https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/278/1895-06-01-The-Author-6-1.pdf e81368930bf64a68822d249cb21b2723 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) 1895-06-01 Volume 6 Issue 1 Pages Page range in volume 1–28 Ngram Date Version of the date in YYYYMMDD format for use by the Ngram plugin 18950601 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.) CONDUCTED BY SIR wal.TER BESANT. VoI. VI.-No. 1.] JUNE 1, 1895. [PRICE SIXPENCE. For the Opinions earpressed in papers that are signed or initialled the Authors alone are responsible. None of the papers or para- graphs must be taken as eacpressing 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 showld 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 - •- w - WARNINGS AND ADVICE. 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 eaccept the cost of the stamp. WOL. VI. 4. ASCERTAIN WEIAT 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. I4. NEVER forget that publishing is a business, like any other business, totally unconnected with philanthropy, You have to do with Be yourself a business man. charity, or pure love of literature. business men. Society’s Offices :- 4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs. *- A --" 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 B 2  ## p. (#356) ################################################ 2 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 Author notes of everything important to literature that you may hear or meet with. . . 9. The committee have now arranged for the reception of members’ agreements and their preservation in a fireproof safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as con- fidential documents to be read only by the Secretary, who will keep the key of the safe. The Society now offers:—(1) 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 agreements. > THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE, EMBERS are informed : 1. 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, gene- rally, 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 eaclusively 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. - - -º NOTICES. HE Editor of the Awthor 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 Awthor 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 o the Editor any points connected with their work which t 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  ## p. (#357) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 3 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. 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. *-- * ~ * g- ºr -ºs. LITERARY PROPERTY, I.—CANADIAN COPYRIGHT. HE following “case” has been drawn up for the committee by Mr. James Rolt, barrister- at law — “It is impossible to deal with the Canadian Copyright Act of 1889, or to estimate the effect it will produce if it is allowed to come into force, without in the first place, shortly referring to the present position of copyright (a) as an imperial question, and (b) as an international question. (I) International copyright. (i.) The principal countries of Europe, and, in fact, from a literary point of view, the principal countries of the world, with the exception of the United States, have at last, in the Berne Con- vention, recognised that the rights of an author in the fruits of his labour should be free from all conditions and restrictions whatever, except such as may be enforced by the laws of the country where it is first produced. (ii.) The United States unfortunately, owing to political and trade pressure, have not been able to allow authors their full and just rights. Foreign authors can, however, under the Act of 1891, obtain protection on the terms of printing their works in the States. The condition is unquestionably wrong and unfair in principle, but the recognition by the States of the rights of foreign authors is, even where subject to such a condition, of immense importance, especially to British authors. Acceptance of the terms imposed does not imply a recognition of their justice, and should not under any circumstances be allowed to be drawn into a precedent. On the other hand, we should be most careful to avoid doing anything which might imperil the recognition of the rights of British authors which has been so hardly won from the United States of America. The Canadian Act, if allowed to come into force, would, it is believed, lead to the with- drawal from British authors of the United States Act of 1891. (2) Imperial copyright. The foundation of imperial copyright as it at present exists is to be found in the Act of 1842, which gives protection throughout the British dominions to every work which is first published in the United Kingdom. The Colonies justly complained that under this Act a work which was published in a colony had no copyright in the United Kingdom or in any other colony, but this grievance has been removed by the Act of 1886; a work published in a colony now enjoys precisely the same protection as one first pub- lished in the United Kingdom, (3) Canadian copyright as it exists at present. It was a common complaint of the Colonies, especially of Canada, that owing to the operation of the Imperial Copyright Act they were unable to obtain a sufficient supply of English literature. In order to remove this ground of complaint the Foreign Reprints Act was passed, and under its provisions Canada has been allowed to import pirated copies of English works on the under- taking that a duty of 12% per cent. should be collected by the colony upon all such copies for the benefit of the author. As a matter of fact the duty has not been collected, nor has any serious attempt been made by Canada to comply with the undertaking. In 1875 an Act was passed in Canada giving copyright to foreign authors upon condition of their republishing in the colony either simul- taneously with or at any time after publication elsewhere. This Canadian Act was expressly authorised by an Act of the Imperial Legislature, and therefore the Canada printers and publishers contended that the Imperial Copyright Act was repealed so far as Canada was concerned, and that English authors could only obtain copyright in Canada upon complying with the conditions of the Canadian Act. This contention was, however, decisively negatived by the Canadian courts in the case of “Smiles v. Belford,” and the position therefore at present is that English authors are only obliged to republish in Canada if they wish to avoid the operation of the Foreign Reprints Act. (4) Canada’s present proposals. The Canadian Act, passed by Colonial Legisla- ture in 1889, but reserved for the sanction of the Imperial Government, provides that, in order to obtain copyright in Canada, works must be regis- tered with the Minister of Agriculture before  ## p. (#358) ################################################ 4. THE AUTHOR, or simultaneously with their first publication, wherever such publication takes place, and must be reprinted and republished in Canada within one month of their publication elsewhere; and (2) that if the author does not comply with these conditions the minister may grant licences for the publication of the work, the licensees paying a royalty of Io per cent. for the benefit of the author. This Act is promoted solely by and in the interests of the Canadian printers and publishers, who claim to have the right to make a profit out of the works of English authors. The following are some of the reasons why the Act should not be allowed to come into force : (I) It is reactionary, and contrary to the prin- ciples adopted by this country after full con- sideration in acceding to the Berne Convention. It would, of course, deprive the Canadian author of the benefit of that Convention. (2) It is an attempt to deprive authors of their recognised rights for the benefit of the Canadian printers and publishers. (3) It is (except from the view of the printer and publisher) entirely unnecessary. The Cana- dian reader is amply provided for under the Foreign Reprints Act. (4) It will involve the repeal, so far as British authors are concerned, of the United States Copy- right Act of 1891, and the revival of legalised piracy in that country. (5) If it should by any chance accomplish its object, the action of the Canadians will thus recoil on their own heads. Canada will again be flooded by pirated copies printed in the United States, and the last condition of the Canadian printers and publishers will be far worse than the first. The short-sightedness of the Canadian policy is almost incredible. It will involve the flooding of English and other markets with cheap reprints, to the great detriment of publishers who have to pay a fair price for the work they publish. It has been proved over and over again that legislation is powerless to prevent the importation of these cheap reprints. (6) Having regard to the entire failure of Canada to collect the duties under the Foreign Reprints Act, there is no security whatever that authors will receive even the Io per cent. royalty provided by the Act. A manifesto has been issued by the Canadian Copyright Association in support of the Act. The reasons given may be stated as follows: (1) Canada has the right to legislate fully on copyright. Canada's right to legislate on copy- right is confined to the case of Canadian authors. She has no right whatever to take away from British authors their rights under the Imperial Acts. This was expressly decided by her own courts in “Smiles v. Belford,” and is the reason why she is now seeking the advice of the Imperial Legislature. (2) Copyright is analogous to patent right, and the Imperial Government did not disallow the Canadian Patent Act. But, in the first place, copyright is not analogous to patent right. Copy- right is given to the form only, not to the thought expressed. It does not prevent another author dealing, with the same subject or idea. Patent right deprives the second inventor, who has independently arrived at the same result, of the profits of his labours. Patent right is a monopoly in restraint of other original inventions. Copy- right is not. Secondly, the Canadian Copyright Act is not in the least on the same lines as the Canadian Patent Act. The Patent Act allows twelve months for obtaining a patent in Canada, after one has been obtained in England, and a further twelve months for commencing to manu- facture. This gives time to ascertain whether the market will warrant the outlay. (3) That under the present conditions the Canadian rights of English authors are included in the sale to United States publishers, to the injury of the Canadian printers and publishers. Here we have the true and only reason for the proposed legislation. It is based on a fallacy. It is no injustice what- ever to Canadian printers and publishers that British authors should be able to choose for them- selves where and through whom they will print and publish their works. To be consistent, the Canadians should demand that no artists should have protection for their works except such as used paints and canvas made in Canada. And the remedy is simple. English authors have to reprint in the United States. English publishers do not therefore demand protection or set up imaginary rights, but meet the difficulty in a business-like way. They set up branches in New York and Boston. Let the Canadians do the same. English authors, other things being equal, would rather deal with a Canadian publisher than an American. And let the Canadians join with us in endeavouring to obtain the removal of the unjust restrictions imposed by U.S.A. legislation instead of endeavouring to perpetuate and extend them. The real interests of English authors and Canadian publishers and printers in this matter are the same, and the latter are pursuing a most short sighted and suicidal policy. In any case the English authors submit with some confidence that the Canadian proposals are not such as ought to receive the sanction or assistance of the Imperial Legislature. May 13, 1895. J. ROLT.”  ## p. (#359) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. s II.--THE LAW of CoPYRIGHT. Amongst the Bills proposed to be introduced during the ensuing session of Parliament is one to amend the law relating to the protection of copy- right against the importation of foreign reprints into this colony, and to the registration of books. The second clause provides that Act No. 4 of 1854, and so much of the seventh section of the Copyright Act, 1873, as entitles the proprietor of the copyright of any book to demand the delivery to him of all copies of foreign reprints of such books unlawfully imported under that Act, shall be repealed. Clause 3 will suspend the existing order prohibiting the importation of foreign reprints of British books, and give force and effect to every provision of Acts of the Imperial Parliament having regard to the prohibition against the importation of foreign reprints of British books into this colony. Clause 4 makes it illegal for any person not being the registered proprietor of the copyright, or some person authorised by him, to import into the colony any reprint of any book in which there shall be registered copyright under the provisions of the Copyright Act, 1873, as to which such proprietor shall have given to the Collector of Customs a notice, in writing, duly declared before a justice of the peace, that such copyright exists, such notice also stating when such copyright will expire. And if any unathorised person shall import or bring any such reprint into the colony, or shall knowingly sell, let, publish, or expose for sale or hire any such reprint, then every such reprint shall be forfeited, and shall be seized by any officer of customs, and shall be destroyed or disposed of in such manner as the Governor shall direct; and every person so offending, being duly convicted, shall also for every such offence forfeit the sum of £Io and double the value of every copy of such book which he shall so import into the colony, or shall knowingly sell, let, publish, or expose for sale or hire, or shall have in his possession for sale or hire; £5 of such penalty to the use of the officer of customs, and the remainder to the proprietor of the copyright. By clause 5 the proprietor of the copyright is reserved the right of action for damages for infringement of the Act. According to the seventh clause lists of all books in respect to which copyright shall be subsisting in the colony must be posted at the customs houses of Colonial ports.-Cape Times, April 6. III.-AMERICAN CoPYRIGHT LAw.—IMPORTANT DECISION. The Law Department of the United States gave an important decision yesterday bearing . upon the law of copyright. It says that the law in the United States as it at present stands does not prevent the sale in the States of American copyright books that have been printed in Canada. The point is one of such importance to United States authors that an agitation for their better protection will be started forthwith.-St. James’s Gazette, May 4. IV.-BoITON v. ALDIN AND OTHERs. (Queen's Bench Division.—Before Mr. Justice Grantham and a Common Jury). This was an action to recover damages for the infringement of copyright in a photograph by publishing it in the Sketch and in another publi- cation, and an injunction was asked for to restrain future publication. The representatives of the Illustrated London News, it was said, were ready to submit to an injunction going against them, and to pay costs up to a certain point; and they were therefore discharged from the action. Mr. Willes Chitty was for the plaintiff, and Mr. Kemp, Q.C., and Mr. Willis Bund for the remain- ing defendant. It was said that Mr. Gambier Bolton, the plaintiff, was a Fellow of the Zoological Society, and he had spent a large part of his life at the Zoological Gardens and in travelling in various parts of the world taking photographs of a great number of wild animals in various attitudes. He had a collection of 30OO of these photographs, which the authorities of the British Museum had framed and hung upon their walls for the benefit of future generations. This was very important, as many varieties of animals were fast becoming extinct, and, indeed, the plaintiff had in his possession photographs of two or three kinds of animals which were already extinct. The photo- graphs in the Museum would show to future generations the animals as they now exist. He had incurred great expense, and had run very great personal risk in getting the photographs. He had been in great danger on two or three occasions at the Zoological Gardens. Among others, he took at the Zoological Gardens a photo- graph of a tigress yawning. The difficulty in that particular case was that the tigress was asleep, and he had to wait for hours and hours until she should wake and yawn, and then there was great doubt as to whether the yawn could be caught at a proper attitude. He registered the photograph under the Copyright Act of 25 and 26 Vict. c. 68, in June, 1894, and it would be shown that the re- maining defendant made a sketch of this photo- graph and sold it for publication. It was pub- lished in the Sketch, and it was to stop a proceed- ing of that kind that the present action was brought. It was most important to the plaintiff  ## p. (#360) ################################################ 6 THE AUTHOR. that this should be accomplished, because artists of high standing were in the habit of using his photographs for studying wild animals in various positions, and his source of profit would be endan- gered if people were allowed to publish sketches of them. Evidence was given that the tigress in question had a cancerous mouth, and the tigress in the sketch had the same complaint. Mr. J. P. Nettle- ship, artist and animal painter, expressed his opinion that the published sketch was taken from the plaintiff’s photograph. It was admitted that the defendant’s sketch was sold for £3. There was other evidence that the publication of the sketch would be likely to seriously affect the sale of the plaintiff's photographs. Mr. Kemp, upon the conclusion of the evidence, submitted that the plaintiff had made out no case, and he quoted various decided cases in sup- port of his contention that what had happened was no infringement of copyright within the mean- ing of the Act. Mr. Justice Grantham had no doubt that the sketch was taken from the photograph, and that there was an infringement of copyright. He therefore gave judgment for the plaintiff for an injunction, and he awarded him one penalty of £IO and 34o damages. Judgment for the Observer, May 17. plaintiff with costs.