that starving boy in his paper-littered garret in the Holborn bye-way; aye, a hundred times more sad than even the final fall in the weakness of hunger and in the fever of alcohol of Edgar Allan Poe. In this case as in that there was no help possible. There was no hand near to stay or help, nor any land in sight. But from de Nerval’s hideous pillory, his so accessible gallows, what easy rescue might have been made. When at last the police  ## p. 236 (#250) ############################################ 236 THE AUTHOR. arrived, and the man was cut down, life was extinct. In his pockets were found various manuscripts, notably part of a serial story which Gerard de Nerval was then writing. But no papers allowing of his identification. So the body was sent to the Morgue, there to lie on a dripping slab, with a vagabond, killed in a brawl, on the one side of him, and a self-drowned woman of the town on the other. Poor Gerard de Nerval. Poor poets. I hear that Mr. Rowland Strong, the able correspondent in Paris of the Morning Post, is oc, upying such leisure as journalism leaves him in writing a novel on Parisian life, with which he is very well acquainted indeed. The novel ought to be a very good one, for Mr. Strong is master of a most excellent style, as the readers of the Paris correspondence of the Morning Post have long observed, and, moreover, a man of wide reading, caustic wit, and great powers of observation. One is always glad to chronicle the endeavour on the part of the journalist to produce purely original work, in spite of the fact that many critics in London will not admit that a man who has written for the press is capable of literary production. It is a strange theory, for in France at least every successful writer began his career, with the exception, perhaps, of Alphonse Daudet, by writing for the press. I hear that the proprietor of a leading and successful American magazine has just left Paris for London to arrange for the writing of a new “Life of Christ” for publication in his magazine. Mr. Zangwill is in Paris studying life amongst the art students in the Montparnasse quarter, in preparation for a novel on this subject. He may be seen daily dining—not without heroism—in a miserable little crémèrie near the Rue de Rennes, where the rapin and his womankind take their scanty meals. His note-book is filling apace, but I fear, in my knowledge of the kind of fare pro- vided at the Parisian crémèries, that at times he must regret the fleshpots of Israel. Mark Twain is also in Paris. Madame Juliette Adam is writing her Memoirs. They will be invaluable to the student of the political and literary histories of France under the Third Republic. - RoBERT H. SHERARD. I 23, Bd. Magenta, Paris, Jan. 24, 1895. BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 1894, HE Publishers' Circular gives its customary analytical table of the new books of 1894 :— 1893. I894. New New New New Books. Editions. [Books. |Editions. Divisions. Theology, sermons, Bibli- cal, &c. .................. 459 74 476 8O Educational, classical, and philological ...... 518 IO4 615 I27 Juvenile works and tales 659 36 269 29 Novels, tales, and other fiction .................. 935 393 1315 337 Law, jurisprudence, &c. 27 23 I 26 23 Political and social eco- nomy, trade and com- II101"Ce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 I4. I4 I 2 I Arts, sciences, and illus- trated works............ 86 37 98 3O Voyages, travels, geo- - graphical research ... 247 72 282 68 History, biography, &c. 269 65 256 58 Poetry and the drama ... 197 Year-books and serials in 37 I6O 2 I volumes . ............... 37O I 328 2 Medicine, surgery, &c. ... 93 58 97 59 Belles-lettres, essays, mo- nographs, &c. ......... 96 I I 370 II 5 Miscellaneous, including pamphlets, not sermons I IO2 328 767 2I 5 5 I:29 I 253 53OO | I 185 5 I:29 53OO 6382 6485 —Times, Jan. 4. The number of books published in the year 1894 reaches an amazing total of 6485. If, however, we examine the list a little we shall find crumbs of comfort. For instance, 981 of them are “miscellaneous, including pamphlets.” Strike them out ; we will not read them. Tech- nical, scientific, professional, and trade books— all three which belong to the business of life— numbered 596. Strike them out. Those will read them who must. Religious books, 856. I think we may strike them out in considering literature. The medicine of the soul is as “scientific ’’ as the medicine of the body. Educa- tional books number 742. Strike them out, because they are the tools and instruments necessary for the conduct and business of life. Year-books and serials are surely not literature. Strike out 330. Boys’ and girls' books, 297. Strike them out. There remain novels, voyages and travels, history and biography, poetry, and belles lettres. Of novels there were 1315 new books and 337 new editions. Now, every novel  ## p. 237 (#251) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 237 worth anything goes into a new edition. These figures mean, therefore, IOOO failures in novel writing; they also mean a great many books paid for by the foolish writers after their work has been declined. Further, they mean that in this period of depression and “tightness” there are thousands who try whether they, too, cannot join the company of the successful. They cannot, but they will always try. These figures also mean that, seeing the enormous success of certain novels and the impossibility of discover- ing why some of them have succeeded, a few publishers are “plunging ” in hope of securing a “boom.” On the whole, we need not be alarmed by the figures. Again, the ephemeral nature of many apparently solid books, as those of travel and of history, is shown by the fact that there are 538 new books of the kind and only 126 new editions. Of poetry there is a sad falling off. Only 160 new books of verse against 190 of last year. Only 2 I new editions against 37 of last year. The most remarkable increase is under the head of “belles lettres, essays, monographs, &c.” In 1893 there were 96 new books under this head and II reprints. In 1894 there were 370 new books and I 15 reprints | What does this mean? First, we should like to see a list of these new books and reprints. Probably we should have to strike out a good many as irrelevant. I take two columns of book advertisements from the Times. In one I find two such books; in the other, three. What are they—these 370 books of belles lettres? Here is a theory which I advance with hesitation, but it may account for some. The production of a book of essays or of criticism is an excellent method by which a young man ambitious of literary work may introduce himself. If his book attracts notice either for style or for scholarship, he is a man to be noted and remembered by editors. And the number of such young men is increasing every day. The congestion of the pro- fessions; the apparent ease and pleasantness and freedom of the work; the large incomes made by successful journalists and critics — these, with many other reasons, attract the young men of Oxford and Cambridge. I imagine that this theory would account for some of the 370 volumes. But what about the rest ? I do not know. On further consideration of these figures, it occurred to me to compare them with those obtained from the lists issued day by day in the leading journals. For instance, there is published every day in the Times a list of the day's publications. In this list we may certainly assume that every book of the least importance or pretensions is announced. The following are the numbers of publications, month by month. Since the first two columns are difficult to keep apart, let us add them together. It will be seen that the numbers are about half those given in the Circular. We have, that is to say, 770 novels and children’s story books announced in the Times against I 594 reported in the Circular : New. Children’s. Reprint. January ......... 65 ...... I 7 . . . . . . 7 February ......... 34 . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . 3 March ............ 37 . . . . . I . . . . . . 8 April............... 3I . . . . . I . . . . . . 6 May ............... 45 . . . . . . O . . . . . . 8 June ............... 47 . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . 8 July ............... 64 ...... 4 . . . . . . I3 August ............ 34 . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . 6 September ...... 25 . . . . . . O . . . . . . 5 October. . . . . . . . . . . . 43 . . . . . . I . . . . . . 7 November. . . . . . . . . 86 . . . . . . 4O . . . . . . I 2 December . . . . . . ... I 23 . . . . . . 63 . . . . . . 35 634 I36 II 8 We need not in the least attack the correctness of the figures in the Circular. We may, however, understand that a good half of the books making up that portentous total were quite unimportant and trivial works. Further examination proves that out of the 634 novels there were at least 200 or even 250 also quite trivial and unimportant. This class is made up chiefly of those novels published at the author's own expense. There are paltry houses— call them rather hovels—which do nothing except produce trash at the author's expense. “Our reader reports so favourably of the work that we are prepared to offer you the following exceptionally favourable terms, &c.,” according to the formula. These deductions made, we are left with a very fair number of novels—by no means too many for the reading of the English-speaking world— Written by about 250 known novelists and about I5O aspirants. * * * NOTES AND NEWS. E have lost in Sir John Seeley one of the greatest writers of our time—if by “great” we mean one who is powerful enough to mould and influence his time. The man who so far influenced the Anglican Church as to sweep away old shibboleths and to clothe the old doctrines with fresh meanings; the man who revived in his country the Imperial idea, making of Great Britain not only the Mother of Empire, but the Mistress and Empress; the man who taught the world how the New Germany was  ## p. 238 (#252) ############################################ 238 THE AUTHOR. created and by whom ; that man, surely, deserves the name of great. My own acquaintance with Seeley took place towards the close of the fifties. He was some three years my senior, so that my earliest knowledge of him is that of a young Bachelor of Arts, Senior Classic. He was as a young man habitually grave, yet by no means without humour; no one who knew him then would speak of him as dry. Serious he certainly was ; his mind was then, as ever since, filled with the great and lofty themes of which he afterwards treated. To talk with him was, to a lad of twenty, an education ; he filled one with new thoughts; he gave one suggestions; he made one thirsty and hungry for more know- ledge; he made one careful of speech on account of a certain Socratic