- W.—MUSICAL COPYRIGHT. A telegram from America has been received by the plaintiffs in the musical copyright test case of Novello v. Ditson to say that the Appellate Court last Friday upheld the decision of the court below, in favour of the British publishers. The question referred to the so-called “manufacturing ” clauses of the American Copyright Act of 1891 ; or, in other words, the point raised was whether music, like books, must be printed from plates engraved or type-set in the United States in order to secure copyright at Washington. Both courts have now decided that music is exempt from the “manu- facturing ” clauses, and although it would perhaps be somewhat rash to consider the matter quite settled until the full text of the judgment is received a week hence, it nevertheless seems to have been held that music, unlike books, need not be reprinted in the United States in order to secure American copyright. The action was so far a friendly one in that the facts were agreed to by both parties; but the case was regularly fought out, the costs as we understand being defrayed by the members of the Music Publishers' Association of England.—Daily News, April 30. *... a -º sº- w - THE PROBLEM OF PUBLISHING, I" has been remarked by many of our members that the Society has never put forward a model agreement, or a series of model agree- ments. The reasons for not doing so are obvious. At the outset, while the facts were as yet only partly known, and the whole question was obscure, it would have been absurd to attempt a model agreement. For instance, no one had then ventured to demand the audit of accounts; no one had dared claim the right of learning the real facts as to the administration of his own estate; no one had even begun to understand that there is no risk whatever in the publication of a very large number of writers' works; no one had as yet begun to understand that there ought to be any connection between the price paid when a work was bought and the sum it realised ; and, though the royalty system had been introduced, no one had even begun to ask what any royalty offered meant for the publisher as compared with the author. All this is now changed; we know what it actually costs to produce a book; we know what the publisher charges the retail bookseller; and we know what is meant by risk. The time may seem, therefore, convenient for some consideration of the problem from the author's point of view, with the increased light thrown upon it since the question first arose, now ten years ago. There are three methods of publishing: I. Those in which the author sells his work for what it will fetch ; or, which is another way of putting it, prefers to capitalise his royalties. In the case of a successful writer this method should only be adopted with the advice of an agent. 2. That in which a profit-sharing agreement is accepted. 3. That in which a royalty is accepted. There are sub-divisions in these three classes. As, for instance, when the profit-sharing agreement means a half or two-thirds to the author; and, in the third case, what amount of royalty is offered, and whether the royalty is deferred or to begin with the first copy. We will consider some of the relations of the publisher to the book he issues. I. He used to say that he took the risk. We do not hear so much about the risk of late. As regards successful writers, that is, two or three hundred writers at least, there is no risk, no risk at all. Not the least shadow of risk. The publisher knows very well beforehand that he is safe for a certain minimum of copies, and that this minimum will not only cover his expenditure but will leave a margin of profit. Outside this  ## p. (#361) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 7 circle of successful writers there may be, no doubt, risk; most publishers, however, in such a case make the author pay for production, or, at least, guarantee such a number of copies as will repay themselves, with a margin. The number of books thus paid for by the author is enormous ; there are small firms which do nothing else. 2. When there is risk, what is it P Of course we are not considering the starting of a magazine, or the production of great works like an encyclopædia, a dictionary of natural biography, or the like ; or a book elaborately and expensively illustrated; or an edition de lua.e; or technical books in small demand. The author in such a case must generally be considered as the employé of the publisher; he contributes his work; he is paid for his work; he is not concerned with the rest. In this place we are talking only of ordinary books—travel books, history, memoirs, and biography, essays, poetry, plays, fiction, theology, sermons, educational books, &c. The risk is the difference between the number that the publisher can reckon on being taken by subscription, and the initial cost. Thus a book may cost £120 to produce and advertise, which the publisher will only subscribe at the outset for £1 12. The risk in that case is therefore 38. Most people talk as if the risk was the whole cost of production. On the other hand, those who pay for producing their own poetry and fiction will do well to remember that the risk will probably be represented to them as the whole cost of produc- tion. In some cases, where the book is worthless and ought not to be published, the risk really may be the whole cost of production. A case was brought to the Society the other day in which an author had paid for the production. The number of copies sold was nineteen 3. The use of money. Accounts are made up, as a rule, once a year, and payment is made three months afterwards. This means the use of all the money received, and since the first run of the book is by far the most important, the use for eight to twelve months. In the case of a highly suc- cessful book, say a 6s. book, of which 40,000 copies go off in the first three months, the pub- lisher retains in his own hands for nearly a year the difference between the returns and the cost of production ; that is, he has the use of all the author's royalties, amounting in such a case to about £3000. This would mean to the author about £IOO interest, but to the publisher, as money used in his business, a sum which may be estimated at from IO to 20 per cent., i.e., from £300 to £600. extreme case, and very unusual. Quite so ; but we must always take an extreme case in order to test an agreement in publishing, just as in a WOL. VI. But, it will be said, this is an theory of mathematics. Take, however, another case, in which only 2000 copies are sold. Here the publisher holds in hand for a year royalties at, say, one shilling a copy, amounting to £IOO. He therefore pockets from £10 to £20 in addition to what the royalty leaves him. This extra profit is, it will be seen, a serious factor in the accounts of a book, and one which must be taken into con- sideration. 4. The agency for American rights. An author should be careful to retain these rights. A literary agent will take care of them for him at IO per cent. Several publishers’ letters have been received lately in which, while denouncing vigorously the extreme wickedness of the literary agent who takes IO per cent., the writer has kindly offered to undertake the American rights at 30 per cent. or 50 per cent. 5. The cost of production. It cannot be too strongly impressed upon authors that cost of production must be taken to mean actual cost — money actually paid and nothing else. There are st'll some people left who systematically falsify their accounts. Readers of the Author will remember that a case was submitted to counsel, whose opinion, published in tº e Author, was that no judge would uphold such falsification on any pretence what- ever. Whether such a case could be brought into the criminal courts remains to be seen. Perhaps this may be ascertained by experiment before long. Nothing, to repeat, must be charged that is not actually paid, e.g., not advertisements in a publisher's own organ ; not advertisements that are actually, or practically, exchanges. Discounts, which are sometimes very heavy, must be entered in the joint account. 6. There must be no secret profit of any kind. 7. The accounts must be open to inspection 8. The author must be told the whole of the facts about the production and the sale of his own book. - 9. Then comes the question of the “establish- ment expenses.” A charge for these expenses is sometimes made in the agreement. Should it be allowed P There are three persons connected with every book. I. The author, who creates the property. Has he no “establishment expenses P” One does not reckon his household expenses; but there are many other things, He has to pay his agent; his study is his office; he has probably a shorthand clerk; he employs people to copy things; he has to buy many books; he has sometimes to go many journeys; he has to spend large sums in acquiring his knowledge—surely these are C  ## p. (#362) ################################################ 8 THE AUTHOR. ‘' establishment expenses.” Hitherto, however, he has not charged them. 2. There is the bookseller. He has a heavy rent to pay; he has taxes, assistants, and all the charges of a shop to defray before he touches anything at all for himself. These are his “esta- blishment expenses.” Hitherto he has not asked them to be allowed first, before his “profit” begins. The simple man continues to call the difference between the price he gets and the price he pays, his profit. 3. The publisher, alone of the three, demands a first charge of “establishment expenses.” But he is careful not to recognise the same claim in the case of the other two. Io. Then follows the question of the proportion that should be paid to the publisher. What are the services which he renders He lends his office and his servants; his clerks give out the book, they also collect the money. The publisher arranges with printer and binder; he decides on the amount that may be spent in advertising the book. As a rule it is per- fectly simple routine work. What should he receive P There must be a margin, of course, over and above the establishment expenses, for the publisher as well as for the author and the bookseller. How large should that margin be P A publisher has been complaining lately in the New Budget that all he could get for himself out of a certain book which had a very wide circulation was a paltry 6d. a copy. Note that with a very successful book—it is only a very successful book for which so large a royalty can be claimed— namely, 25 per cent.—with a book selling 40,000 copies, the wretched 6d. over which this person whines means 29 Iood | This 6d. was reckoned after deducting sevenpence for alleged establish- ment expenses. Imagine the happiness of an agent who should be allowed to take £IOOO out of £5000 for himself, with his office expenses as well ! The case is highly instructive. II. The deferred royalty ought not to be, but too often is a trick of the very worst kind. It seems perfectly reasonable that the cost of production should be first defrayed before profits are declared. Thus, suppose an edition of 3OOO copies is printed —all that the publisher thinks will be sold. Suppose also that the publisher is nearly right. IIe sells 2500 copies. The book has cost him 216o. He sells it at 6s., i.e., 3s. 6d. It therefore takes him 920 copies to clear himself: every other copy is clear gain. What do we think then of publishers offering a miserable IO per cent. or 15 per cent. royalty to begin after a thousand copies? At the latter royalty, for instance, the author would receive about £70 and the publisher about £200. This can hardly be called a just share of profit for managing this little estate. What, then, ought the publisher to receive P Obviously, more in proportion for a book of small circulation than for one of wide circulation. With these facts before us let us endeavour to arrive at some kind of conclusion. A proportion actually based on principles of equity cannot be expected from the nature of the case. For who can decide what ought to be the pay- ment of an agent P One can only state the facts, and deduce from them some conclusion that will be accepted by honourable men on both sides. Sir Frederick Pollock, speaking at a public meeting of the society when he took over the chairmanship, said, very strongly, that it was simply impossible that honourable men should be unable to arrive at an agreement as to the rights of author and publisher respectively. It does seem impossible. Let us therefore make an attempt to arrive at a solution of the problem. The above are, roughly speaking, the data. If the members of the society will consider the problem, (I) for a book about which there can be no talk of risk, and (2) for a book which carries risk there may be found some way out of the difficulty. For my own part, I would suggest, as a small contribution towards clearing up this question, that we leave off talking about the author's royalty and begin to speak and think of the royalty granted by the author to the publisher. This will be a practical method of asserting the pro- prietor's rights in his own property. *~~ * -- NOTES FROM PARIS, \ LPHONSE DAUDET has no intention of writing his impressions about London. He emphatically said so this very morning. He said that he has se-n far too little of our great city to venture to express an opinion on it that it would be presumptuous, and so on. He will probably, however, use his experiences in some future novel. His stay on the whole has been a pleasant one, and he will leave England on Monday next, “not without regret.” He has been greatly interested in all he has seen, and has filled note-books with notes on the same. He says that the characte- ristic of the English race is pride, that the French have no such pride, and that it is a good thing. Our English habit of tea-drinking, on the other hand, he thinks a detestable thing. “Tea in the morning,” he says, “tea at noon, tea all day. I  ## p. (#363) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 9 gave it up in time. It was ruining my nerves.” He still suffers a great deal. “I feel as if my legs were being stabbed with knives, and as though there was a harrow going over my body.” However, he keeps in good spirits, and may often be heard singing. His favourite tune just now is that of “Her Golden Hair,” which, he says, is the Leit-Motiv of London. I say that his stay has been a pleasant one “on the whole”; that is to say, in spite of various annoyances from which, it would appear, no celebrity on a visit to London is exempted. The interviewers, to begin with, who by indiscreet statements have involved him—as thanks to him for placing himself at their disposal—in inter- minable controversies. Then the Leo-Hunters. Various people—including one or two noble ladies —treating him like an actor or curiosity on show —have written—strangers to him a stranger—to bid him to their houses, without taking the trouble of showing the preliminary courtesy of calling on him or of leaving cards. These have received lessons in savoir vivre which one hopes may profit them. Anonymous letters, many con- taining insults, have reached him by every post. Inventors have asked him to further their inven- tions, and needy Frenchmen have demanded funds where with to repatsiate themselves. I was present the other day at an interview between M. Daudet and a person who described himself as a French musician, who wanted a “few words in private.” Daudet told him to speak up, and he began speaking offensively about the English. However, seeing that Daudet by no means agreed with him in his comments on “ces Anglais,” he deftly turned his insults into compliments, and went on to say that he wanted the money to pay his fare back to Paris. Daudet said he had no money with him, but asked Léon, who was present, for his purse. Léon said that there was very little in it, and Daudet then told the man that he should have all there was, and emptied the purse on the table. The destitute musician went away, radiant, with about two pounds in his pocket. That was a week ago. To-day I saw him in the bar of a public-house in the Strand. He has not left for Paris yet. Léon Daudet has just finished correcting the proofs of his satirical novel “Les Kamcatka,” which will be published at the beginning of June by Charpentier, who expressed himself to me at the Wernissage of the New Salon as very sanguine about it. He will then start upon a work of imagination, to be called “Le Voyage de Shakespeare.” He imagines Shakespeare travel- ling in the North of Europe collecting the impres- sions from which “Hamlet” eventually springs. WOL. VI. It will be a difficult task, but, if successfully worked out, should make a very interesting book. I understand that George Hugo, who has been staying in London with the Daudets, will illustrate the work. I hear that of late many of the most dis- tinguished men of letters in France—the Daudets, the Rosnys, Pierre Loti, and others—have placed the management of their entire English and American business interests in the hands of Mr. A. P. Watt. Crockett writes me a charming letter from Bellagio. “Since I came to Italy,” he says, “I have been full of work. My book of ‘Cleg Relly, Arab of the City,” begins in the Cornhill for July, and this in addition to ‘The Grey Man’ for the Graphic, and other things. Then there have been incidentals to do, short things, which are neither here nor there, but which take time.” I have often thought that for writing a book for children a child would be one's best col- laborator. S. R. Crockett seems to share my opinion, for he tells me that he is writing a Christmas book in collaboration with his little daughter Maisie, the bonniest little child that God ever sent to earth. “It is a Christmas book about our travels,” he writes. “It will make the superior person very sick; but will please all children, big and little, or so I think. And I care little what the person who can’t write himself, but tells you how you must write, will say of the matter.” He is exemplary in his remarks on criticism. “I heard that I had been annihilated in some review by a gentleman whose name was un- familiar ; but I did not see the article, which must, I think, have been blank cartridge, since nobody was a penny piece the worse.” He also tells me that he hopes to be back in July, “when we are going to St. Andrews for the seaside, to dig in the sand—all of us.” Amongst the late Leconte de Lisle's papers was found a set of notes, in which the great poet summed up, in a few words devoted to each, his opinion on his comrades in the Muse. Of Lama - time he says: “An abundant imagination, an intelligence endowed rather with a thousand noble and ambitious desires than with real capacities. A nature d’élite, an incomplete artist, a great poet by chance. He has left behind him—as it were in expiation—a multitude of stillborn beings, with liquified brains and hearts of stone, the Wretched family of an illustrious father.” Alfred de Musset, in Leconte de Lisle's opinion, was a “mediocre poet, nil as an artist, a very witty writer of prose.” Victor Hugo was “the greatest known lyrical poet. Exaggerated in all things, C 2  ## p. (#364) ################################################ IO THE AUTHOR. puerile and yet sublime, with an inexhaustible reservoir of splendid and incoherent images, a marvellous dreamer, with extraordinary blanks in his intellect.” About Baudelaire he wrote: “Very intelligent and original, but of limited imagination, lacking in breadth. His art is too often clumsy. About Théodore de Banville: “Witty, amiable, good- natured, a skilful, brilliant, but superficial artist.” Alfred de Vigny, according to the great Parmas- sian, was “a great and noble artist, in spite of frequent laches of expression, who has always lived in retirement, poor and dignified, faithful to the end to his one creed—the beautiful.” Theophile Gautier : “An excellent poet, an excellent writer. Very unjustly neglected.” As to Béranger, he is of opinion : “His chansons de circonstance and his God of a cabaret philanthro- pique have all had their vogue ; and having all had their vogue, are now and for evermore dust and ashes.” One would like now to be able to have the opinions of Béranger, Theophile Gautier, Baudelaire, and the others on Leconte de Lisle. I hear that arrangements have already been made in London for the publication in serial form of Mr. Vizetelly's translation of Emile Zola's new novel “Rome.” That is to say, arrangements in anticipation, as but little of the book has been written. The story, apart from descriptions of Rome and Roman life, deals with a tragic love affair. Zola is working himself to death over it. I met him at the Wernissage, and asked him why he was looking so pale. “Le travail,” he said, “Le travail!” Work ought not to make one pale. It is absurd if it does. Why are literary men, who usually lead a very healthy life, almost invariably “sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought " ? De Musset said their faces gave a reflection of the white paper which was always before them. But then the paper is not long white, and I, for my part, never saw an author turn negro from the reflec- tion of the written sheet. The doctors might explain the matter. I have seen it reported that Madame Sarah Bernhardt is engaged in writing her memoirs. This is not true, and the report was doubtless spread abroad with the kind intention of injuring a work which has been in preparation for some time. I saw the lady shortly before her depar- ture from Paris, and she said that she was in no wise so engaged. What leisure she enjoys is spent in her atelier on sculpture, in which art she has already achieved some success. A model attends her every day when she is at home in Paris. I do not know what she does when en voyage. I had a grotesque experience at her house in the Boulevard Pereire on the occasion referred to. We were talking about a very pathetic and tragic thing, and the great lady was wringing her hands and had tears in her eyes. She was sitting with her back to a cage in which was a large Senegalese monkey, and the whole time that she was speaking the ape was grimacing horribly, sticking out his tongue, blinking his eyes, and performing various gymnastic feats. The contrast was a striking one, and, heavy- hearted as I was, I could not master a laugh—a laugh of the Sardinian kind. I suppose that everybody is reading Mr. Roche’s masterly translation of the “Memoirs of Barras.” One wants to hear the other side about Napoleon, and Barras gives it, full and strong. Of course Barras, by reason of his jealousy about Josephine, was a prejudiced witness, but then most of the witnesses on the other side, from Ménéval downwards, were also prejudiced. Mr. Charles Roche is a very dis- tinguished journalist, of world-wide experience, of whom M. Daudet has expressed a very high opinion. He is connected by marriage with the family of Charles Dickens. May 23. ROBERT H. SHERARD. Authors’ Club, 3, Whitehall Court. * * ~ * a- - --e. NEW YORK LETTER, New York, May 18. ITH increasing experience of the diffi- W W culty of expression in black and white, I am coming more and more to be of the belief that it is absolutely impossible to say any- thing in print so that it cannot be misunder- stood. For example, there was a letter in the Author two or three months ago in which it was shown that a British series of books is pretty certain to find an American publisher, while an American series is very unlikely to find a British publisher ; and now comes Mr. Andrew Lang in the Illustrated London News and calls this plain statement of fact a complaint. Certainly it was not prompted by any feeling of grievance. It was prompted by a desire to fulfil the wishes of the editor of the Author, who requested me to explain any conditions in the American book market which the reader in England was not likely to know. Now, one of the conditions an English reader is not likely to suspect is that the American market is more freely opened to a British book of average merit than the British market is opened to an American book of average merit. This is a fact. To state it is not to make a complaint. -  ## p. (#365) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. I I To account for it is not easy, although the reason is probably to be found in the former colonial dependence of the United States toward Great Britain; the effect of which was to give the British a poor opinion of what came from America, and to give the Americans a high opinion of what came from England. Many American authors have noticed that there is still in the United States a lingering survival of colonial deference toward British authors. Curiously enough, this colonialism exists in America only in regard to literature. For example, British art, pictorial or plastic, is held in very low esteem, as the American painters and sculptors and architects look to France for their masters. In a recent essay on “Trade Winds in Literature,” Col. Higginson discussed the subject with his usual felicity of illustration. “The sailors of Columbus,” he began, “ in crossing the Atlantic were not alarmed by oppos- ing winds, but because the wind blew always in their favour. It was certain, they held, that such winds cut off all hope of return. In literature these same winds have blown ever since; the fame of an English author spreads rapidly to America, whereas that of an American, though it may ultimately reach Europe, goes far more slowly. Dr. Conan Doyle, who has thus far identified his name with but a single character in fiction, comes here and receives 500 dollars per lecture; whereas if Edgar Poe had gone to England, in his day, and had offered to lecture, he would have been fortunate if he had cleared a profit of 3s. 6d. Americans to whom the very names of Dr. Doyle and Mr. Christie Murray and Dean Hole were previously unknown, made haste to read some of their books in order to attend their lectures. It is impossible to see in this any- thing but a survival of that trade wind called Colonialism.” And after giving other instances, Col. Higgin- son declared that “The history of literature is, far more than we recognise, a series of vibrations of the pendulum for the two great branches of the English-speaking race; sometimes the one takes the lead, sometimes the other. Forty years ago no book produced in England compared in world-wide circulation with “Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and even to this day it is said to be found in English farmhouses more frequently, with ‘The Wide, Wide World,’ than any other book. Twenty years ago the travelling American rarely met an Englishman who was not familiar with Mark Twain, or an English woman who was not eager to hear anything about Longfellow. It is probable that Emerson had, and still has, on the minds of thoughtful Englishmen more direct influence than Carlyle had among Americans. It is only a few years since American magazines conquered London, which they still hold; and since it was generally admitted that Americans excelled their transatlantic cousins in short stories. This year there is a swing of the pendu- lum. In spite of Mr. Howells—who doubtless prophesied somewhat rashly—there is a reaction in favour of tales of historical romance, in which English writers have taken the unquestioned lead.” The fact is that England is the older country, and that, therefore, there is a certain prejudice in England against an American author ; while America is the younger country, and therefore there is a certain prejudice in America in favour of an English author. That is why an American publisher was readily found to issue Mr. Lang's series of volumes on “English Worthies,” although that series proved to be a financial failure, and was abandoned before two of the most interesting of its books appeared—Mr. Lang's own “Izaak Walton’’ and R. L. Stevenson’s “Wellington,” both of which remained unwritten. That is why the “Great Educators’” series, which was planned here in New York by Prof. Nicholas Murray Butler (who assigned the separate volumes to writers in America, in England, and in France), and which is printed here by Charles Scribner's Sons (who sell sheets to Mr. Heine- mann), is published in London with a new title- page, from which Prof. Butler's name is omitted —this new title-page being the only part of the so-called “Heinemann’s Great Educators’ Series'’ which is printed in England. It is pleasant to be able to record that books of solid merit have sales sometimes as large as those of the mere book of the hour. I was told not long ago that two thousand sets of the new edition of Mr. James Bryce's book on the “American Commonwealth” were placed with the trade here in the city of New York alone in a single day. By the publisher's advertisements I see that Mr. John Fiske’s “Discovery of America” is in its thirteenth thousand, while most of his other historical and philosophical works have reached at least a tenth edition. Macmillan and Co. will commence in May the publication of their “Miniature Series,” one number of which will appear each month. The little books will be bound in paper, and will be sold at 25 cents each. In shape and in size, and in neatness of typography, they resemble the pretty little collection of books by American authors issued by Mr. David Douglas, of Edin- burgh. The volumes announced for the coming year are: “Shakespeare's England,” by William Winter; “The Friendship of Nature,” by Mabel Osgood Wright; “A Trip to England, by Gold-  ## p. (#366) ################################################ I 2 THE AUTHOR. win Smith; “From a New England Hillside,” by William Potts; “The Pleasures of Life,” by Sir John Lubbock; “Old Shrines and Ivy,” by William Winter; “The Choice of Books,” by Frederick Harrison; “Gray Days and Gold,” by William Winter; “The Aims of Literary Study,” by Hiram Corson, LL.D. ; The Novel— What It Is,” by F. Marion Crawford; and “Amiel's Journal,” translated by Mrs. Humphry Ward. It is to be noticed that, although the publishers are a British house, only two of these eleven books are by residents of England. In the May number of the Book Buyer, the little monthly publication issued by Charles Scribner's Sons, appears the first instalment of a Bibliography of First Editions of John Greenleaf Whittier, compiled by Mr. Edward H. Bierstadt, of the Grolier Club. No detailed and descriptive bibliography of this writer has been published here- tofore, and the compiler has endeavoured to make his work complete, and as fully descriptive as is convenient in view of the undertaking. It is the purpose of the publishers of the Book Buyer in future to make contributions of literary study, which they believe will be found convenient standards of accurate information upon the subject. The Whittier Bibliography will be completed in four instalments. The publishers expect to follow it with bibliographies of James Russell Lowell, Nathaniel Hawthorn, Robert Louis Stevenson, and other authors whose works are of interest to collectors. The May number of the Book Buyer has for its frontispiece an engraving on wood of the latest portrait of Mr. Stedman. The editor of the new American edition of the Bookman—which now owes very little to its London namesake save the name—is one of the Columbia College Professors of Latin ; and it is therefore perhaps not unfair to credit him with the following adaptation, called “Titerary Log-rolling in Ancient Rome’’:— Hor. Epist. ii., 2, 87. Frater erat Romae consulti rhetor, ut alter Alterius sermone meros audiret honores, Gracchus ut hic illi, foret huic ut Mucius ille, Qui minus argutos vexat furor iste poétas P Carmina compono, hic elegos. “Mirabile visu Caelatumque movem Musis opus !” Adspice primum, Quanto cum fastu, quanto molimine circum- Spectemus vacuam Romanis vatibus aedem - Mox etiam, si forte vacas, sequere et procul audi, Quid ferat et quare sibi nectat utergue coronam. Caedimur et totidem plagis consumimus hostem Lento Samnites ad lumina prima duello. Discedo Alcaeus puncto illius ; ille meo quis P Quis nisi Callimachus P Si plus adposcere visus, Fit Mimnermus et optivo cognomine crescit. Multa ferout placem genus irritabile vatum, Cum scribo et supplex populi suffragia capto ; Idem, finitis studiis et mente recepta, Obturem patulas impune legentibus aures. [The same, Englished.] Two Romans, counsellor and pleader, went Through life on terms of mutual compliment; One called the other Gracchus, he supposed His brother Mucius ; so they praised and prosed. Our bards to-day the selfsame madness goads: My friend writes elegies, and I write odes. O how we puff each other “’Tis divine ! The Muses had a hand in every line.” Remark our swagger as we pass the dome Built to receive the future bards of Rome; Then follow us and see the fame we make, How each by turn awards and takes the cake. Like Samnite fencers with elaborate art, We hit in tierce to be hit back in quart. I’m dubbed Alcaeus, and retire in force : And who is he P Callimachus of course ! If this seem feeble, then I bid him rise Mimmermus, and he swells to twice his size. Writing myself, I’m tortured to appease Those wasp-like creatures, our poetic bees; But when my pen's laid down, my sense restored, I rest from boring and from being bored. The Paris correspondent of the Author voices M. Marcel Prevost’s protest against an unautho- rised American translation of his unspeakable Demi-Vierges.” The translation, it is true, is pub- lished in America, but the translator, Mr. Arthur Hornblow, is an Englishman. H. R. *– ~ --> sº- ~~ NOTES AND NEWS. THINK that I may very properly make this the place for a brief note concerning the distinction lately conferred upon me. It is, in fact, a national recognition of this Society and of its work in advancing the dignity and the inde- pendence of literature. The Earl of Rosebery in his letter to me expressly pointed out that this distinction was offered in recognition of services which, he kindly says, have been rendered by me to the dignity of literature. These humble services could only be effective through such an organisation as our own. It is, therefore, the Society itself which has, for the first time, received recognition. We have also to chronicle the same distinction conferred upon our chairman, Sir William Martin Conway. The fact that he is our chairman, in addition to the many achievements by which he has lifted himself above the heads of his fellows, may be taken as having had its weight. Last, but not least, is to be noted, as very suggestive of new departure, the same distinction bestowed upon a poet—Sir Lewis Morris.  ## p. (#367) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. I3 In the lamented death of Lord Pembroke the Society has lost one of its strongest friends. Lord Pembroke was a member of our council; he attended the meetings of council—which are few ; he was present at several of our public meetings; he took the chair for us at one of our dinners; and he always showed the greatest interest in our work and aims. In a recent “interview,” which appeared in the Daily Chronicle, Mr. Hall Caine gave public utterance, for the first time, to a suggestion which has been in the minds of many, and is now being talked of freely. “The authors,” he said, “who have the hearts of the public would’—under certain circumstances—“ have to do as Ruskin did—create new publishers—or else attempt the perhaps not impossible task of doing without publishers altogether, and going direct to the booksellers.” This is what is whispered or spoken outright. What is to prevent, if authors choose, the opening of an office, with a manager paid on Commission, and not allowed to publish on his own account P The thing is perfectly plain and perfectly simple. For my own part I hope— though my hope is not, I confess, so strong as formerly—that the old machinery will continue, but adjusted to altered conditions. All that we demand as a preliminary to any serious attempt to settle the question is the recognition of four points which no honest man can, for very shame, refuse, viz.: - I. No secret profits—i.e., no falsifying of a CCOUnts. 2. No charge unless of money actually paid—as no charge for advertisements except those paid for ; all discounts to be entered in the books, &c. 3. Open accounts—i.e., an author to see the account books which concern himself. 4. A clear understanding of what the agree- ment leaves to either party in the event of SUICCéSS. I have submitted these points to many business men. Their opinion has uniformly been the same. If anyone in the City, they say, should dare to object to any such conditions between himself and his partner or fellow venturer in any enterprise, he would be shown the door instantly. If, therefore, we find that a certain publisher is constantly vomiting charges of this and of that against the Society or any of its committee; if he further learns that this publisher is one of those who still falsify their accounts, keep the books dark, and persevere in the bad old ways of treating the author as their humble dependent, it is surely our plain and obvious duty at least to avoid that person; not to give him our books; and not to admit him to our society. Do we not owe so much—it is not much—to the cause of literature, as well as our own self-respect P. This is one of the points which we ought to cultivate— the absolute social boycotting of the dishonest and the tricky publisher. Here is a case, not of dishonesty, nor of tricki- ness, but one which exposes the way in which certain publishers have come to regard their own rights over a book. The man in question was interviewed by a certain paper, and he wept over the wickedness and the greediness of the un- speakable author. The case of wicked greed was this. He produced a book by a highly popular, though, perhaps, unspeakable, author. This author took a royalty of eighteenpence out of a nominal six shillings. How did the case stand P The figures are not to be denied. They are as follows: The average price of the book to the trade is s. 6d. 3 The cost, with advertising, is less than a shil- ling—say I I d. The author receives Is. 6d. for every copy sold. The publisher receives Is. Id. This man said that he must first subtract the “establishment expenses” and, these all deducted, he was left only sixpence. The “expenses” therefore amount to about as much—say 31250 for the one book, which had a sale of about 50,000 copies, and is still going on. Really, when one looks at the modest exterior of this publisher's establishment, one is surprised that one book can cost so much merely to manage, without counting the production. Therefore, the publisher having had no risk whatever—having simply used the machinery of a small office, and ordered the advertisements—gets 31250 for himself by his own showing. And he goes on to say that things are coming to such a pass—i.e., when a publisher can make no more than £1250 for himself out of one book—that “the successful author will find no publisher willing to undertake his books at the price he demands.” What? Not for twelve hundred and fifty pounds? Really Here is self sacrifice But is not this demanding almost too much of a credulous public P As for “establishment expenses,” the question will have to be argued out. For my own part, I should begin by arguing that the bookseller's and the author’s “establishment expenses” must be allowed as well as the publisher's. The former, clearly, has rent and assistants and taxes to pay : and he has also the very considerable risk of  ## p. (#368) ################################################ 14 THE AUTHOR. unsold stock. The latter—the author—has at least the rent of his study, which is his office; his shorthand clerk; his agent; his typewriting; the books he must buy ; the journeys he must take. For instance, I once wrote a little book on Captain Cook. It was one of Macmillan's series, for which T received a hundred guineas. The price was, I dare say, quite as much as the book was worth, commercially. I do not complain at all about the price. I was very glad to write the book for other reasons apart from the small cheque. Now, this book took me down to York- shire twice; and once to a certain cathedral city to see a certain clergyman, who had information of a kind previously unpublished, and very useful for the book. I had to pay for the copying of a previously unpublished log. I had to get a good deal of typewriting done. All these were “esta- blishment expenses,” and they amounted, I reckoned up, to about £45. But it never entered my head to charge these expenses, although they swallowed up nearly half the little cheque. If, however, the practice of charging for “establish- ment expenses” is allowed to one of the three persons named, I shall argue that it must be allowed to all. It seems likely that we shall have a good deal of talk upon these subjects before long, perhaps with some results. The booksellers, whose case is really hard, seem waking up. One of them, Mr. Burleigh, wrote to the Times saying, with great bitterness, that authors and publishers between them are killing the bookseller. Sir William Conway pointed out in an able letter that authors, at least, are innocent of any such action or intention. As a matter of fact, the alleged Squeezing by agents, which has by no means as yet even reached the old half-profit system, is a thing of the last half dozen years, and no change whatever, as Mr. Burleigh must know very well, has been made of late in the relations of bookseller and publisher. The booksellers, in fact, if they only knew it, are the real masters of the situation. They should combine, but not to run up the prices of books. They should combine, leaving to each perfect freedom as to the price at which he would sell his books. upon me I will show him certain other objects for which booksellers could combine with very excellent results to themselves. But if he calls he must not begin by calling authors bad names: first, because I won’t allow it; next, because we don't deserve these bad names; and lastly, because calling names doesn’t advance matters. At the Authors’ Club on the 27th ult. Rider Haggard was the guest of the evening. If there And if Mr. Burleigh will call was wanted a proof that literary men are not, as a rule, devoured with jealousy and hatred towards each other, it was provided in the recep- tion which he met with at that dinner. A friend of many readers of this paper is dead. George Bentley died last week at the age of sixty- seven. He had long been suffering from asthma, which drove him every winter to take refuge at Tenby. Courtly, genial, kindly, he was the model of the old-fashioned publisher of the most honour- able kind. Nor was he without literary ability, as was shown by the occasional papers which he con- tributed to his own magazine, Temple Bar, of which he was for nearly thirty years the editor, These essays he collected into a little volume, which he published some years ago, with what success I know not. His magazine continues, I believe, to enjoy a wide and increasing circulation; and it has always been remarkable for its excel- lent novels, written chiefly by ladies, and for its biographical sketches. At this moment, that of going to press, it is impossible to do justice to the memory of George Bentley. In our next number I hope that one who knew him intimately will communicate to the Author a longer notice of this kindliest of publishers. I hear also at the same moment that James Dykes Campbell, the author of the “Life of Coleridge,” is dead. It was his one book, but it is the life of Coleridge. No other memoir of the philosopher-poet will be written, unless it is one based upon Campbell's. The author was for many years a partner in the house of Ireland, Fraser, and Co., in Mauritius; he was always, from boyhood. attracted towards literary pursuits; and when I first made his acquaintance, now thirty-two years ago, was already deeply interested in every- thing that concerned Coleridge and his friends. He was fortunate in being able to retire from business soon after forty with a moderate fortune, which enabled him to live as he pleased, and to take up in earnest the literary life without being shackled by the necessity of providing the daily bread. To this enviable independence we owe the “Life of Coleridge"—a book which contains the research, the travels, and the patient labour of years. He died at a comparatively early age, but his life was happy, fortunate, and successful. To have written that one book, which will remain long after the perishable work of more popular writers, to be inseparably associated with the name of Coleridge, is an achievement which by itself makes a successful career. WALTER BESANT.  ## p. (#369) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 15 ANNUAL DINNER OF THE INCORPORATED SOCIETY OF AUTHORS, R. MOBERLY BELL presided last even- ing (May 23) at the Holborn Restaurant, over the annual dinner of this Society, at which about 180 ladies and gentlemen were present, including the American Ambassador, Sir F. and Lady Jeune, Mr. A. W. a Beckett, Mrs. Oscar Beringer, the Rev. Canon Bell, D.D., Mr. Mackenzie Bell, Mr. C. F. Clifford Borrer, Mr. J. Theodore Bent, Mrs. Brightwen, Mr. Walter Besant, Miss Marie Belloc, Mrs. Moberly Bell, Professor C. A. Buchheim, Mr. F. H. Balfour, yet I am not here to ask absolution, to plead Mrs. H. C. Black, Dr. Sutherland Black, Mr. Poulteney Bigelow, Miss Mathilde Blind, Mr. Henry Blackburn, Lieutenant-Colonel Campbell, Sir W. T. Charley, Q.C., Mr. Edward Clodd, Mr. W. Martin Conway, Mrs. Conway, Mr. Moncure T). Conway, Miss E. R. Chapman, Mr. A. Chatto, Mr. and Mrs. Horace Cox, Miss Beatrice Chambers, Mr. and Mrs. Hall Caine, Mr. Ralph Hall Caine, Major Seton Churchill, the Earl of Desart, Mrs. Gerard Ford, Miss L. Friswell, Sir William Fraser, Mr. Harry Furniss, Mr. Edmund Gosse, Mrs. Aylmer Gowing, Dr. R. Garnett, Mr. Upcott Gill, Mme. Sarah Grand, Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins, Dr. G. Harley, F.R.S., Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. Isaac Henderson, Pre- bendary Harry Jones, Mr. C. F. Keary, Miss Florence Marryatt, Lord Monkswell, Mrs. Millie, Mr. S. B. G. M'Kinney, the Rev. C. H. Middleton- Wake, Mr. Justin C. MacCartie, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Norman, Miss E. Pitcairn, Mr. W. H. Pollock, the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, the President of the Institute of Journalists, Lord Reay, Mr. W. Fraser Rae, Mr. John Rae, Mr. J. Morgan Richards, Mr. J. Ashby Sterry, Mr. A. M. M. Stedman, Mr. M. H. Spiel- mann, the Rev. Clementi-Smith, Mr. Douglas Sladen, Mrs. Burnett Smith, Dr. Burnett Smith, Miss Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. H. M. Stanley, Miss L. Shaw, Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Sheldon, Mr. Clement R. Shorter, Sir Henry Thompson, Mrs. Alec Tweedie, Mr. Andrew W. Tuer, Mr. G. Herbert Thring, Mrs. Thring, Miss Grace Toplis, Miss Tobin, Miss G. Traver, Mr. H. Townsend (New Pork Herald), Mr. Thomas Townend, Mr. William Tirebuck, Mr. P. Villars (Figaro), Mrs. Neville Walford, Mr. C. T. Hagberg Wright, Mr. Walter, Mr. Sydney F. Walker, Mr. Theodore Watts, and Mr. Wesselitsky. The following is a report of the speeches:— The CHAIRMAN.—Your Excellency, my Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen: I ask you to drink to that toast which needs no words——“The Queen.” The CHAIRMAN.—Your Excellency, my Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen : Before I propose the toast of the evening, I think it incumbent on me to offer some explanation of my apparent pre- sumption in venturing to address from this chair a Society of Authors. I am painfully conscious that I stand, as it were, in the footprints of men whose shoelatchets I am unworthy to unloose; that I address authors whose names are “household words,” and that to most of you to whom I am utterly unknown, except by name, if by that, I must seem to have rashly and unnecessarily placed myself amongst that vast majority of man- kind who “rush in where angels fear to tread.” guilty, nor even to urge extenuating circum- stances, for if on my own merits I have barely right to ask admission as a simple member of the Society of Authors—for I hold that the term “author’’ is not too lightly to be applied to every scribbler (hear, hear) — if I have still less the right to speak with the authority which befits your chairman, yet I ask you to see in this chair to-night not my own insignificant personality, but rather the representative, if an inadequate one, of that great author who, though anonymous, may yet in some respects claim to be the greatest author of all time, the Press. (Hear, hear.) I am deeply sensible that the Society of Authors, in asking me to take the chair to-night, have been anxious to pay a graceful and generous compliment not to myself, not to any section of the Press, but to the Press as a whole, to the Press in the widest acceptation of the term, to that power, great for good and evil—I trust greater for good than for evil—which owes its existence to a large extent to the co-operation of authors, and to which authors themselves some- times owe a little. (Hear, hear.) I speak of the Press as an author because I like to think of every portion in it as forming a part of one individual whole, animated by one common object, choosing, it must be, different ways of arriving at that object, quarrelling, it may be, within Our body corporate, but yet, if differing in our means, never differing in our end, and that end I take to be to voice without fear or favour, without bias or prejudice, above all without personal motive— (hear, hear)—that which we honestly believe to be the public intelligence and the public con- science. I call the Press a great author because to ninety-nine hundredths of readers authors are known not by their individuality, but by their Works, and I think that even in this distinguished assembly of authors it will hardly be denied that the Press, if not the greatest, is, at all events of all authors, the most prolific and the most voluminous. (Hear, hear, and laughter.) The  ## p. (#370) ################################################ I6 THE AUTHOR. most popular amongst you count your readers by thousands—we count ours by tens and hundreds of thousands. The most industrious amongst you can only write—well, ten or a dozen volumes in the course of a year. (Laughter.) We publish that every day. (Laughter.) The most versatile amongst you cannot claim to be a profound authority on more than three or four subjects. The author I represent is