method by which he con- vinced the foolish speaker of his folly—yet gently and never with any joy over the humiliation of the other man. He took little interest in the things so much beloved by the average under- graduate ; he seldom asked, I am sure, where the college boat was ; he was not present at boat suppers; perhaps he never witnessed the University boat race; and he never showed up at Lord's. A modest and sober walk of four or five miles gave him all the exercise he wanted, and the rest of his time was chiefly spent in his own rooms. It is pleasing to remember that one of his closest friends and greatest admirers was a man wholly unlike him in every particular—Charles Stuart Calverley. I have heard Calverley dis- course on the virtues and qualities of Seeley most generously (for they were sometimes thought to be rivals) and eloquently. Seeley was the son of a man of deep religious feeling, which he himself inherited. The inevitable revolt of the son against the father's narrow Calvinism, which generally takes the form of aggressive agnosticism, in his place became a Christianity on broader foundations with new meanings and more Catholic enclosures. He was always religious in his thoughts and religious in his daily life. I have never heard him lecture or speak. I can readily believe that as in his books so in his lectures, the personal element was entirely re- pressed. Perhaps he was dry. Yet he taught. He was born to teach, and he was full of things to teach. He made the most of himself too. Quite early in life he realised that for such work as his, German was necessary. He went to Dresden for three months and came back a master of the German language. Later on it became necessary for him to know Italian and to study Rome. He went to Rome for the summer months, staying there three months, and return- ing a master of Italian and of Roman topography. He is a standing example that the strongest and best faculties—intellect of the rarest—-memory —scholarship—linguistic gift–power of expres- sion—are worth nothing without industry. I well remember a certain letter which came to me across the sea, one day a long time ago, when I was abroad. It was from a man who knew Seeley better than was my good fortune; who saw a great deal more of him. This man sent me a copy of “Ecce Homo,” just then published. “Read the book,” he said. “It is Seeley's, though the world does not yet know it. Read the book. He stands out already, as I always said he would—ávač divöpóv—a king of men’’—And so he did. That Seeley joined our Society at the outset; that he gave us his name as a Vice-President first, and a member of Council afterwards; that he strongly approved of our work and our aims— this has always been to me, at times when it seemed as if all our efforts for self-protection were likely to be in vain, a great encouragement and support. •-º-º-º-º- At the first meeting of the committee held in the year, on Monday, Jan. I4, it was RESOLVED, that the best thanks of the committee be con- veyed to Sir Frederick Pollock, for his services to the society as chairman of the Committee of Management during the year 1893 and 1894. I hear of complaints among members that their books are not mentiomed in “Book Talk” of the month. Will every one make a note that we very much desire to hear of every new work produced by our members; that we cannot promise to hunt among the advertisements and the announcements for these new books; that if members will inform us of their new books they may depend upon the notice being inserted; and that, as regards a short review or expression of opinion upon the book, it must be left to the writer of the columns called “Book Talk.” It is, of course, impossible for the editor to promise, or for the members to claim, even a short review in these pages. The question of Canadian Copyright is sus- pended for the time, owing to the death of Sir John Thompson. Meanwhile we have reprinted in another column (p. 228) an article on the subject, from the Montreal Weekly Witness, which shows that public opinion is not all on one side. In another place (p. 248) will be found a report of Mr. Stedman’s address on the occasion of the  ## p. 239 (#253) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 239 Stevenson memorial meeting at New York. The occasion was memorable. One of the few writers who in their lifetime are recognised as belonging to the common literature of the English-speaking races—not the local provincial literature of Great Britain, of the States, of Canada, of Australia, but the common possession of all—was dead. The meeting was held in honour of that man; he was a Scotchman by birth ; he was not a dweller in the United States, but he was acknowledged to belong to the States, to be part of the honour and glory of the States just as much as Lowell was claimed to belong to us, although a Republican and an American to the finger tips. It was not only a memorable occasion, but the chairman's eulogy, here reproduced, is fully worthy of the occasion. Had I not heard Leslie Stephen's address on the completion of the Lowell memorial in Westminster Abbey, I should have said that I did not know a single English author capable of such an address, so dignified, so beautiful, so worthy of the writer whom it illustrated. And now that it is too late, what, one asks, were we ourselves doing that we held no such meeting P Why was it left to the Americans to show us how we should honour our writers? Alas! so little accustomed are we to any recognition of letters that we do not even remember to pay the tribute of a funeral oration on the departure of our worthiest and our best Among the letters of the month will be found a proposal by Mr. Thomas Macquoid that a memorial to Louis Stevenson should be esta- blished. The letter does not propose any form of memorial. Not a statue, says the writer, but perhaps the founding of some institution con- nected with literature. I willingly give admission to Mr. Macquoid’s letter and proposal, and if the suggestion commends itself to members, I shall be very glad to receive their opinions on the subject, and to forward them to the secretary for the consideration of the committee. There are two points for consideration: (1) Whether it is desirable that such a memorial shall be instituted; (2) if so, what form it should take. Now, as to the first point. I have no doubt whatever that some of Stevenson’s work will live and form part of the glorious Corpus of English Literature. In the general chorus of praise and lamentation following on the death of this writer, it seems ungenerous to hint that any part of his work may die. At the same time, we must remember that posterity will be principally occupied with its own writers, and that it is a selection only—a very small selection—of dead men's work, that is allowed to remain and to be read. It is the next generation that pronounces the verdict upon a man, and from that verdict there is no appeal. Perhaps, therefore, it would be safer to let a dead man remain without honour for twenty-five years. In that time his greatness will be established or will be extinguished. However, if it be thought best to form some memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson, why should it not be a statue? The only statues to men of letters in London are those of Shakespeare in Leicester-square, and Dr. Johnson in St. Paul’s. There are also certain busts in Westminster Abbey and elsewhere. Yet nothing more honours a man than a statue. It is public ; it is always present ; it is enduring ; every passer by recalls the man and his works; it stands as an outward and visible sign of a nation’s recog- nition. Poets have their corner in the Abbey; only a corner; most of the space is given up to the Great Obscure or the Obscure Great. Let us make a beginning : let us teach the people that it is time to honour our great writers as we honour our statesmen; in the same open way. Only when we uncover the statue to Louis Stevenson, in Trafalgar-square, let it be done in the presence of the people, by invitation; the people on the omnibuses; the passengers engaged in their daily calling ; the great common public who read his “Treasure Island.” I have seen an advanced copy of the report of the Society for the year 1894. There is one point which I venture to anticipate. There are over 12oo members at this time of writing. Now, out of the I2OO one-half, or 600, had occasion it seems, during the year, to consult the Secretary on some point of difficulty or doubt in the conduct of their business affairs. Now, consider what would have happened with these difficulties had the Society not been in existence. The author would have gone to his lawyer, who certainly knew nothing about the subject ; and he would have incurred legal ex- penses for no good purpose; or he would have allowed his publisher to put his own interpreta- tion on the matter. Now the Secretary, who does know the subject, gives his advice or information for nothing. In cases where money has to be recovered, the author has only to put the papers into the Secretary’s hands, when action is taken immediately, and for nothing. The knowledge of this fact generally causes payment to be made immediately. And—again—remark the propor- tion of authors who do find it necessary to seek advice in the year—50 per cent. ' Members will please to note that the committee have now arranged for the reception of their  ## p. 240 (#254) ############################################ 24O THE AUTHOR. agreements and their preservation in a fireproof safe. They will, of course, be regarded as confi- dential documents to be read only by the Secre- tary, who will keep the key of the safe. The com- mittee now offer (I) To read and advise upon agreements and publishers. (2) To stamp agreements in readiness for a possible action upon them. - (3) To keep agreements. (4) To enforce payments due according to agree- ments. Once there was a member—a lady—who could not get in her accounts or the money due to her. She came to the Secretary, who promptly pro- cured the account and the cheque, of course at no expense to her. There was no suspicion of a fraudulent return of books sold. Contrary, how- ever, to reasonable expectation, the lady received the cheque with considerable temper. She said that she had looked for a much larger sale; and if this was all the Society could do for her, she should withdraw. And she did. What can be done for people who look to the Society to find them a public P Another very unreasonable and selfish person is the man or woman who stands aloof from us, Or even joins in the diffusion of the usual unvera- cities which that kind of publisher who desires darkness loves to spread around, until the time of trouble, when he makes haste to bring his papers and to become a member in order to get his case settled for him. An extreme form of this kind was illustrated by a certain man who brought a case and became a member. His case cost the Society 3815, but it was successfully conducted. The grateful member thanked the Secretary for what he had done, and said that he should now resign. So we were gainers of one guinea, his year's subscription, and losers by £15 in costs in the case. We did not even get kööos, because he was rather ashamed of his own simplicity and did not talk about it. Mr. Laurence Hutton’s remarks on the American respect for English literature (see the New York Letter, p. 234) seem to me exaggerated. We have not asked the Americans to subscribe for the preservation of Carlyle's house ; the committee have only signified their willingness to accept American contributions if any are offered. We should most certainly not “laugh to scorn” any proposal that Englishmen should join in honouring Poe ; nor do we–so far as I know— “mock the generosity’ of Americans in building a theatre at Stratford. The ancient literature of this country belongs to America as much as to ourselves. As regards a modern writer, when the Americans adopt him, so to speak; when they receive him into their libraries; welcome him ; learn from him ; delight in him; he becomes an American as well as an English writer. The question about Carlyle, is simply whether he is, in this sense, an American writer. Have they adopted him P Do they learn from him P Let us remember that there is a small modern current literature belonging to and common to all English speaking countries. For instance, we place Tenny- son and Browning in this our common literature, together with Lowell and Longfellow. There is also a current local or national literature in every English speaking country consisting of minor poets, minor novelists, minor essayists, who do not cross the frontiers of their own country. The influence of Carlyle in this country has been enormous. It would appear from Mr. Laurence Button’s remarks, that it has not been great in America. Perhaps, then, Carlyle does not belong to the current common literature. The following is from the Westminster Gazette: In our last number there appeared a letter calling attention to the strange appearance of two lines by Miss Procter in Mr. John Davidson's new volume of poems. The editor of this paper ought to be severely castigated for admitting a charge of plagiarism without verifying it, especially when it could be tested so easily and so readily. His only excuse is that the case was adduced as a remarkable instance of unconscious plagiarism, a thing more common than is generally believed. It did not occur to the editor that Mr. Davidson could be accused of a thing so monstrous and at the same time so inconceivably foolish as to “lift” two whole lines from Miss Procter. May the curtain of the “Fifth Act ’’ be a curtain of oblivion : An absurd comedy of errors has been acted in the columns of the Spectator and in our own. Mr. John Davidson has been accused of a trick of “sub-conscious memory,” for including in his “Ballad of a Nun’ the lines— “And yet, We lost it in this daily jar and fret, And now live idle in a vain regret.” But neither the lines, nor any like them, are in Mr. Davidson's poem at all ! The following is the development of the comedy :— - Act. I. The Spectator, reviewing Mr. Davidson’s poem, said it was a new version of “A Legend of Provence,” and quoted Miss Procter's lines as above. Act II. A correspondent of the Spectator, misunder- standing, and thinking the quotation was made from Mr. Davidson, writes and says, “Why, but Mr. Davidson has been unconsciously reproducing Tennyson’s “Love is hurt with jar and fret, Love is made a vague regret.”  ## p. 241 (#255) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 24. I Act III. We quote this correspondent's remarks in our columns; whereupon another correspondent writes and says, “Why, this man has not only echoed Tennyson, but actually lifted into his poem two lines solidly from Miss Procter.” Several other correspondents write to like effect. Act IV. At last it occurs to somebody to consult Mr. Davidson’s poem itself, and to look up the references generally—with the result shown in the outset of this note. Act W. Curtain, please ! WALTER BESANT. *- A -º * * FEUILLETON, A LITERARY BUBBLE. N journalism all roads lead to London. A carefully worded advertisement in the Times, offering a sub-editorship to a lady or gentle- man of education in return for a premium of sixty guineas, drew me, a young and untried member of the profession, into the metropolitan whirlpool in the summer of 1893. The preliminaries duly arranged, though not without some natural misgivings on the part of more cautious relatives and friends, I left to make the acquaintance of the editor-proprietor of the “high class weekly journal” with whose fortunes (and misfortunes) 1 was shortly to become identi- fied. My first interview with this gentleman took place in the editorial sanctum one sunny after- noon in May. He was courteous and affable, and expressed surprise at my diminutive stature and virgin countenance, my handwriting having led him to expect a bearded Hercules. From his grin of satisfaction, however, I gathered that he was not altogether displeased to find his ideal upset. Then we talked about journalism. Had I thought of turning my attention to light or serious literature ? I replied, diplomatically, that one might temper gravity with wit. He was delighted. I was a born journalist he felt sure, and only required a course of his gentle tuition to shine as a planet in the literary firma- ment. His attention knew no bounds. He must find me lodgings, take me to the Derby (this fell through (), and make me thoroughly at home in my new quarters. Meanwhile, would Itake some books with me for review P. Thus we parted on excellent terms with each other, and with our own particular selves. I had arrived on a Friday, and the high class weekly was due to appear on the Saturday. It did not reach the office until late on Monday afternoon, and, tyro as I was, my heart sank as I gazed at the insignificant pile of papers which then lay carefully stacked upon the counter. If there were 500 copies, the maximum was surely reached. Just then the proprietor bustled in. My reviews were glanced at, approved, and the great man, with almost paternal solicitude, pressed upon my acceptance a cheque for a pound, a half week's salary. I ought here to explain that my contract provided for remuneration at the rate of £2 per week, and the repayment of a proportionate amount of the premium if the engagement were closed within twelve months from the signing of the agreement. The cheque was crossed, and, having no bank account in London, I attempted to cash it through a friend in the provinces. It was returned marked “refer to drawer,” and I immediately called the attention of my Gamaliel to the matter. He hemmed and hawed, consulted his cheque-book, and finally paid me in gold, being unable to account for the “mistake.” For the next two or three weeks my two sovereigns came in with commendable regularity; then thirty shillings appeared as the price of my labour, my employer coolly explaining that he had spent the odd ten shillings on a Turkish bath. The arrears were not forthcoming till the following week, when a cheque (open, at my request) for £2 accompanied the lagging half- sovereign. On inquiry at the bank, I discovered that the cheque would not be honoured. My literary tutor was not in the least abashed when I returned with this intelligence. He smiled, and said he detected some dissimilarity between the indorsement and the name in the body of the cheque. That, he felt sure, accounted for my rebuff. Still, he pocketed the erring paper, and the arrears began to accumulate in an alarming fashion, while any actual payment was very grudgingly tendered. Meanwhile, the paper had been going from bad to worse, and the struggle to make both ends meet resulted in acts of glaring dishonesty. On one occasion, the funds having run short, and the stony heart of the printer being unmoved by promises of future payment, a week passed with- out publication. To hoodwink the advertisers, the contents of the previous week's issue were inclosed in covers bearing the current date, and forwarded to advertisers only. Whether or not this fraud was exposed I never learned. Another ingenious device was the “puffing” of minor celebrities, who, in return for an eulogistic description of their virtues, and a correspondingly convenient omission of their vices, purchased a few hundred copies of the paper from the enter- prising publisher. In the case of one “eminent,” when his order of 500 copies was found to have exhausted the available supply, a hundred or more back numbers were inserted at the bottom of the pile to complete the amount. But I should fill many columns of the Author if I attempted to describe all the tricks and  ## p. 242 (#256) ############################################ 242 THE AUTHOR. subterfuges employed by this scoundrel to stave off his creditors, and to figure in the eyes of the world as a man of unblemished and unimpeachable character. He practised as a barrister, and was extremely anxious that I should, under his auspices, embrace the legal as well as the jour- nalistic professions. Had I been so weak as to yield to his wishes, he would undoubtedly have pocketed a considerable share of the fees. But I had gauged his character by this time, and forbore. I had not been long in his office before I dis- covered that I was by no means the only “pupil.” connected with the establishment. There were two or three besides myself, and I soon heard grievous complaints of growing arrears and dis- honoured cheques. My own salary, from putting in an appearance in driblets, ceased altogether, and neither by persuasion or threats did I succeed in extracting another penny from my employer, who was, in effect, a bankrupt. The paper died in due course, and we then dis- covered that the pseudo-proprietor had long since assigned the property to others. Nor could we obtain any redress. I had unfortunately neglected to have my agreement stamped, but had this been otherwise, an action at law would only have resulted in throwing good money after bad. I returned to the provinces a sadder if a wiser man; and, having lately been elected an associate of the Society of Authors, have good reason to hope that I shall henceforth be free from the predatory attacks of such wolves in sheep's clothing as the pretended proprietor of a certain “high-class London weekly.” If the publication of my own experience should succeed in placing others upon their guard, I shall at least have derived some consolation for my own unfortunate commence- ment. G. F. O. *~ - –” ,-- - --> RUSTIC READING, ESPITE all our vaunted spread of educa- tion, it cannot