omniscient. (Laughter.) . He speaks with profound authority on every subject and at the very shortest notice. We write tragedy in our police courts, we write comedy in our Parliamentary reports, and fiction in our advertisements (laughter); but the Press, though it uses the first personal plural, is never egotistic, and our business to-night is with the Society of Authors. There are two societies of authors. To the greater it is given to but few in a generation, or even in a century to belong; but the long list of immortals, which begins, perhaps, with Homer and will not finish, with the names of your two presidents, the late Lord Tennyson and Mr. George Meredith. If few can attain all can aspire, and you and the world will be better for the aspiration, and I think it fitting in proposing the toast of what must be an ephemeral society of authors not to altogether omit mention of that great immortal Society, of whose works it was said more than four hundred years ago “they are the masters who instruct us without rods or ferrules, without harsh words or anger, without money or clothes. If you approach them they are not asleep. If inves- tigating you interrogate them they conceal nothing, if you mistake them they never grumble, if you are foolish they never laugh at you.” The other society of authors is Our noble selves. If we cannot illuminate all time we shed a very brilliant light upon the pre- sent generation. We are a most virtuous society, the most virtuous that ever existed. Imake that assertion on the unimpeachable authority of a committee of the society itself, for we have been informed in the public press that no member of this society is greedy—(laughter)—inordinately greedy. That remark was not made in reference to this banquet. It referred to the greed of pecuniary profit. I do not know that it is a serious charge to bring against anyone that he should be greedy of the full remuneration which he can honestly claim for his work (hear, hear), but, however that may be, we are devoid of even that, and therefore I am sure I am justified in saying that we are a peculiarly virtuous Society, that we have a strong sense of virtue —whether we have an equal sense of humour, that, as one of our Society hath said, is quite another story (laughter)—but we have great claims upon your goodwill. We have led a respectable, useful, and not utterly obscure existence, for more than eleven years. Originally started, I believe, for the protection of the unfledged authors from the wiles of those animals. —ferae naturae—who prowl in the field of litera- ture in the guise of the Profession we all honour and respect, the publisher, you now number twelve hundred members, all authors more or less. distinguished, more than half of whom have sought the assistance of the committee : and we have another claim—we are co-operative and self supporting. We do not send round the hat. (Laughter.) We ask nothing of our visitors, except to dine with us, and that which is, perhaps, I admit, already a severe tax, to listen. to our speeches, but even that is not compulsory. (Laughter.) I have spoken of your past and present. Allow me a few words as to your future. As a member of your Society, as one whom you have peculiarly honoured to-night, I naturally wish you a long and prosperous career, but I fear that my hopes are stronger than my faith. I am credibly informed that many of you neglect the latest gospel of labour. Some of you work more than eight hours a day, many of you have other professions, and are therefore out- siders; others, I am told, are so devoted to literature that they work without exacting a living wage, and then, worst of all, you do not each of you insist upon exactly the same payment— pounds, shillings, and pence, per word, or per page, or per week. (Laughter). Well, if these horrible charges are true, it is my duty to tell you that you are blacklegs, and that you must expect in a very short time that either the House of Commons or the London County Council, or one of those numerous institutions which exist to restore to us the beneficent socialism of the sixteenth century, will come down upon you, and they will, perhaps, establish a ministry or a department for the protection of the authors, and thus will destroy the reason of your existence. The department will collect statistics, they will be able to say that two, or possibly three, men are studying at the same time the same period of history, that possibly half a dozen young ladies are writing novels, in each case the motif of which may be the gentle passion, and it would be very easy for them to point out that this is an enormous waste of labour, that it could be done much more cheaply and much more expeditiously by a ministry of literature, with the help of assistant secretaries for prose, poetry, and so forth. This is not utterly irrelevant, because in the past you have fought the pseudo publisher, otherwise the pirate. For the future your object is to combat pseudo philanthropy, otherwise Socialism  ## p. (#371) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 17 —it is the only way by which you can keep the Society alive, and by which we in the Society can exist. I have to associate with this toast the name of your chairman, Mr. William Martin Conway, a gentleman who has climbed to dis- tinction on the Alps, the Apennines, and the Himalayas; who is equally prominent as an art lecturer, mountaineer, author, and who now desires to enter into that singular assembly con- sisting of commoners who desire to become peers, and peers who desire to become commoners. I am peculiarly unable to speak of Mr. Conway; luckily you know him better than I do. I am unable, because my opportunities have never led me much into the study of art, and my inclina- tions have never led me to mountaineering, except with the friendly help of a locomotive. But there is just one point for which Mr. Conway is very remarkable, and upon which I am able to speak with the highest authority. Mr. Conway is a man of a most extraordinarily good judgment, and ex- traordinary good taste. He has brought the proofs of that here to-night, and they sit on my left hand. (Laughter and hear, hear.) Ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to drink to the toast of the Incorporated Society of Authors, associated with the name of Mr. W. M. Conway. M.R. W. M. ConwAY.—Mr. Chairman, Your Excellency, My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen : I have often thought that this annual dinner of the Society of Authors might be made a very much more amusing function than it is. We un- fortunately meet only to dine. We don’t meet, I am thankful to say, to collect money, neither do we meet to sell the products of our labour. I have sometimes thought that if on these occasions every member of the Society of Authors attended with his manuscripts, and if we invited the publishers of London to dine with us, and if, after duly baptising the whole show in champagne, we held an auction, that the frolic would be some- thing worth attending. (Laughter.) However, you have drunk the health of the Society of Authors, and it is for me to attempt to justify that some- what rash act. Sir, the Society of Authors is at all events an active society—when it has nothing else to do it falls upon Mr. Gosse (laughter), we fill up odd moments by quarrelling amongst our- selves, and when we get a chance we fall upon a common enemy. Squabbling is said to be a sign of life, and I am sure that the Authors’ Society, throughout the whole course of its not too long existence, has been engaged in one successive series of squabbles. It was once my pleasure—at least, my duty—to be the secretary, or, rather, to run, a thing called the Art Congress for the three years of its chequered existence. During that time I attained a somewhat minute and peculiar dinner. acquaintance with the attitude of the artistic mind in the face of business. Since I have been intimately associated with the Society of Authors I have had proofs—derived from this former experience—I have had proofs that the author is really an artist. I find that in many matters of business the author approaches the situation with that kind of attitude which is distinctly characteristic of the artist who abuses everyone all round, but more especially his own attorney (laughter), and we who have sat for some time on the committee of this Society are now thoroughly accustomed to the artistic attitude of authors—we have become so accustomed to it that unless we are abused by the members we don’t consider that we can be possibly doing our duty. (Taughter.) There is my friend Mr. Besant, who at intervals boils with indignation. I say that this boiling with indig- nation on the part of our founder, Mr. Besant, is the great source and origin, and, I hold, the moving force, that has created and maintained this Society. (Applause and laughter.) Unfor- tunately for myself, I am unable so to boil when I hear that an author has entered into a ridiculous agreement. Mr. Besant does the boiling with indignation, and it is for me to advise him to carry out his contract. It seems to me that the first thing that an author who has played the perfect fool in the matter of the making of his agreement has to do is to suffer the penalty of his folly for the time being, and to afterwards go to the Society of Authors to guard him in the future against similar blunders. (Hear, hear.) Another member of the Society wrote to us the other day and said he would like to become a member of the Society, not because he intended to make any use of it, but because he wanted to have a guinea's worth of fighting for his money. We elected that gentleman immediately (laughter), being, I hope, a sporting committee, and we have since been sitting around waiting for the fray. (Laughter.) Un- fortunately the only sport we have been able to have out of him has been a letter communicated to the public press in which he abused us for dining here to-night. (Loud laughter.) Well, we have heard something of late about book- sellers, and I had a sort of idea of talking about them myself, but it occurred to me that it would lead to a disquisition on political economy which 1 feared would be rather a heavy morsel after So we will pass by the booksellers, and come to our other friends the publishers. Gentle- men, our relations with publishers—the relations, that is to say, with the main body of authors with whom we come in contact—appear at the present time to be highly satisfactory, for the number of disputes—most of them small ones — that has been brought to our notice of late has been ex-  ## p. (#372) ################################################ I 8 THE AUTHOR. tremely low, and I conclude that, through the medium of the Society of Authors, publishers and authors have come to understand each other a little better than before, and this common understanding has been brought about by the common recognition of each side of its own folly and its own interest, and I believe that hereafter we shall find that the Society, far from being a necessarily militant body, will be in friendly contact with that body of men who are really its partners, and should be its allies. I believe that in future we shall find that we are attaining more and more to a common understanding, and are able better and better to work to our common end. But at the present time we are united — we and the publishers are assuredly united in One common cause, for we are threatened by a common danger. I allude, of course, to the ques- tion of the Canadian copyright. (Hear, hear.) There, gentlemen, is a question which has arisen recently in an acute form, and which, if there had not been a Society of Authors to take it up, would assuredly have been settled in a manner that would have done the greatest possible injury to the interests of British authors. I trust that, owing to the vigorous ini iative that we have taken in this matter, no injurious decision will be come to; but there, at all events, is a matter which threatens authors and publishers alike, and in which both are equally and keenly interested. (Hear, hear.) Well, gentlemen, I think I have said enough, and more than enough, to justify in having drunk to the health of yourselves—to the Society of Authors —and I trust that in the coming year, until we meet here again, we shall go on along the lines we have adopted, and shall advance in the pro- motion of those just interests which the Society exists to promote. (Loud applause.) The RIGHT Hon. SIR FRANCIs H. JEUNE, P.C., in proposing the toast of “Literature,” said— Mr. Moberly Bell, Your Excellency, My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen: I have the honour to propose to you the toast of “Literature,” asso- ciated with the name of Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins. (Here a band, playing in a neigh- bouring room, opportunely interrupted with a startling burst of music, which, to the merriment of the company, seemed specially designed to pay honour to the toast and to the name of Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins.) I could hardly imagine, sir, a more inspiriting incident, under what must be admitted to be circumstances of some difficulty, then the sound of that distant, but, I hope, not distressing band. (Laughter.) But I admit I do acquire some comfort and some consolation in entering upon the task which has devolved upon me, for I presume that I have been selected to propose this toast because I never wrote a book, and because my contributions to ephemeral literature have been so few as to be a negligable quantity, and I am quite content to be ranked in that large class of meritorious persons whose only business with newspapers is to read them, and whose only additional duty with regard to books is to buy them. (Laughter.) But, sir, I think it is not unfitting that a man whose life has been spent in the pursuit of a laborious pro- fession should make his acknowledgments to the charms of literature, because it is he, and persons such as he, who owe to literature the happiest relaxation of their lives, with an occupation that never wearies, and with pleasures that never pall. (Applause.) But, Sir, a prudent lawyer never makes an admission except for the purpose of avoiding an inconvenient inquiry, and I am not prepared on this occasion, especially after the speech of the chairman, to admit a complete dis- severence between literature and law. It is quite true, sir, that in those legal treatises in which we delight, or are supposed to delight, you cannot find those charms of literature other than such as may be obtained by clearness of style and lucidity of arrangement. It was not, Sir, always so. We have, I am afraid, in later days changed for the worse. Old writers allowed themselves greater license. Lord Coke, in commenting on a mis- taken and earlier author, after his observations proceeded to a sort of obituary notice of it, and said: “He lived without love, and died without pity, save that of those who thought the pity was that he had lived so long.” (Loud laughter.) Sir, I regret to say characterise the personal qualifications of our predecessors, however erroneous we may think their notions to have been. But, Sir, the connection between Litera- ture and Law is, I venture to think, a close one. I don’t claim that many have found their place on the roll of fame, and I do not forget that England contributed Lord Bacon, or that Sir Walter Scott hailed at once from the land of lawyers and the land of Scotland, but I admit that the roll of fame is short. But when we come to that branch of literature which your chairman represents, there, I venture to say, a wholly different position may be taken up. Your chairman has told you that every day some twelve volumes—I think it was— of ephemeral literature are produced. Well, Sir, I think that we lawyers contribute our full share to that. I believe that public speakers attain a length in the columns of the daily papers propor- tionate to their eminence—that the first-class man is allowed to say all he has said at full length, that the second class are those who are allowed to say a part of what they have said, and that the third class consists of those who have to content themselves with reading what they ought to have  ## p. (#373) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. IQ said. (Doud laughter.) Now, Sir, I think that we may claim the first of those places. I recollect a short time ago—well, a time ago— reading in the same day a judgment by a certain Lord Chancellor—whose name I decline to mention (laughter)—and a political speech by the same authority. The judgment, Sir, occupied two columns and a half — the speech occupied something less than half a column. I do not know whether the political and judicial utterances were of value in direct relation to their length, but I think it must be admitted that in his legal capacity the Chancellor made a larger contribution to journalism. than ever he could or did as a politician. (Laughter.) Well, your chairman has reminded you that there is another side where we may contribute largely, at least to daily literature. He has told you that the Courts produce at once tragedies and come- dies, that literature from the time of Shakespeare down to those of Molière, Trollope, and Dickens have