yet be said that Hodge has developed much literary taste, or has taken keenly to the study of fiction, except, indeed, as a personal accomplishment. In our large towns, to judge from the statistics issued by the free libraries, the working classes devour novels in enormous quantities, nor are they alto- gether bad judges of quality, for the authors most in request with them are also among the favourites of those who subscribe to Mudie’s. And the urban labourer has come to regard the Sunday paper as no less a necessary of existence than his pipe. But in the country matters are very diffe- rent. Partly from want of taste, partly from lack of opportunity, nine out of every ten farm-hands never open a book at all, and confine their reading to the single beer-stained copy of the local paper that goes from hand to hand in the bar of the public-house. This is partly due, as we have said, to lack of taste. It is almost startling to find how many there are among our village-folk who cannot read at all. A few of them have never learned to do so, the greater number acquired the art painfully and by dint of many thwacks at school, promptly to forget it when, at the age of fifteen or so, they left school for good, and began to work in the fields. Let anyone who has almost entirely for- gotten his Greek endeavour to imagine what pleasure it would give him to read Thucydides in the original, by way of beguiling his leisure hours after a hard day’s work, and he will cease to wonder at Hodge's apathetic attitude towards literature. Again, those who can read easily enough do not find much to interest them in the newspapers, while books hardly ever come into their hands. They do not—we are speaking of entirely rural districts—take the faintest interest in politics, nor do they care about trade unions, strikes, agitations, or reforms, all of which are so dear to the mind of the London artisan. You may put it down to sluggishness and stupidity if you will, and it is quite true that your rustic is not easily aroused in the direction of any reform, desirable or otherwise. But yet there is a good deal of shrewd wisdom underlying this apparent in- difference, and it proceeds not a little from the fact that in the calm, peaceful atmosphere of country life it becomes easier to see these agita- tions in just perspective, to realise more accu- rately their importance, to be less readily swept away by each fresh enthusiasm, than it is for the fevered town-dweller, overpowered by the blatant noises of rival fad-mongers, and not allowed a moment of quiet in which to think for himself. Of course there are exceptions; in every village there is the Radical workman, regarded with humorous and good-natured in- difference by the rest, who spends all his spare time in what he conceives to be the study of politics, and who is always prepared to tell you how the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary ought to act. He is great at Socialistic prophecies, and his confidence in foretelling the future is only equalled by his ignorance con- cerning the present and the past. But he is the exception, not the rule; the typical rustic is a perfect Gallio as regards politics. It is interesting to notice a use which Hodge makes of the copy of the local paper which he  ## p. 243 (#257) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 243 enjoys with his pipe and beer sitting outside the Spotted Dog on a summer's evening. First, he reads carefully the title and the date, to guard against wasting his intellect on ancient history. Then, in most cases, he will turn to the cricket news. It is astonishing how keen is the interest taken in county cricket by the agricultural classes in our southern districts; many a man who has never handled a bat in his life can tell you nearly all the first-class averages for the last five years. In the north, even more attention is doubtless given in winter to the football news, but cricket is by far the greater favourite in the south. Having read out the scores, with eloquent comments, to his companions, he glances through the rest of the paper for any attractive headlines speaking of murders, fires, or inquests. Having found one of these charming accounts, he absorbs it slowly and reverently, running a finger along the print lest he lose the thread of sanguinary narrative. After this he scorns to read of the doings of Parliament or the news from foreign countries; with a sigh of satisfied contentment he hands on the paper to his next neighbour, whose study of it is conducted on precisely similar lines. And this performance, repeated once a week, represents the whole of the attention given to literature by the majority of our agricultural labourers. Mrs. Hodge's reading is a little more extensive. The good soul studies her Bible, and wonderful indeed are her interpretations of its more difficult passages. In about half the cottages, too, by the side of the Bible you will find a well-thumbed copy of the “Pilgrim's Progress,” with alarming illustrations used to terrify the children into the paths of virtue. The pictures in Fox’s “Book of Martyrs” are also employed for this purpose, and are found even more effectual) nor does Mrs. Hodge ever realise the cruelty and gross folly of this system of intimidation. The rest of the literature of the cottage will perhaps be made up of an ancient number of the Graphic (the illustrations from which are pinned about the walls), a cookery book, and the current number of the parish magazine. If the family includes a Miss Hodge of sixteen or so, that young lady is nearly sure to possess a little work on fortune- telling and another on dreams. And such is the range of the cottage library. But this almost total neglect of literature amongst the country people is due, as we said at the outset, not only, or even chiefly, to want of taste, but also to lack of opportunity. Give a country labourer a good book of adventure by a popular author, and if you can once prevail upon him to begin reading it, he will continue it and enjoy it hugely. And Mrs. Hodge, in default of better things, reads with great eagerness the mawkish and sentimental stuff found in most of our parish magazines. So that there really are symptoms of a taste for literature, were the opportunity for cultivating it only to be supplied. But the cheap editions, so accessible to the Londoner, are never seen here, never a book of any kind is on sale in the village shop. Amongst the bacon and the cheese lie copies of a dress- making journal and the local newspaper, and that is all. Surely something could and should be done to promote the sale of good and cheap literature in the country. Of course, village lending libraries have been established in many places. Sometimes they have succeeded, more often they have failed, because the books have not been wisely selected, and are of the aggressively “improving ” order. Hodge has a healthy hatred of “goody-goody "litera- ture, and it is this feeling that makes him fight shy of the lending library. But once conviuce him that you are not offering him a tract in dis- guise, and he will be willing enough to read, while to encourage and foster such a taste is a work that may safely be commended to those who are desirous of doing something towards bettering the condition and brightening the monotonous lives of our agricultural labourers. *- - --" g- > -s; BOOK TALK, HE month of January, 1895, will ever be memorable in bookish circles for the revival of the issue of books by metropolitan daily newspapers. Many years ago the Weekly Dispatch issued an atlas in parts to its readers; and of a series of illustrations of picturesque parts of the world, a number of newspapers of the second rank in England and on the continent have recently distributed no fewer than eight million copies. But the great London dailies have hitherto declined all such offers. The Daily Chronicle, however, has now taken the lead by announcing an encyclopaedic dictionary, in forty- two parts, at 6d. each. This is nothing else than Cassell’s “Encyclopædic Dictionary,” printed from a new set of plates; and as it was originally sold at seven guineas, the reduction in price is certainly striking. The Chronicle expects a sale of 200,000 copies. The Chronicle's new departure was received with great surprise, but the surprise was more than doubled when two days later the Times announced that in April it would issue an atlas in fifteen parts, at Is. each. This, in its turn, is also  ## p. 244 (#258) ############################################ 244. THE AUTHOR. a publication of Messrs. Cassell's. It is the German-produced atlas, offered first at 31s. 6d. net, and afterwards at two guineas with the customary discount. We understand it is owned |by a syndicate of persons, of whom Mr. Arnold Forster is the chief. The Times, by the way, is also about to publish a serial work of fiction in its weekly edition. It remains to be seen what the publishers will say to this journalistic rivalry. When one newspaper publishes a dictionary, another an atlas, another a history of England, another a history of English literature, and so on, a series of severe blows will have been dealt at publishing firms all round. The book of the month, if it should be reached in February, will no doubt be Lord Roberts’s “Reminiscences of India.” No man living knows certain aspects of India and the Indian people so well as Lord Roberts, and the British public has good reason to feel the deepest interest in everything that he says. He fought through the entire Mutiny, and he has either shared in or directed every military move- ment or reform in India during the last thirty- five years. On some problems now pressing for solution his word should close the controversy. It goes without saying that the greatest success awaits his book if it presents any adequate picture of himself and his career. The present Tsar made a tour through the Far East in 1891, in the course of which, as will be remembered, he was only saved by the timely assistance of Prince George of Greece from assas- sination at the hands of a fanatic Japanese police- man. He had of course remarkable opportunities for seeing Eastern festivals and sights not com- monly shown, and unless the record of his travels is too severely edited, it should form an enter- taining picture. He did not, however, visit China, as the Emperor of China could not be induced to receive him with proper honours, and he would not go to Peking under other circumstances. The illustrated account of his travels will be published by Messrs. Arch. Constable and Co. within a few weeks. A book of travels and studies, to be published early in February is Mr. Henry Norman's long- promised work on the Far East. It will be called “The Peoples and Politics of the Far East,” and will contain a series of chapters on each territorial or ethnological division of that part of the world —the British Empire, France, Russia, Spain, and Portugal in the Far East; and China, Japan, FCorea, Siam, and Malaya. In all these places Mr. Norman spent a considerable time, and one part of the Far East which he explored has not been visited by any white man either before or since his journey. The book will contain sixty illustrations, chiefly from his own photographs, and four maps, and will be published in one large volume, probably at a guinea, by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin. Messrs. Bliss, Sands, and Foster, a very young firm of publishers, have hit upon a useful idea in their series to be called “Public Men of To-day.” The following are already in preparation :-Li Hung Chang, by Professor Robert K. Douglas ; the Right Hon. Cecil Rhodes, by Edward Dicey, C.B.; the Ameer, by S. E. Wheeler; the German Emperor, by Charles Lowe ; Senor Castelar, by David Hannay. Later on we shall have President Cleveland, Signor Crispi, Lord Cromer, and M. Stambuloff, The past month has been an eventful one for Theosophists, so far as the world of publishing is concerned. Not only have the Westminster Gazette and the Daily Chronicle treated the subject, but Dr. Walter Leaf has published, through Messrs. Dongmans, an abridged translation, on behalf of the Society for Psychical Research, of M. Solovyoff's book, “A Modern Priestess of Isis.” This, it need hardly be said, is an exposure of Mme. Blavatsky; while Mr. Arthur Lillie's “Mme. Blavatsky and her Theosophy,” published by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein and Co., is another stout volume devoted to “the most suc- cessful creed-maker of the last three hundred years.” University men, both of this country and the United States, should read Dr. George Birkbeck Hill’s “Harvard College, by an Oxonian.” It is an admirable account of the great American University, and, considering that it is the work of a visitor, it is a marvel of research and insight. The American Press has praised it highly, and we are astonished to see it dismissed by the Athenæum in one line. A special word is due to the completion of Professor Skeat's Oxford edition of Chaucer. It is dangerous to prophesy finality for any work, but it hardly seems likely that any edition of Chaucer in English can supersede this ideal one. The last volume is the sixth, but there is still to be a supplementary volume containing “The Testament of Love,” and other works which have been generally attributed to Chaucer. Mr. Douglas Sladen's volume on Canada will appear during February. It is not a discussion of the political questions or economic prospects in Canada, but a picturesque description of Canada as a part of the imperial route round the world. That is, it will deal chiefly, we understand, with the Canada of the Canadian Pacific Railway.  ## p. 245 (#259) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 2.45 Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden are the pub- lishers, and the book will be lavishly illus- trated. Two modern novels to appear during the coming month will be looked for with interest. One of them is “The Woman Who Did,” by Mr. Grant Allen, to be published by Mr. John Lane. Mr. Allen has hitherto consulted, in writing his fiction, what he has believed to be the taste of the public ; in this book he is under- stood to have consulted his own. He has been chaffed a good deal for having said that under present conditions of book-producing, a novelist was prevented from writing a work of art. In this book he has, we believe, defied the conven- tions sufficiently at all events to show his idea of a work of art in fiction, The curious title, by the way, is suggested by a conversation which occurs in the narrative, one man remarking that no woman would do such a thing, and the other retorting that he knew a woman who did. The second novel, called “Gallia,” by Miss Ménie Muriel Dowie, is the first book she has written since “A Girl in the Karpathians.” Gallia, the heroine, is the daughter of a Secre- tary of State for the Colonies, and the novel is a study of the character of one type of modern woman under such circumstances as those in which the life of his daughter would necessarily be spent. It is a one-volume novel, and will be published by Messrs. Methuen at 6s. The Queen has been pleased to accept the iatest volume of the new Sussex magazine, called Southward Ho / with a presentation poem by Mr. Charles William Dalmon. - Our readers will be interested to hear of some results of publishing one's own book that have just come to our knowledge. We are not at liberty at present to give the name of the book or the author, but we may say that it is a large volume, printed in admirable and almost lavish style, and sold by one of the first firms of London publishers for the author, on commission. The price is 18s., and the first edition, consisting of 1500 copies, has now practically been sold. The cost of production was, roughly, 3:300, and the net profit to the author, who has given away an extravagant number of copies, will be £300 also. In fact, his balance-sheet will be better than this, for the cost of production is rather less than we have stated, while the returns will even- tually be rather more. Ten per cent. On 1500 copies at 18s. would be £135. Verbum sap. A new style of literary advertisement has made its appearance this month. Mr. Fisher Unwin has issued a booklet, costing a shilling, called “Good Reading: About Many Books, mostly by their Authors.” It is, indeed, more than a booklet, for it contains 252 pages and upwards of forty portraits. The publisher has requested the authors of the principal books he has issued this season to send him an account of how, when, and why their book, &c., and they have responded liberally. Their contributions and photographs form the little volume. Among the contributors are John Oliver Hobbes, S. R. Crockett, Sir Chas. Gavan Duffy, Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner, Dr. Jessopp, Swift MacNeill, M.P., W. M. Conway, Henry Norman, Grant Allen, J. J. Jusserand, Alfred Perceval Graves, Louis Becke, Richard Watson Gilder, and George R. Sims. The book is, of course, intended to advertise the wares of the firm, but many of his authors have paid their publishers the compliment of sending him long and interesting reminiscences. It is addressed “To the Booksellers,” to remind them how important it is that merely “cheap reading” should not oust “good reading ” from the home shelves. Good Words begins in its present issue a series of papers by Mr. John Murray, called “Some Authors I have known.” It is needless to remind our readers how many of the greatest modern authors Mr. John Murray has known, either as his own friends or his father's. Some day, perhaps, an author will write on “Some Publishers I have known.” Mr. John Lane announces “The Story of Venus and Tannhäuser,” by Mr. Aubrey Beardsley, with twenty full-page illustrations. The subject obviously lends itself to both the merits and the gross defects of Mr. Beardsley’s style, and we can only hope that for this occasion at least he will have chosen to fling away the worser half of his talent. - Messrs. Longumans and Co. have in preparation a volume by Mr. Wilfred Ward on “Cardinal Wiseman’s Life and Times,” to which Mr. Gladstone, Lord Acton, and Cardinal Vaughan will contribute. Mr. Ward's volumes on cognate personalities have been among the most interest- ing volumes of their class that have been published for many years. - Messrs. Macmillan announce a new series of “Illustrated Standard Novels,” attractively printed, and priced at 3s. 6d. Every novel will have a prefatory notice by a critic of distinction, and will contain some forty illustrations. Among the first announcements are : “Castle Rackrent ‘’ and “The Absentee,” by Maria Edgeworth, with introduction by Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie; “Japhet, in Search of a Father,” by Captain Marryat, introduction by David Hannay; “Tom Cringle's Dog,” by Michael Scott, introduction by  ## p. 246 (#260) ############################################ 246 THE AUTHOR. Mowbray Morris; “Maid Marian * and “Crotchet Castle,” by Thomas Love Peacock, introduction by George Saintsbury; “Lavengro.” by George Borrow, introduction by Augustine Birrell, M.P.; “Sense and Sensibility,” by Jane Austen, intro- duction by Austin Dobson. The month of February may possibly see the illustrated “Life and Correspondence” of the late Dante G. Rossetti. Messrs. Ellis and Elvey will publish the correspondence, which extends practically over Rossetti's entire lifetime. “A Year of Sport and Natural History,” edited by Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, and published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall at a guinea, will appear in February. It is to be a sort of Badminton Library in one volume, and will treat of shooting, hunting, fishing coursing, &c., classified according to the months of the year in which these sports are pursued. Mr. Sonnenschein’s “Supplement” to his well- known and indeed invaluable work on “The Best Reading ” is now due. It is unnecessary to speak of the importance of this work. Everybody who is engaged in research of any kind has constant recourse to it. Mr. Frankfort Moore, author of “A Grey Eye or So?’ and “I forbid the Banns,” is about to change the subject of his fiction. Messrs. EIutchinson and Co, announce for immediate publication a novel by him called “The Secret of the Court,” dealing with life in the East. The daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Miss Margaret Benson, has written a small volume, illustrated by herself, of sketches and studies of animals in their domestic relations. It is entitled “Subject to Vanity,” and Messrs. Methuen are the publishers. The daughter of Lord Salisbury, by the way, Lady Gwendolen Cecil, is now stated to be the author of the ghost story, “The Closed Cabinet,” in last month’s Blackwood. Everybody who writes for the press should procure a copy of the tiny pamphlet called “Rules for Compositors and Readers,” compiled by Mr. Horace Hart, printer to the University of Oxford, and giving definite and technical instructions regarding spelling, punctuation, and type-setting of disputed and doubful words and expressions, founded upon the “New English Dictionary.” Mr. Hart offers to send a copy to any printer's reader who applies for one, but no doubt other people could secure copies by a very small pay- ment. It is in the highest degree desirable that such authoritative uniformity should be intro- duced into our books and newspapers. Mr. John Lane has issued privately a very charming reprint, by Messrs. T. and A. Constable, of Edinburgh, of the “Life of Sir Thomas Bodley, written by Himself,” after whom Mr. Lane has named his publishing