been always ready to produce these scenes, and I am sorry to say they are chiefly charac- terised by a sense of humour rather at the ex- pense of the lawyers, or by some extremely bad law. (Laughter.) But, Sir, I am not altogether surprised, or at all surprised, that literature finds a field for its exertions in that direction. A trial combines many elements of interest. There is the continual display of gladiatorial skill. There is the constant revelation of incident, and there is the glorious uncertainty of result. A famous trial seems to combine the various attractions of an interesting cricket match with those of a suc- cessful drama. (Laughter.) I think, Sir, for these contributions journalism ought to be thank- ful. It may well be that there are some parts of these contributions which could be better spared, and I think this is no unfitting occasion, speaking as I do to an audience composed both of men and women, and to an audience highly capable of judging on such a subject, to express a respect for those journals which, exercising their independent judgment, have thought it right to refuse publication to matter which, in their opinion, ought to be suppressed. (Applause.) But, Sir, I am quite conscious that those journals who practise that abnegation do so at considerable loss to themselves, and they deserve respect because it may well be that they give advantages to less scrupulous rivals. I should be glad, Sir, if it were not so. I think it impossible that the proceedings in Courts of Justice should be held otherwise than in public, and from personal experience I have no reason whatever to complain of the proceedings of the public Press, but I am aware that there are some papers who cannot put a sufficient check upon themselves, and I confess I should be glad if it were possible to provide that some authority, responsible and cognisant in the matter, should be allowed to forbid the publication of that which ought not to be published. I think that would be for the interests of morality, and I believe it would be for the interests of journalism, because I think it would tend to raise the lower class of journals, perhaps against their will, but still to raise them to the standard of the highest (applause). Sir, I approach the task of saying something about literature—and it has fallen to my lot to do it more than once—with a somewhat uneasy feeling in one respect, and the presence of your chairman brings about that feeling. I was once in the chairman’s presence, and the presence of the American Minister reminds me of it, and I was once rash enough to say that journalism was “literature in a hurry,” and after I had said it I received so many remonstrances and read so much criticism in the papers that I almost began to think that my poor little obser- vation was original. (Laughter.) Mr. George Augustus Sala told me it was not true that all newspapers were produced in the small hours of the morning. An authority, Mr. Arthur Walter, in a judicious and even judicial spirit, said that a part of literature was so produced and part was not ; but, Sir, our chairman this evening has reinforced me because he has told me that it is the great merit of the Press to produce its matter at the smallest possible notice. There- fore I decline the white sheet, I am not prepared to do penance for the observation, and I still venture to maintain that journalism is literature in a hurry. (Taughter.) You attend the theatres on the first night, and you see the busy pencils all around you, and you read the criticism next morning. It is brilliant criticism, but is it not brilliant criticism in a hurry P (Laughter.) There is a story told of Mr. Delane, coming down late at night to his club full of the account he had heard of the illness of Mr. Disraeli. It was said that Mr. Disraeli was seriously ill—even danger- ously ill—and Mr. Delane's terror and regret were extreme. He said to everyone “Have you heard the terrible news, the awful news P” His friends heard him somewhat surprised, and someone said “No doubt it is very sad and very sudden, but I never knew you had such an admiration for Mr. Disraeli,” and Mr. Delane said “Oh no, it is not that at all, but here it is ten o’clock at night and I have not got a word written about him. (Laughter.) Now, sir, I daresay that if Mr. Disraeli had then died there would, after all, have appeared a brilliant and complete biography of him, but would it not have been biography in a hurry P  ## p. (#374) ################################################ 2O THE AUTHOR. Sir, I have the greatest possible respect for the leading articles of the Times; I think they are very full of good sense, of profundity and wisdom— and I nearly always agree with them. (Laughter.) But, sir, I have never heard that it was given to many men in the world, to quote Mr. Russell Lowell, “lifelong convictions to extemporise,” and when I have read these articles I have sometimes thought it is wisdom in a hurry. Well, sir, I hope I have justified that phrase. it is—as I trust it is not—disparaging to journalism, it is certainly not disparaging to literature. (Applause). I say all honour ought to be paid to the laborious student by whom our great works have, with toil and labour, been pro- duced; and, sir, what is more, the whole history of the literature of this country is the history of a literature that has not been in a hurry. The remarkable feature about it is that century after century the tree has put forth flowers ever new, although of varied beauty, and has produced fruits ever new, although of varied value. Well, sir, I think that is a great comfort to which we look. I am sorry to hear from Mr. Conway that authors have their domestic and external difficulties. They apparently have difficulties both with their home and foreign policy. (Laughter.) They apparently have difficulties with the publisher and with the |bookseller; and the trio of publishers, booksellers, and authors form a combination which does not altogether appear to be a happy family. I can- not, Sir, offer them the consolation of a lawyer, because I am afraid that the instinct of a lawyer is that where three people are quarrelling there must be something very substantial to be quarrel- ling about. consolation of the distressed agriculturist. The relations between them appear to be very much the same as those of landlord and farmer and the labourer, and I think it is true that whatever else has happened in these unfortunate difficulties which have arisen in that sphere of life, whatever else has happened it is not the labourer who has suffered. Sir, there may be other difficulties and dangers which beset the labourer. It may be that at the present time some clouds rest upon his prospects. It may be that writers such as Mr. Max Nordau, in pointing out degeneracy, apart from matters of great exaggeration, put their fingers upon some points of truth; it may be, sir, that in an age which apparently is unable to elect a Poet Laureate, that there is something wrong with the poets or with the age ; but if some of these matters tend to a foreboding I think we may look at the past of our literature, and take comfort in the fact that literature is the best antidote to pessimism ; and if it be true that literature, high, and pure, and national, filled the At any rate, if Perhaps, sir, I may offer them the “spacious times of great Elizabeth,” it is equally true that the sounds of that literature have often echoed since and echo still. Sir, I have great pleasure in connecting with this toast the name of my friend, Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins. I had almost said my relative, because he is, I am glad to think, connected with my legal brother, the brilliant and distinguished Sir Henry Hawkins. At any rate, I am sure that in Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins, not even Max Nordau himself, in his most scientific moments, could discover the stigma of degeneracy. It was no decadent, I think, that produced the weird and startling fiction of the “Prisoner of Zenda,” or the raillery of the “Dolly Dialogues,” or the easy sarcasm and startling incident of his last effort “The Man of Mark.” Mr. Hawkins has, I hope, himself made a mark upon the literature of the day, and I hope that he will gain for himself a notable place in the literature of the country. (Applause.) r. ANTHONY HoPE HAWKINs, replying to the toast, said—Mr. Chairman, Sir Francis Jeune, Your Excellency, My Lords, Ladies, and Gentle- men : I regret for some reasons that one who pursues the branch of literature that I do should have been called upon to reply to this toast. Almost the first remark that I heard when I came into this room was the question of why I should be selected to reply to this toast. Gentle- men, I am unable to answer the question, but I am, after all, glad that it is so, because it has given me the opportunity and the pleasure of listening to the kindly and generous words which Sir Francis Jeune has spoken of me, but I was afraid that it would foster that vanity to which novelists, I understand, are prone. Gentlemen, that is an unjust charge. We are very conscious of one another's defects. (Laughter.) And if you were aware of the dispassionate consideration, in a very limited amount of time, we bring to bear upon One another’s writings, you would not consider that we unduly exalted our branch of literature. The fact is that we authors are somewhat in the position of ladies, who, believing themselves sus- pected of beauty, take refuge in an exaggerated appreciation of the charms of others, to which they have not paid much attention. (Laughter.) Mr. Conway, as became his position, did not speak in terms of extravagant eulogy of the Organisation of which he is the active chief, but we who occupy less responsible positions may speak more freely of what we consider our merits and our mission. For my part, I look forward to a great mission for this Society, and I am prepared to endure as many jokes as the wit of our opponents may suggest for the price of taking it seriously. Our primary object is to  ## p. (#375) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2 I abolish Grub-street. (Hear, hear.) But I think there is another, and I think that the committee of this Society did well to think that there was another—and that is that in time, and as this Society justifies itself in the eyes of the world, it may establish not onlv a Court of Appeal for distressed authors, but also a court of honour for its own members. (Hear, hear.) If we look round at the other professions—I don’t need to say “learned professions,” for it needs no learning to write books (laughter)—you will See corporate bodies existing to which members of the profession willingly submit their disputes, and by whose decrees they willingly allow their conduct to be governed. Gentlemen, I believe that that reputation and position is not beyond the prospects of this Society. (Applause.) I think that the Society will live above criticism, and we shall see it come to occupy that position to which, in my opinion, it has a right to aspire. We don’t want this Society to be merely a society for the prevention of cruelty to children (laughter)—that is a very laudable and excellent function, and a function with which this Society is employed from day to day, but we also wish it to be a Society to which its own members and our friends the enemy—the publisher—can come with confidence, sure that a dispassionate judgment will be taken, and sure that the Society will be as Severe towards the faults of its own members as upon those with whom members come into con- tact in the course of business. (Hear, hear). I think there is one more word that I ought to say before I sit down, for I should not be doing my duty, having the honour to reply for literature, if I did not say one word about the great loss which literature has suffered in the year gone by in the death of Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson. The romantic school of English fiction was deprived by his death of its acknow- ledged king and chief, and a personality was lost of rare thought and distinction and sweetness. It is not possible for most of us—I may say safely without offence that it is not possible for any of us—to hope to emulate Mr. Stevenson’s achievements, or claim to share his gifts. (Hear, hear.) . But we are many of us able to remember the kindness which he invariably showed to younger and less distinguished Writers, and we are all able to learn some- thing from the example of his high ideal, and the untiring, unresting energy with which he pursued it. So, sir, although we cannot stand on his high level, we may feast our eyes upon the high mountains that it is not for our feet to tread, and, with a thousand un- satisfied aspirations, rest at least in the tranquility of the satisfaction of our own little piece of . work done as well as we could do it. (Loud applause.) Mr. WALTER BESANT then proposed the toast of “The Visitors” in the following terms: Mr. Chairman, your Excellency, my Lords, ladies and Gentlemen,_I have to propose the toast of “The Visitors.” I am sure that at this late hour of the evening you will not think it shows any disrespect to our visitors if I give you this toast in a very few words. We have always been particu- larly happy and fortunate at all our dinners in the visitors who have done us the honour to attend, and on this occasion I think we are more fortunate than usual. For, first of all, we have with us this evening the American Ambassador. Wherever English authors are gathered together, on the rare occasions that they do assemble, it is only fit and right that America should be represented in the most adequate form possible, because those of us here, or in America, who are able to contribute anything towards literature at all, are doing it not only for America, but for both countries, and for all that vast world which comprises the English-speaking race. We have next with us the President of the Institute of Journalists, and I am sure that no one is more fittingly here, because literature and journalism so closely overlap that no one knows where one begins and the other ends. We have also with us the President of the Royal College of Surgeons, whom I take to repre- sent the literature of surgery. Then we have next with us representatives of the chief London papers, and some of the provincial ones, and we also have representatives from France, Australia, America, Italy, and from Russia, all gathered together as Our guests on this occasion. Law is represented not only by our own members who are lawyers, of whom we have many, but also by one of our judges, to whom you have already had the pleasure of listening. India is repre- sented by one who has administered a province, and lastly Africa is represented by a most dist nguished traveller—perhaps the most dis- tinguished traveller of any time or any country. I have therefore the pleasure and the honour, in the name of the Society, to we'come the visitors On this occasion, and I ask you to do honour to the toast, with which I couple the name of the American Ambassador. (Applause.) His Excellency the AMERICAN AMBAssADoR, replying to the toast, said: Mr. Chairman, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am deeply sensi- tive to the cordiality of your welcome. I am asked to respond for the guests of the English authors. The paradise of politicians is supposed to lie in a majority, and were Ia politician I should find my- self in the largest majority that the most hopeful politician could expect, for if I speak for the  ## p. (#376) ################################################ 22 THE AUTHOR. guests of the authors it is not for the little repre- sentative handful that have gathered round this charming board to-night, but it is for the count- less army of the vast majority of civilised men and women who have fed so well and so long at the tables of the authors, and have enjoyed the fine fruits of the authors’ wit and fancy. In order to enlarge the scope of Literature, the phrase was invented, “The Republic of Letters,” and yet I am inclined to take a leaf from the book of one of my countrymen, and let the American sailor, Captain Mahan (applause) show the superiority of sea power over land power, to call to your mind how Nelson, with the sea power of England, made the safety of England possible under Wellington at Waterloo. It is therefore upon the high seas of authorship and literature that I would ask you to embark : Far as the breeze can bear the ocean’s foam, Behold your empire, and survey your home. I don’t think that the land can hold the mind of man—it must embark upon the sea, and it must be wafted as the gales may blow—freely, unhesitatingly. Wherever genius shall direct the course, there the human mind must follow it. And so authors must become seafaring folk— they have been so, they must be so, and, coming from a country kindred in literature and in feeling to this—(loud applause)—I feel that literature forms the strongest bond between the two nations. (Applause.) You are free to freight your ship with what you will—with learning, with poesy, with prose, with wit, with fancy, with philosophy —you may freight your ship with what you will, and you may choose your course. You are not confined by hard dry land, but