house. In a preface he gives an account of the founding of his business with Mr. Mathews, and its development into its present form. M. Pierre Loti has just issued in Paris another of his dreamy descriptions of the East, under the title of “Le Désert.” Although it is not yet issued to the public, it bears upon its title-page the legend, “twenty-eighth edition.” The third volume of the complete “Edinburgh Stevenson " has just appeared. It is the second volume of the sub-division “Travels and Excur- sions.” - Mr. E. F. Knight, well known for his admirable book on the Pamirs, called “Where Three Empires Meet,” has published through Messrs. Longmans, at 2s. 6d., an interesting description of the condi- tion and prospects of Matabeleland and Mashona- land, under the title “Rhodesia of To-Day.” In it he promises a history of the Chartered Company. The principal books of the past month are:– “The Life and Correspondence of Sir Bartle Frere,” by Mr. John Martineau (2 vols.: Murray); the late Mr. Walter Pater’s “Greek Studies: a Series of Essays * (Macmillan); Mr. G. A. Sala's “Reminiscences” (2 vols. : Cassell); Mr. Percy Fitzgerald’s “Memoirs of an Author’’ (2 vols. : Bentley); Mr. Gosse's new edition of Smith's “Nollekens and His Times,” with an essay on Georgian Sculpture by the editor (Bentley); “Forty Years at the Post-office,” by Mr. F. E. Baines, C.B. (2 vols. : Bentley); Mr. Horatio F. Brown’s “John Addington Symonds " (2 vols. : Nimmo); volume II. of the “State Papers relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada,” edited by Professor Laughton for the Navy Records Society; “The Hillyars and the Burtons,” the second volume in the reprint of Henr Kingsley, edited by Mr. Clement Shorter (Ward, Lock, and Co.); and Mr. George Saintsbury's “Corrected Impressions: Essays on Victorian Writers ” (Heinemann). Mr. Edward Clodd, the President of the Folk- lore Society and of the Omar Khayyam Club, whose two little books on “The Childhood of the World” and “The Childhood of Religions” have been almost classics for years, will be represented among the authors of February by two new works of a similar size and character. The first, “A Primer of Evolution,” will be published by Messrs. Longmans; and the second, “The Story  ## p. 247 (#261) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 247 of Man,” will form one of a series in preparation for George Newnes Limited. The first of these affords an illustration of the practical working of the American Copyright Act, as it is being manufactured in America for the British market. “A Blameless Woman’’ is the title of John Strange Winter's next novel, to be published, in . one volume, at 6s., by Messrs. F. W. White and Co. early in February. It is by far the longest story that the author of “Bootle's Baby" has yet written, being her first novel of three- volume length. The story is mainly a study In marriage. Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden, Limited, will publish innmediately a new volume by Mr. George Meredith, entitled “The Tale of Chloe ; and other Stories.” It will consist of the famous “Lost Stories” of Mr. Meredith, without which, Mr. J. M. Barrie has said, no edition of his works can pretend to be complete. The publishers will also issue an édition de luate of the same volume, beautifully printed on hand-made paper, and artistically bound, half-parchment. Price 25s. net. A unique feature of this large-paper edition is that it will contain as a frontispiece a recent privately taken portrait of Mr. Meredith, reproduced by the photogravure process by Messrs. Walker and Boutall; also a photogravure of the Châlet at Box Hill, where Mr. Meredith does the great part of his literary work. The edition, will consist of 250 numbered copies only for England and America. The author who writes under the name of “Hilarion ” has in the press a new book entitled “Greece : Her Hopes and Troubles.” A short story, entitled “Teddy,” by the same writer, appeared in the December number of “The Monthly Packet,” and his novel, “A Jersey Witch,” has been translated into Swedish, and is now running as a serial in Norra Skane one of the chief newspapers of Sweden, in which “Gräfin Kinsky,” also by “Hilarion,” appeared some time ago. The author of “A Forgotten Great English- man,” Mr. James Baker, is about to contribute a series of articles upon Egypt to some important journals, and has just left England for that country. He sailed on the 12th ult. from Plymouth by the ss. Austral. Sir William Charley, Q.C., D.C.L., has just published (Sampson Low, Marston, and Com- pany) a historical vindication of the House of Lords, which should be read by everybody interested in the subject—by those who defend the House of Lords, and by those who wish to pull it down ; the former will find arguments, the latter will learn to moderate their statements. It is, indeed, astonishing how loose and ignorant is the common kind of talk about the House of Lords. What is claimed to be the most complete history of modern art which has ever been attempted, will shortly be published by Messrs. Henry and Co. It is from the pen of Dr. Richard Muther, keeper of the Royal collection of prints and engravings at Munich, and will be a work of considerably over two thousand pages. The title will be “The History of Modern Painting.” The story opens with the English art of the eighteenth century, and treats at length of the English painters and illustrators of the present century. France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Spain occupy a share of the author's space ; America and American painters living abroad come in for due notice ; and even the influence of Japan on European art has not been overlooked. The work will be profus-ly illustrated. It will be issued both in parts and volumes. “The Old Pastures” is the pleasant and attractive title given by Mrs. Leith Adams to her new serial story, which will begin in House- hold Words On Jan. 26 In the sonnet by the Rev. John Lascelles, quoted in our last number, there is an error. In the last line, “and stooped and kissed the dust” should be “and stooped and kissed my dust.” Mr. Headon Hill, the author of “The Rajah's Second Wife, &c., is correcting the proofs of a new volume of short stories shortly to be issued by Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden Limited. The same author has also just completed and delivered a serial novel, written to the order of Mr. C. Arthur Pearson, of Pearson's Weekly, which will commence in August, and run through twenty issues of that journal. The “Confessions of a Poet’” (Hutchinson and Co.), by Prof. Harald Williams, is a volume of verse, the third volume which this poet has pro- duced. Most modern poets appear with a little dainty volume of tiny poems. Prof. Williams comes with a volume of closely printed lines, 500 pages in length. We cannot in these pages review it as it deserves, but those of our readers who buy and read new books of verse we recom- mend to make a note of this, and not to be deterred by its length. Mr. Percival H. Almy will produce imme- diately a volume of verse called “Scintilla Carminis.” The publisher is Mr. Elliot Stock. The price of the work will be 3s. 6d.  ## p. 248 (#262) ############################################ 248 THE AUTHOR. AN AMERICAN TRIBUTE TO STEVENSON. (From the New York Daily Tribune, Jan. 5.) HE Robert Louis Stevenson memorial meeting at Music Hall last night proved to be a worthily appropriate expression of . the grief that the death of the great romancer has caused among his numerous readers and friends in this city. On the stage were the president of the evening, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and most of the vice-presidents, among whom were included: William Dean Howells, Frank R. Stockton, Laurence Hutton, Professor George Woodberry, Moncure D. Conway, David Christie Murray, Joseph B. Gilder, Brander Matthews, Professor William M. Sloane, Richard Watson Gilder, FI. C. Brunner, Charles A. Dana, Professor T. R. Lounsbury, William Winter, Rudyard Kipling, Richard Henry Stoddard, George W. Cable, E. L. Godkin, Henry Marquand, Professor Francis H. Stoddard. George Parsons Lathrop, Edward Eggleston, Walter H. Page, and many others. Mr. Stedman’s address was as follows: “Such an assemblage—in the chief city in the Western World—is impressive from the fact that we have not come together for any civic, or political, or academic purpose. I have been thinking of its significance in view of con- siderations quite apart from the sorrowful cause of our gathering. But of these this is not the time to speak. On its face, this demonstration is a rare avowal of the worth of literary invention. It shows a profound regard for the career of a writer who delighted us, a sense of loss instan- taneously awakened by the news of his death. For the moment we realise how thoroughly art and song and letters have become for us an essential part of life—a common ground where- upon we join our human love and laughter and tears, and at times forego all else to strew laurel and myrtle for one who has moved us to these signs and emotions. Yes, we are brought together by tidings, almost from the Antipodes, of the death of a beloved writer in his early prime. The work of a romancer and poet, of a man of insight and feeling, which may be said to have begun but fifteen years ago, has ended, through fortune's sternest cyllicism, just as it seemed entering upon even more splendid achievement. A star surely rising, as we thought, has suddenly gone out. A radiant invention shines no more ; the voice is hushed of a creative mind, expressing its fine inaginings in this, our peerless English tongue. His expression was so original and fresh from Nature's treasure-house, so prodigal and various its too brief flow, so consummate through an inborn gift made perfect by unsparing toil, that mastery of the art by which Robert Louis Stevenson conveyed those imaginings to us so picturesque, yet wisely ordered, his own romantic life—and now, at last, so pathetic a loss which rene WS The Virgilian cry The sense of tears in mortal things that this assemblage has gathered at the first summons in tribute to a beautiful genius, and to avow that with the putting out of that bright intelligence the reading world experiences a more than wonted grief. Stevenson was not of our own people, though he sojourned with us and knew our con- tinent from east to west as few of this large audience can know it. But a British author now, by statutory edict, is of our own. Certainly his fame is often made by the American people—yes, and sometimes unmade. Theirs is the great amphitheatrum. They are the ultimate court of review. All the more we are here “for the honour of literature;” and so much the more it is mani- fest that the writer who lightens our hearts, who takes us into some new