on the high seas of human feeling and human relations you steer your bark to what course you will, and whatever port you find open to the good things with which your vessel is freighted. There can be no such thing to-day as exclusion of the human mind— there can be no such thing as a pent-up author. If he is pent-up, depend upon it the bonds and shackles are found within his own mind. I am disposed to think of this empire of authorship and literature that there is no thing into which it does not enter, and over which it does not exert a potential control. In these islands, and everywhere else almost, there is great agricultural depression, and the question might be asked “What have authors to do with the tilling of ground, and what has literature to do with agri- culture ?” Now, I would put it to any clear- minded Scotchman, and I would put it also to his hard-headed English brother, what effect upon the principles of real estate in Scotland and in England has the literature of Sir Walter Scott had P Subtract that influence and let the calculation be made—how much poorer on the whole score of money value, of houses and lands, would the kingdom of Great Britain be without the mind and the soul of that magician. (Applause.) Why, Gentlemen, I would ask my friend Sir Francis Jeune whether there was not lately tried in the court over which he presides, a suit to avoid a contract for real estate upon the ground that a ghost inhabited the house that had been purchased, and whether Amy Robsart was not brought into court, and his purchase sought to be avoided, because the man found that Sir Walter had killed Amy Robsart in the wrong place P (Laughter.) Now, Gentlemen, if the ghosts of literature can be brought into court and have their money value essayed, what are we to say of the realities of literature, and of the power of authorship in our daily transactions? So that I think we can expand, by very easy efforts of logical and rational deduction, the touch of authorship and literature to everything that affects the happiness of men, women, and children the civilised world over. Thus you see that in attempting to answer for a small portion of your guests, I speak in the tongue of my own land—and, I suppose, with a certain inflection (“No, no,”) I may also say I speak yours—and I thank you most sincerely for the pleasure that we have derived from the Society of Authors to-night, and for the pleasure that all derive from the work of authors every- where. (Applause.) Mr. H. M. STANLEY then proposed the last toast of the evening, that of “The Chairman.” He said: Your Excellency, my Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,_-From what the American Minister has said just now, I gather that in behalf of the visitors here to-night he has expressed the feelings of pleasure of all your guests at being here this evening and I gather that they have enjoyed a great deal of pleasantness. To me this is a memorable evening, because it is the first time I have had the pleasure and honour of being at an Authors' dinner. From what Mr. Conway has stated it appears that there is a great deal of un- happiness sometimes within the circle of Authors, but I never expected to see any disturbance at an Authors' dinner; and if I were to express my own feelings I should describe them as being those of extreme felicity that I have the honour to sit at this table this evening. In fact, I am free to confess that, from what I have seen and heard of the party here present, a somewhat warmer feeling takes possession of me now than when I entered this hall, for you are all so modest and unassuming in manner—in fact this is the quietest public dinner I have ever been at ; but it seems to me that you do not carry in your bearing that  ## p. (#377) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 23 pride which we might have expected from children spoiled by the world’s applause. (Laughter). I have to propose the last toast of this evening. The fluency with which speeches have been deli- vered made me almost despair of being able to interest you at all, but I gather some confidence and comfort from the nature of my subject. You have heard your chairman—you have seen him for yourselves. You have heard a speech, weighted with good sense and humour, and you will take him, as I take him, to be more than a mere ornament for a banquet, and you may gauge his worth each one for yourselves. I do not think Mr. Moberly Bell has distinguished himself in the fields of fiction—of which there are so many representatives here this even- ing, ladies and gentlemen—but he has dis- tinguished himself in other fields of litera- ture. He has been away for many years in a distant land, as a narrator of facts, as a student of history, as an observer of political strategy, as an analyst of human motives. Week after week his letters have appeared in this country, and by them we were able to diagnose public feeling in that land. I dare say that he will submit to your superior 'gifts of divine imagination. He may not be able to raise a mortal to the skies, or bring an angel down to earth, like some of you can, but he can at least write most veracious political letters, and in his book “ Pharaohs and Fellahs '’ you will be able to find the keen discrimination and varied talents of a Plutarch. (Laughter.) I have known Mr. Moberly Bell for many years. Those who may only have been able to claim a slight acquaintance with him may be able to say that they would like to cultivate his acquaintance more closely, but I am sure those who are already possessed of his friendship can boast of a thing of which they are, and may well be proud. This is the gentleman to whose health I ask you to drink heartily—to his health and long life—and it is with all affection and sincerity that I give you “Our Chairman, Mr. Moberly Bell.” (Applause.) The CHAIRMAN.—Mr. Stanley, Your Excellency, My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen: I thought I had forgotten how to blush, but Mr. Stanley is an artist of the renaissance, and he has dis- covered the lost art. I never before heard myself compared with Plutarch, and I never knew half the great things I had done, but I attribute a great deal of what Mr. Stanley has said to an acquaintance of twenty-eight years, and I beg that you will take Mr. Stanley's remarks about myself in a very different way to what you would take his remarks upon other matters with which he is even more acquainted—that you will take it with a grain of salt. (Laughter.) As I was coming into this room I was told by a lady that the speech of the chairman in reply to his health was expected to be extremely witty. That would have appalled me—did appal me, until I sud- denly remembered what is the soul of wit. I therefore approach my task with that consolation in mind, and I have nothing more to do than to thank you very heartily for the support you have given me, for the way in which you have welcomed me, for the warmth with which you have drunk my health, and on behalf of the Society of Authors I thank everyone here for their presence to-night. (Applause.) The company then rose. ** * * g- ºr -se BOOK TALK. UTOBIOGRAPHICAL memoranda, were left by the late Lord Selborne, and are now in course of preparation for issue. The work will be published by Messrs. Macmillan. Mr. George Barlow has written a story of artistic life, styled “Woman Regained,” which will appear shortly from the Roxburghe Press. Two art works of importance are announced by Messrs. Geo. Bell and Sons for publication in the autumn. One is on the paintings of Velasquez, and is being brought out by Mr. R. A. M. Steven- son, the eminent art critic, who is also cousin of the late Robert Louis Stevenson. The other con- cerns Sir Frederick Leighton, and among the hundred reproductions of his pictures which it will contain will be that of “Cimabue,” by per- mission of Her Majesty. Mr. Ernest Rhys has written a biography of the P.R.A. for the work, while an appreciation of him as artist is from the pen of Mr. F. S. Stephens. A technical dictionary of sea terms, phrases, and words used in the English and French languages has been compiled by Mr. William Pirrie, and will be issued shortly from the house of Messrs. Crosby Tockwood and Son. M. Alphonse Daudet, who has, of course, been the centre of attraction for literary London during May, is writing the story of his youth—or, rather, he is telling it to his intimate friend, Mr. Robert H. Sherard, who will put it into form and write it. For “Premier Voyage—Premier Mensonge ’’ is to be published in English, and the work of collaboration has been begun. Works relating to the Far East come just now not singly but in battalions. Another book on Rorea has just been published under the title of “Quaint Korea,” the writer being Mrs. Louise Jordan Miln, who is known for her larger work  ## p. (#378) ################################################ 24 THE AUTHOR. “When We Were Strolling Players in the East;” Mr. Lafcadio Hearn will shortly make a further addition to the stock with “Out of the East : Reveries and Studies in New Japan,” with the same publishers, Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co. Japan is also the subject of a volume of letters by Amy Wilson-Carmichael, which Messrs. Marshall Brothers are bringing out under the style “From Sunrise Land.” Then Mr. J. Morris, who was many years in Tokio, in the service of the Board of Works, has written a work called “Advance Japan: A Nation Thoroughly in Earnest,” a feature of which will be the Japanese national anthem done into English by Sir Edward Arnold. It is in the press of Messrs. W. H. Allen and Co. “Old- World Japan,” by Mr. Frank Rinder, is a volume which Mr. George Allen will issue shortly. Mr. Henry Norman’s important and already well- known work, too, “The Peoples and Politics of the Far East,” has during the month entered its third edition. Two other works on subjects of contemporary political interest are “Five Years in Madagascar,” by Colonel Francis C. Maude (Messrs. Chapman and Hall), and a book on Nicaragua by Mr. Archibald Colquhoun, special corresponeent of the Times. Mr. Charles G. Leland has gone in among the people of Florence, and sought to know their world of legend, and his book of record is announced for early publication by Mr. Nutt, entitled “Legends of Florence.” Mr. Aubyn Trevor-Battye's adventures in the Arctic regions are embodied in “Icebound on Rolguev,” which Messrs. Archibald Constable and Co. will publish for him very soon. Mr. Lionel Johnson and Mr. Le Gallienne have written the letterpress of “Bits of Old Chelsea,” which Messrs. Kegan Paul will issue in an artist’s proof edition, Mr. Walter Burgess having drawn for it about forty etchings. Few subjects could be more interesting, associated as Chelsea is with the great names of Carlyle, Turner, Rossetti, and Leigh Hunt — to mention only these. One notable sketch is of “A Corner in Sir Thomas More's Garden.” Only a hundred copies will make up the edition, and the price is Io guineas. An association has been formed among the prominent houses which do business in foreign books, with the object of keeping a look-out upon questions concerning the improvemant of their trade, and generally to live in harmony and defend their interests. The society is called “The Association of Foreign Booksellers in London.” Mr. H. Kleinan, of Messrs. Hatchette and Co., is president, and Mr. Kohn, of Messrs. Asher and Co., hon. Secretary. Mr. D. Christie Murray will publish, in the course of a week, through Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co., his new novel in one volume, “The Martyred Fool.” The story “Lochinvar,” which Mr. S. R. Crockett is writing, deals with the life of a High- lander exiled in Holland. Messrs. Methuen will publish it. A new romance by Mr. Gilbert Parker, entitled “When Walmond came to Pontiac; the Story of a Lost Napoleon’’ is due from Methuen's press to-day. The Hon. Denis Arthur Bingham will shortly issue, through Chapman and Hall, a volume of “Recollections of Paris.” He is the author of “A Journal of the Siege of Paris” and “The Marriages of the Buonapartes.” French life is also the subject of a book by Mr. Albert D. Vandam, which the same publishers have in hand, entitled “French Men and French Manners.” A new series of short novels by well-known writers will be commenced towards the end of the month by Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co. The first volume is to be “The Story of Bessie Cottrell,” by Mrs. Humphry Ward, which is appearing serially in Cornhill and Scribner's. Messrs. Routledge and Sons also announce a new fiction series at 3s. 6d., of which the first will be “Two Women and a Fool,” by H. Chatfield Taylor.” Another is to be produced by Messrs. Archd. Constable and Co., who in it will make no distinction of names, but regard simply the merit of a story. Mr. Lang edits a new edition of “The Death Wake,” the poem by Thomas Tod Stoddart, which first appeared in 1831, and is now ex- tremely rare. It will be issued from the Bodley Head. Two works of history which are to appear shortly are “The Model Republic,” in which Mr. Grenfell Baker traces the evolution of Switzer- land; and a history of the Australasian Colonies, from their foundation to the ye, r 1893, by Pro- fessor E. Jenks, of University College, Liverpool. The latter will be the next volume in the Cam- bridge Historical Series, edited by Professor Prothero; while Mr. Baker's book will be pub- lished by Messrs. H. S. Nichols and Co. Mr. Grant Allen (who is dramatising his recent much-debated novel, “The Woman Who Did,” assisted by a theatrical collaborator in the person of Mr. Dyce Scott) is one of several leading authors who will contribute to a new series of complete stories to be published by Messrs. Tillot- son and Son, of Bolton. Mr. Crockett is of the  ## p. (#379) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 25 number, with a tale called “The Enlistment of a Cameronian; ” and Miss Corelli contributes “The Withering of a Rose.” - Chief among the books published during May was “The Life and Letters of Edward A. Free- man, D.C.L., LL.D.,” by the Dean of Winchester (W. R. W. Stephens, B.D.), which Messrs. Macmillan issued in two volumes. It is interest- ing to note that the great historian had an “ insuperable repugnance to reading or writing in a public library.” “As if,” he said once, “to take the lowest ground, money were not better and more cheaply spent in buying one's own books, than in buying railway tickets to go read other men's books a long way off.” From the same publishing house early in the month came the first volume of a notable work, “A History of English Poetry,” by Mr. W. J. Courthope. The definition of English poetry given by Mr. Court- hope is metrical compositions in the language “from the period at which it becomes fairly intelligible to readers of the present day.” The author anticipates his work will be completed before the end of the century. The first two volumes of the “Memoirs of Barras, Member of the Directorate,” were published by Messrs. Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co. Mr. George Duruy edits the work, and in his introduction defends Napoleon from the attacks of Barras, and gene- rally exhibits the latter as a scoundrel. Mr. H. S. Hoole Waylen has compiled a selec- tion of “Thoughts from the Writings of Richard Jefferies,” which Messrs. Longmans will publish immediately. The same firm will send out Sir Edward Arnold’s new book of verse, called “The Tenth Muse, and Other Poems; ” and a volume of “Russian Rambles,” by Isabel F. Hapgood, who relates inter alia a visit to Count Tolstoy in his home. What is likely to be an excellent catalogue of the manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam Museum has been prepared by the director, Dr. M. R. James, and will come from the Cambridge University Press on an early day. Twenty pages of photo- graphic reproductions of important manuscripts are given. The work is priced net at 25s. “The Rise and Growth of the English Nation, with special reference to Epochs and Crises,” by Dr. W. H. S. Aubrey, is announced for publication by Mr. Elliott Stock. It will be completed in three volumes, the first being published early in May and the rest at short intervals. The June number of the Antiquary will con- tain an interesting illustrated paper on “Some of the Round Towers of France;” also an article on the R. A. Exhibition under the title “The Anti- quary among the Pictures.” The London Library has added 40,000 volumes to its shelves since 1888, when the present catalogue was published, and the census of January showed that the stock has grown to a total of 167,000. While the accommodation is thus severely taxed, the income also increases steadily—there are 2279 members—and at the general meeting on the 13th inst, a proposal will come up for the appointment of a professional auditor. A new catalogue will be ready three or four years hence. Mr. J. F. Hogan, M.P. has written “The Sister Dominions,” in which he gives the impressions Canada and Australia made upon him during a recent tour. As he is secretary of the Colonial party in the House of Commons, the author had special means of receiving the opinions of public men in the colonies. The book will be published soon by Messrs. Ward and Downey. Australian life (along with that of Scotland) is also the concern of a novel called “By Adverse Winds,” which Mr. Oliphant Smeaton, editor of the Liberal, has written, and Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier will publish. The produce of the past month in the depart- ment of periodicals includes a new monthly, on general lines, edited by Mr. William Graham, and called the Twentieth Century, devoted to articles on subjects of the day, but containing also fiction and verse; and a new quarterly of the same price as the Yellow Book and, like it, concerned with literature and art. This latter is the Evergreen, “a northern seasonal,” published in Edinburgh by Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, and in London by Mr. Fisher Unwin. The contents of each issue are to correspond with the season of the year it appears in. Mrs. Emma Marshall will shortly add to the series of her historical romances a story entitled “The White King's Daughter. Messrs. Seeley and Co. are the publishers of these stories, of which “Under Salisbury Spire’ and “Ken- sington Palace ’’ are amongst the most popular. “Roughly Told Stories,” is a book apparently by a new hand, named John Ingold. He aims at originality and epigram. He is also a cynic. One sketch in the volume at least is noticeable —that called “The Tramp.” (The Leadenhall Press.) The authorship of “A Superfluous Woman” has at length become public. That it was from a practised hand every one knew, but there was some doubt as to the sex of the writer. The book was quite one of the successes of 1894, and ran through several editions. Another novel by the same author, Miss Emma Brooke, entitled “Tran- sition,” has just been published. Let us wish it as large a success.  ## p. (#380) ################################################ 26 THE AUTHOR. A prettily bound book, with its silver and grey, is Mathilde Blind’s “Birds of Passage.” It is a book of songs—“Songs of the Orient”— “Songs of the Occident’” — “Shakespeare Sonnets”—and miscellaneous poems. Let the poet speak for herself in one of her Shakesperian Sonnets, that called “Cleve Woods: ” Sweet Avon glides where clinging rushes seem To stay his course, and, in his flattering glass, Meadows and hills and mellow woodlands pass, A fairer world as imaged in a dream. And sometimes, in a visionary gleam, From out the secret covert's tangled mass, The fisher-bird starts from the rustling grass, A jewelled shuttle shot along the stream. Even here methinks where moon-lapped shallows smiled Eound isles no bigger than a baby cot, Titania found a glowworm-lighted child, Led far astray, and, with anointing hand Sprinkling clear dew from a forget-me-not, Hailed him the Laureate of her Fairyland. “A Life's Mistake” is a story told by Charles Garvice, and published in New York by “George Munro’s Son’s.” Mr. Garvice writes like one who has a future before him. But he should compress. A story ought to be very good indeed to be continued for 35o long pages of closely packed type. - “Creation’s Hope” (Baker and Son, Clifton) is a religious poem whose aim and scope are indi- cated by the title. It is by the Rev. Marcus S. C. Rickards, M.A. The following is an extract : In this fair life scene, over everything There hangs a chilling fear—as the bright Noon Is spoilt by haze, or as the smiling Spring Is marred by blight—a fear, that late or soon Tempers all bliss, and clouds each native boon. Close as an ever-brooding presence sits That fear of death, which now makes Nature swoon, Now braces her for what this clime befits, Which Ignorance alone for a brief spell outwits. The warbler flitting on from spray to spray Fears not the gun that compasses its doom : The schoolboy stealing up to cap his prey Starts not the shy moth settling on the bloom ; The sunny May-fly scorns eve's pending gloom : The feasting grub recks not that ampler size Yields the hid foe within more food and room : The gleaming trout darts at the summer flies, Nor shuns the murderous hook arrayed in kindred guise. But we know we must die, and can but wait: We lounge 'mid flowers and shine while distant claps From gathering thunder-clouds forebode our fate; Large rain-drops fall, and inky gloom enwraps, Tho' Sunbeams linger on awhile perhaps. We roam life’s strand, and eye the nearing tide, Which gains on each, and all at length entraps : We gather shells, we strut with childish pride, We play about while Death creeps on with fatal stride. The Rev. Atherton Knowles has produced a little book which ought to become widely popular, for its subject alone. Most of us are interested in Anglican Service Music, its history and de- velopment. It is a contribution not only to the history of religion but also to that of social manners and customs in which churchgoing occupies so large a place. (Elliot Stock.) “Poems,” by Louis H. Victory, is published by Elliot Stock. Here is one of them : * I walk the world in thought-engendered grief: I grieve for all the pain that taints the years; I grieve for wrongs that rend the soul of seers Who find no power to bring the world relief. I grieve for kings whose golden-sorrowed leaf Of life's brief book is filled with kingly fears; I grieve for beggars starving through their years, Whose consolation dwells in sweet Belief. If I could weep for all the wrongs I see I would be blest with some relief from woe, But my dim eyes will never yield the flow My wearied heart one moment to set free. And as I wander down the path of years, I pray to God for His good gift of tears. “A Japanese Marriage” (A. & C. Black), by Douglas Sladen. Here is a novel laid in that enchanted land of colour and sunshine which is now being talked about by everybody. The setting is strange, and the characters move about under new conditions among an Anglo-Japanese life which is new and delightful. It should be as popular as Loti’s “Chrysanthème.” - A new and cheaper edition of “A Prince of Como,” by Mrs. E. M. Davy has just been issued by the authoress’s publishers, Messrs. Jarrold and Sons. We are glad to see this solid recognition of the work of a young author. . It will be followed, we venture to hope, by many other editions. Miss Eleanor Holmes has completed a new novel entitled “To-day and To-morrow.” It will be issued shortly in 3 vols. by Messrs. Hurst and blackett. A completed edition of the “Works of the late Griffith Edwards,” consisting mainly of local histories in Wales, will be produced shortly (Elliot Stock). A number of the author's poems, both in Welsh and English, are added to the work, which is edited by Mr. Elias Owen, and is fully illustrated. Mrs. Stevenson has just had another story published. It is in Messrs. Hutchinson’s “Home- spun Series,” both in cloth and paper covers. It is called “Woodrup's Dinah,” and is a tale of Nidderdale, the beautiful Yorks Valley, lying between Great Whernside and Knaresbro' and Harrogate. One who knows the dale says: “It simply makes me live there again, and the dialect, customs, and habits come back with more vivid-  ## p. (#381) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 27 ness than I could have believed possible after twenty years.” The author of “Ernest England,” mentioned in “Book Talk” of last month, is not “J. A. Tucker” but “J. A. Parker,” to whom an apology is due for the mistake. It was also in error that Mr. Harry Furniss was stated to “ have accepted control of the art section ” of the New Budget. He is the originator, chief proprietor, editor, and manager of the New Budget. The March edition of 2000 copies of “A Maid of the Manse,” by Mrs. E. Rentoul Esler, being exhausted, Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. are preparing a larger edition for immediate ISSUl€. Messrs. Bliss, Sands, and Foster have just published a novel by Miss H. P. Redden, entitled “McClellan of McClellan.” The book is illus- trated by the author. Price 6s. *-- ~ -º CORRESPONDENCE, I.—MUSIC AND WoRDs. N reading Miss Helen Marion Burnside's reasonable letter regarding the lot of minor poets, I would take exception to one remark only. #he poet should certainly have a share in the performing rights of a larger musical work, but in a song these rights are practically worth nothing, they having completely lapsed from force of circumstances. Unless they were recog- nised universally insistence upon them would kill the song. I should suggest that the poet's initial remuneration should cover the sale of a certain number of hundreds of copies, and upon the sale exceeding this amount a royalty should be given by the publisher to the poet. MRs. MARY A. C. SALMond. 21, St. Leonard’s-terrace, Royal Chelsea Hospital, May 24. II.-DREAM POEMs. May I add to the number of dream-poems? Many a time I have wakened with metre and rhyme on my lips; but of only three such in- spirations have I kept a record. Once I dreamed that I was pouring out tea for a large party, and, growing tired, made the following remark: It is not fair To make poor little me, Who am small and spare, Pour out all the tea. The word spare must have been used for sake of the rhyme, as it does not at all describe my figure | Another night I dreamed a whole long poem, describing, as if for children, the career of a good little boy. I woke with the following couplet: To follow this goodly example he’s bound, And he’s sure to be happy wherever he's found. My third example is an excerpt from a serious poem, all of which is lost except these lines: Faces we have not seen for years, And some which last we saw in tears. They struck me as rather pathetic. F. BAYFor D HARRISON. TTI.-PERSONAL. The American journalist who, in the Mail and Eapress (New York), has seen fit, on what he terms “internal evidence,” to formulate the charges categorically denied by Mr. John Bloun- delle-Burton in the following letter, appears to have indulged in an outbreak of abuse that is not common even on the other side of the Atlantic. What that abuse and those charges are will be plainly seen by Mr. Bloundelle-Burton’s plain and convincing denial of them : Constitutional Club, London. May 13, 1895. The Editor, the New York Mail and Ea'press, New York. SIR,-A cutting from your paper, published last month, has been shown me, in which, under the heading “Mr. Safe,” you state that there is an edition of my novel “The Hispaniola Plate,” published in America by the Castle Pub- lishing Company,” and that in this edition there is a bio- graphy of me which “bears internal evidence of having been written by the author.” Permit me to show you, therefore, what such “internal evidence” is worth. |Until I read the column so headed in your paper, I was totally unaware that any arrangements had been made by the publishers of “The Hispaniola Plate ’’ (Cassell and Co., London) for reproduction by any firm in the United States, and, consequently, did not know that the edition from which you are undoubtedly quoting was in existence. Con- sequently, also, I know nothing of the biography to which you refer as “bearing internal evidence ’’ of having been written by me. And, “internal evidence ’’ notwithstand- ing, the statement that I wrote the biography is false. I have never seen it yet, since naturally it is not in the London edition; I repeat that I know nothing whatever about it, except that which I can glean from your article, and, moreover, no biography of me has ever been written or suggested by myself. I gather also, from what you say, that comparison favourable to me has been made in this production between myself and Mr. , a piece of vulgarity which—in this country at least !—would have been quite sufficient to prove to any critic (as I imagine the writer of your article considers himself to be) that it could not possibly emanate from any author claiming to possess the slightest feelings of self-respect. But, since the discussion of such a claim as this is,  ## p. (#382) ################################################ 28 THE AUTHOR. perhaps, superfluous in my refutation of your writer's ideas and statements, I desire simply to inform you that this part of the so-called “biography” was no more written by me, or known by me, than was any other portion of it, and also that, until doing so at this present moment, I have never written Mr. — 's name. In conclusion, I ask you to give this denial as much pub- licity as you have given the statement, And I remain, Sir, Your obedient servant, (Signed) JOHN BLOUNDELLE-BURTON. IV.-DISCOUNT. Here is a case for the consideration of pub- lishers. A firm offers a 7s. 6d. book for 5s. 9d., and to encourage the publishers we order the work. It arrives by Carter, Paterson, and we have to pay 4d. carriage. If we order the book of Bickers, or Bumpus, we obtain it for 5s. 7#d. or 5s. 8d., and it is delivered free of charge. Does the arrangement profit the author more in case I than in case 2 P And if not, why should we pay 4d. to oblige the publisher, and put a few extra pence in his pocket P S. [The author has nothing at all to do with it.— ED.] W.—ENCOURAGEMENT v. DISCOURAGEMENT. My vicissitudes as an author may be of inte- rest as somewhat remarkable. My first novel, published anonymously, was accepted by a leading firm, had excellent reviews in first-class papers, was pirated in America most successfully. The second, in my maiden name, brought out in first- class style by the same firm, had still better reviews. However, it attracted no attention. I was asked by my publishers if I were not disap- pointed, They had expected much from it; but the subject was painful—that of a woman's intemperance, and its telling was “too graphic, too clever, to get the second reading it deserved,” so they said. A master in fiction has since said “It was a book for a second edition.” Then came my third. The same approbation from the reviews, but I verily believe it was killed by one that breathed the word “psychological.” Hard for it was not so. I would not insult the Spirit of the Times by crediting it with time or digestion for such subtlety. This hurrying age adds to its fever by demanding incident in fiction on a par with that which society and travel endeavour to secure for it. The terse and pungent are in favour, no longer the discursive which takes you by pleasant bye-paths off the high road of the story into touch with the writer's personal thoughts and opinions, out of broad sunshine into restful shade. What is there in the modern novel to make you close it with a careful thumb as your marker, and look out of the window and reflect with the writer? Nothing. Tife is hard facts, and so are latter- day books. I thing it is Mr. Hall Caine who says a writer has no right to digress to his own opinions and observations; one must be kept at full strain after the characters. But “The Golden Butterfly ’’ is in a sixpenny edition, and there are readers who hail digressions such as we find in it as milestones where one may pause and meditate. Well, my third novel died before its best reviews —Guardian, Athenæum, and Academy—were out; the former foretold great things for me. On the strength of my book the C.E.T.S asked me to write a story for them. I did so, in a fort- night. It come out in their Chronicle, and both paper and cloth editions—a stroke of success. My last story is just out, both in paper and cloth too, a large edition in a well-known series. I am venturing on another three-decker, and have another short one in the market. But my reviews warrant me in expecting far greater success. Is the reviewing system at fault some- where P A book is often reviewed when it is either everywhere or virtually dead. All my books have been called powerful and realistic. In my temper- ance story, it was almost suggested in the columns of a paper that my facts must be personal—I hope not from myself as an inebriate | These terms are fashionable praise, but I have not been the fashion. Shorter stories, however, seem to be “getting me forwarder.” But how tantalising is the buffeting between intensely appreciative reviews bearing out a publisher's confidence and public indifference I have been warranted in nourishing great expectations of a full tide, and found myself stranded high and dry on the beach. I have been likened, to my own astonishment, to Mr. Thos. Hardy and Mr. Geo. Meredith. But the public remain stolid. My “pathos, humour, picturesqueness and power” are not for their enthusiasms. Yet I must write. I believe as firmly as Mr. Crockett in the gift being God- given, to be used. I live greatly with imaginary people; when they live with me I must put pen to paper and oust one set to make room for another. But I am not now working up to my powers—deliberately. I have found it exhaust- ing to do so, realising my emotional and dramatic situations too strongly ; so am lowering my standard. Was I born under an unlucky star, and is it my fate to have to be most discouraged by encouragements P Where are the powers that will adjust the balance by making recognition consistent with reviewing P I don’t grudge labour, but I yearn for its just reward. Mean- while I hear my case is a rare one, so I chronicle it. M. E. S. 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. 06 Issue 01 (June 1895) Subject The topic of the resource <em>The Author</em>, Vol. 06 Issue 01 (June 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 1895-06-01-The-Author-6-1 publications The Author