wonderland of his dis- covery, belongs, as I say, to the world. His name and fame are, indeed, a special glory of the country that bore him, and a vantage to his native tongue. But by just so much as his gift is absolute, and therefore universal, he belongs in the end to the world at large. Above all, it is the recounter—and the Greeks were clear-headed in deeming him a maker, whether his story be cast in prose or verse—who becomes the darling of mankind. This has been so whether among the Grecian isles, or around the desert camp fires, or in the gardens of Italy; and is so when he brings us his romance, as in our modern day, from Our Pacific Eldorado, or from Indian barracks and jungle, or from the land of the Stuarts, or, like Stevenson and our own Melville before him, from palm-fringed beaches of the Southern Sëa,S. Judged by the sum of his interrupted work, Stevenson had his limitations. But the work was adjusted to the scale of a possibly long career. As it was, the good fairies brought all gifts, save that of health, to his cradle, and the gift-spoiler wrapped them in a shroud. Thinking of what his art seemed leading to—for things that would be the crowning efforts of other men seemed prentice-work in his case—it was not safe to bound his limitations. And now it is as if Sir Walter, for example, had died at forty-four, with the Waverley novels just begun. In originality, in the conception of action and situation, which, however fantastic, are seemingly within reason, once we breathe the air of his Fancyland; in the  ## p. 249 (#263) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 249 union of bracing and heroic character and adven- ture; in all that belongs to tale-writing pure and simple, his gift was exhaustless. No other such charmer, in this wise, has appeared in this gene- ration. We thought the stories, the fairy tales, had all been told, but “Once upon a time” meant for him our own time, and the grave and gay magic of Prince Florizel in dingy London or Sunny France. All this is but one of his provinces, however distinctive. Besides, how he buttressed his romance with apparent truth ! Since Defoe, none had a better right to say: “There was one thing I determined to do when I began this long story, and that was to tell out everything as it befell.” One or two points are made clear as we look at the shining calendar of Stevenson's productive years. It strengthens one in the faith that work of the first order cannot remain obscure. If put forth unheralded it will be found out and will make its way. In respect of dramatic force, exuberant fancy and ceaselessly varying imagination, on the one hand, and on the other of a style wrought in the purest, most virile and most direct temper of English narrative prose, there has been no latter- day writing more effective than that of Stevenson's longer fictions—“Kidnapped,” with its sequel, “David Balfour; ” “The Master of Ballantrae,” and that most poetic of absolute romances, “Prince Otto.” But each of his shorter tales as well, and of his essays — charged with indi- viduality —has a quality, an air of distinction, which, even though the thing appeared without signature, differentiated it from other people's best, set us to discovering its authorship, and made us quick to recognise that master-hand elsewhere. Thus I remember delighting in two fascinating stories of Paris in the time of Francois Willon, anonymously reprinted by a New York paper from a London magazine. They had all the quality, all the distinction, of which I speak. Shortly after- ward I met Mr. Stevenson, then in his twenty- ninth year, at a London club, where we chanced to be the only loungers in an upper room. To my surprise he opened a conversation—you know there could be nothing more unexpected than that in London—and thereby I guessed that he was as much, if not as far, away from home as I was. He asked many questions concerning “the States; ” in fact, this was but a few months before he took his steerage passage for our shores. I was drawn to the young Scotsman at once. He seemed more like a New Englander of Holmes's Brahmin caste, who might have come from Harvard or Yale. But as he grew animated I thought, as others have thought, and as one would suspect from his name, that he must have Scandinavian blood in his veins—that he was of the heroic, restless, strong and tender Viking strain, and certainly from that day his works and wanderings have not belied the surmise. He told me that he was the author of that charming book of gipsying in the Cevennes, which just then had gained for him some attentions from the literary set. But if I had known that he had written those two stories of sixteenth century Paris—as I learned afterwards when they reappeared in the “New Arabian Nights” —I would not have bidden him goodbye as to an “unfledged comrade,” but would have wished indeed to “grapple him to my soul with hooks of steel.” Another point is made clear as crystal by his life itself. He had the instinct, and he had the courage, to make it the servant, and not the master, of the faculty within him. I say he had the courage, but so potent was his birth-spell that doubtless he could not otherwise. Nothing commonplace sufficed him. A regulation stay-at- home life would have been fatal to his art. The ancient mandate, “ Follow thy Genius,” was well obeyed. Unshackled freedom of person and habit was a pre-requisite; as an imaginary artist he felt—Nature keeps her poets and story-tellers children to the last—he felt, if he ever reasoned it out, that he must gang his own gait, whether it seemed promising, or the reverse, to kith, kin, or alien. So his wanderings were not only in the most natural but in the wisest consonance with his creative dreams. Wherever he went, he found something essential for his use, breathed upon it, and returned it fourfold in beauty and worth. The longing of the Norseman for the tropic, of the pine for the palm, took him to the South Seas. There, too, strange secrets were at Once revealed to him, and every island became an “Isle of Voices.” Yes, an additional proof of Stevenson's artistic mission lay in his careless, careful, liberty of life; in that he was an artist no less than in his work. He trusted to the impulse which possessed him—that which so many of us have conscientiously disobeyed, and too late have found themselves in reputable bondage to circumstances. But those whom you are waiting to hear will speak more fully of all this—some of them with the interest of their personal remembrance— with the strength of their affection for the man beloved by young and old. In the strange and sudden intimacy with an author's record which death makes sure, we realise how notable is the list of Stevenson's works produced since 1878; more than a score of books—not fiction alone, but also essays, criticism, biography, drama, even history, and, as I need not remind you, that spontaneous  ## p. 250 (#264) ############################################ 250 THE AUTHOR. poetry which comes only from a true poet. None can have failed to observe that, having recreated the story of adventure, he seemed in his later fiction to interfuse a subtler purpose— the search for character, the analysis of mind and soul. Just here his summons came. Between the sunrise of one day and the sunset of the next he exchanged the forest study for the mountain grave. There, as he had sung his own wish, he lies “under the wide and starry sky.” If there was something of his own romance, so exquisitely capricious, in the life of Robert Louis Stevenson, so, also, the poetic conditions are satisfied in his death, and in the choice of his burial-place upon the top of Pala. As for the splendour of that maturity upon which we counted, now never to be fulfilled on sea or land, I say—as once before, when the great New- England romancer passed in the stillness of the night: What though his work unfinished lies P The rainbow’s arch fades out in upper air ; The shiming cataract half-way down the height Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell On listeners unaware, Ends incomplete, but through the starry night The ear still waits for what it did not tell. Half bent *- As 2-se r- - -e CORRESPONDENCE I.—How LONG TO WAIT P J. OUILD not all editors agree upon a certain C set of rules, such as these ? All MSS. to be sent with stamped addressed envelopes, months allowed for reading and decision. A proof sent upon accept- ance, and the MS. paid for at the end of the month (or some other given time). Where MSS. are not returned let a certain time be stated, after which the author may conclude that his work is cremated; or, when rejected MSS. are not returned, let it be noted that acceptance will be notified to the author within a given time, otherwise he may conclude that the MS. is destroyed. It certainly is a grievance that authors have no means of ascertaining how long they must wait for news, good or bad, of their MSS., or when they are to consider that, having a copy, they may sent it elsewhere. * II. “If I send a contribution to a paper which declines to return rejected communications, how am I to know whether it is relegated to the waste paper basket or reserved for future use? And am I at liberty, after a month say, to offer my jeu d'esprit elsewhere, or must it be lost for ever ??” [There is no custom by which a contributor may be guided in such a case. The best way would be (1) always to keep a copy; (2) to write, after a month or so, and inform the editor that the author of such a paper will send it to another editor unless he hears that it is accepted. A copy of this letter should be kept.] II.-A MEMORIAL TO ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. I wish to call your attention to the following letter, which appeared in the Westminster Gazette of the 17th ult., in reference to a memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson. As “a rider” to the letter, may I suggest that a committee be at once formed, say, of half a dozen or more, of the best living names in literature, to discuss and carry out the scheme, which I think must commend itself to the followers of literature and to the public. Will you, Sir, set the ball still further rolling P THOMAS R. MACQUOID. The Edge, Tooting Common. Robert Louis Stevenson’s inimitable work will keep his memory green ; but his countless readers owe him for this work a large debt of gratitude, which they are bound to pay to his memory. This tribute, I think, should be paid not in the form of a statue or of any work of art, but rather by the founding of some institution connected with literature—which has been made so much richer by this master's work. Will not some of our leading authors and others form a committee to carry out this idea, and when a sufficient sum is collected to determine on the nature of the memorial P It seems to me a large sum would soon be raised, even by small contributions, from Stevenson’s admirers. THOMAS R. MACQUOID. The Edge, Tooting Common, Jan. I5. III.-A WHOLE ARTICLE QUOTED. Some years ago, my friend, the editor of the North China Daily News at Shanghai, requested me to write for him an account of a visit paid by me to Lord Tennyson at Farringford House, Freshwater. The article was published in due course, and the editor sent me a few reprints of it in proof form, which I have kept by me ever Sll) Ce, One evening last December I happened to take up a copy of Galignani’s Messenger. Conceive my astonishment at finding in it my own article headed “Reminiscences of Tennyson,” and intro- duced by a statement that “A correspondent sends us the following interesting account of a  ## p. 251 (#265) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 25 I visit,” &c. l I immediately wrote to the editor claiming the article as my own, inclosing slips of the original reprint from the North China Daily News, signed B., together with my card, and requesting the insertion of my protest. No notice whatever was taken, After waiting more than a week I wrote again, with precisely the same result. Now, if the editor of Galignani’s Messenger had been duped by his “correspondent,” he would surely have lost no time in exposing the fact, and doing justice to the real author. As he did not do so, am I unreasonable in attributing his dis- courtesy to the very possible fact that my article was simply “conveyed ” to the columns of the Messenger in his own office, and that his obliging “Correspondent,” is a myth? FREDERIC H. BALFOUR. Willa, Carlandrea, San Remo, Jan. 1895. Since the above was written, the following paragraph has appeared in Galignani : We are requested to state that Mr. Frederic H. Balfour, formerly of Shanghai, was the author of the interesting article entitled “Reminiscences of Tennyson,” published in our columns on the 26th ult. This explanation explains nothing. It does not acknowledge the fact that the paper was taken from the North China Daily News, and it makes it appear as if Mr. Balfour had sent the article to the Messenger. IV.-AMERICAN REPRINTs. The other day a friend, who has occasion to see some of the American papers, saw in one of them the announcement of a New York publisher offer- ing several recent successful English novels at 20 cents, a copy. He wrote for four—“The Yellow Aster,” “Dodo,” “Esther Waters,” and another. I told him he had thrown his money away, but, much to my astonishment, he has just received the books. They have come through the post in an ordinary wrapper. One would like to know (1) whether this sort of thing is done to any extent; (2) whether there is any way of stopping H. J. A. it. W.—EARLY EDITIONS OF By RoN. May I ask through the columns of the Author if first or early editions of Byron's works are scarce or of any value P I have what appears to be a first edition of “The Prisoner of Chillon,” in a brown paper cover, and published in 1816. It contains an advertisement “Published this day, in 8vo., 5s. 6d., a Third Canto of ‘Childe FIarold.’” With “The Prisoner of Chillon’’ are published a “Sonnet,” “Stanzas to —,” 5 “Darkness,” “Churchill's Grave,” “The Dream,” “The Incantation,” and “Prometheus.” I have also editions of “The Bride of Abydos,” and “The Giaour;” the former a second edition, the latter a fifth, published in 1813. In my edition of “Mazeppa,” which appears with “The Ode to Venice,” there is appended a weird story in prose called “A Fragment,” and dated June 17, 1816. It deals with a strange and mysterious incident, which would seem to have happened to Lord Byron himself, as it is told in his own person. I should like to know if this “Fragment” is generally bound up with Lord Byron's poems ? It is not to be found in a complete edition which I have. I do not remember seeing it anywhere else than at the end of this poem of “ Mazeppa,” printed in 1810. # may be that some readers of the Author may be able and willing to give the information I seek. CHARLES D. BELL. The Rectory, Cheltenham, Jan. I I, I895. VI.-IIITERARY PENSIONs. Would it be going outside the province of the Author, or I may say the Society of Authors, if they strive to bring before Parliament the question of literary pensions, both as regards the inadequacy of the amount at present distributed and the way it is apportioned P This matter has been forcibly brought to my mind through the call at my office some time back of a technical writer asking for a donation owing to his destitute circumstances. This gentleman some years ago wrote several impor- tant engineering books, which were accepted as standard works, and I have no hesitation in saying that they have been of absolute money value, not only to this country but to the world at large. Owing to the necessarily limited circu- lation of purely technical works it is impossible for the writers thereof to make much money directly from them, and if they have no other vocation they may, if lucky, develop into a technical publisher's literary hack—if not, starve, In a wealthy country like England the amount set apart for literary pensions, and for helping such cases as I have described, appears to me to be absolutely beggarly, and a standing disgrace when we bear in mind the vast sums that are annually lavished in other ways. Is there no way of altering this, or at any rate trying to ? M. PowIS BALE. *º-º-º-º-e  ## p. 252 (#266) ############################################ 252 THE AUTHOR. VII.-REVIEWING. I trust you will not consider it an impertinence on my part in writing to you upon a subject which, after all, has some importance with respect to the vast reading community of England. I mean the art of criticism, and more particularly that section of it which has to do with modern fiction. It is a custom in these days, in lieu of careful and legitimate criticism, to provide a mere summary of a book, to lay bare the plot and motive of the story—the very soul and nervous system. To illustrate my point I will refer only to “The Manxman,” the thorough appreciation of which has been quite spoilt for me owing to the fact that I have already gathered from certain newspaper reviews of the story, a concise précis thereof, and in this case one's chagrin and disappointment is especially keen, because “The Manxman ’’ is unquestionably one of the noblest efforts in fiction of the present generation. Now this certainly seems to me utterly unfair, both to the author and his readers, for it must, to some extent at all events, detract from the popularity and kudos that would otherwise accrue to the former, as it very certainly lessens the ardour and interest of the latter, who is forewarned of every turn of event, and consequently misses one half of the interest in the development of character and plot as the story progresses. Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man to estimate a novel, to decide upon its quality and claims for popular favour, and so forth, without undraping and laying bare its very skeleton. *- a -º a- - - THE LATE JOHN O'NEILL, E have to record the death of a member of the Society who took the deepest interest in its work, and has from time to time communicated papers of great interest to these columns. Only a few days before his death he offered the editor a collection of notes on literary matters. The following notice of his life and work is from the Times of Jan. 2 I : Mr. John O'Neill, who died a few days ago at Selling, in Kent, was a man of rare and recondite erudition. He began his career in the War Office, where his ability caused him to be often selected for difficult work lying outside the routine of the department. After retiring on his pension he was selected by the Foreign Office as Accountant- General to the newly appointed British Govern- ment of Cyprus. He solved to the complete satisfaction of Sir Garnet Wolseley, the first Governor, the difficult problem of evolving order out of the complicated fiscal difficulties left by the Ottoman administration of the island. Eleven different currencies had to be dealt with and reduced to a common denomination, without injury to the revenues, to commerce, or private interests, and this task Mr. O'Neill most success- fully achieved. Endowed with an exceptional faculty for mastering languages, he made a special study of Japanese, and the grammar he compiled in that difficult tongue was adopted by the Government of the Mikado when the work of reconstituting the educational system of Japan was resolved upon. For many years Mr. O'Neill was a constant contributor to philological and literary journals in London and Paris; he was a recognised authority on Provençal literature and the Provençal languge, as well as on the medieval literature of France. Recently he published, through Mr. Quaritch, the first volume of “The Night of the Gods,” a work in which he em- bodied the results of his lifelong study of the origins of religions, not only among the Aryan and Semitic races, but among the Chinese, Japa- nese, and Mexicans. The second and concluding volume of this work is in the press, and will shortly be published. *– 2 --> -* THE REWARDS OF LITERATURE. I have just heard from Smith and Elder about the publication of my two volumes on the Catholic Revival. They offer me 3150. In respect to “Renaissance in Italy,” I have already received £950. When, then, I have brought out these two volumes, I shall have had in all 31 IOO for this long bit of work. Allowing for periods in which I was unfit to work, periods in which I sought a change of work, I find that I have spent eleven years upon this task, and pretty hard years of daily labour. The education which enabled me to attempt it was a very costly one, and the abilities which qualified me for it, though not first-rate, were at least unusual in their combination of many-sided intelligence with acquired knowledge and literary style. I have then been paid at the rate of £100 per annum; but I must deduct at least £50 per annum from my gains for books and travel, quite indispensable to the production. This I reckon as really far below the just allowance. Say, then, I have received £50 a year during the eleven best years of life for the eaecution of a laborious work, which implied an earpensive educa- tion and unusual cast of intellect. The pay is about equal to the wages of a third-class merchant's clerk or a second class butler, the latter being also found in food and lodging.—From the “Life of John Addington Symons. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 09 (February 1895) Subject The topic of the resource <em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 09 (February 1895) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Publication Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1895-02-01-The-Author-5-9 publications The Author