https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/286/1896-02-01-The-Author-6-9.pdf d22878855cb152e1387cb6477cacfb72 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 The Author Description An account of the resource A digitised run of the Society of Authors' monthly periodical, The Author, 1890–1914, made available together for the first time. Currently users can browse issues and <a href="https://historysoa.com/items/browse?search=&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Index&collection=&type=&tags=&exhibit=&date_search_term=&submit_search=Search+For+Items&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) 1896-02-01 Volume 6 Issue 9 Pages Page range in volume 197–220 Ngram Date Version of the date in YYYYMMDD format for use by the Ngram plugin 18960201 Ngram Text Version of the text with no HTML formatting for use by the Ngram plugin O be El u t b or, (The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.) C O N DU C T ED BY W. A. L T E R B E S A. N. T. VoI. VI.—No. 9.] FEBRUARY 1, 1896. [PRICE SIXPENCE. For the Opinions eaſpressed in papers that are signed or initialled the Authors alone are Tesponsible. None of the papers or para- graphs must be taken as eaſpressing the collective opinions of the committee winless they are officially signed by G. Herbert Thring, Sec. *~ --> 4- ºr -e. 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, Chamcery-lame, 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 2–2 - * ~~ WARNINGS AND ADWICE. I. RAWING THE AGREEMENT.-It is not generally understood that the author, as the vendor, has the absolute right of drafting the agreement upon whatever terms the transaction is to be carried out. Authors are strongly advised to exercise that right. In every form of business, this among others, the right of drawing the agreement rests with him who sells, leases, or has the control of the property. 2. SERIAL RIGHTs.—In selling Serial Rights remember that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you object to this, insert a clause to that effect. 3. STAMP You R AGREEMENTs. – Readers are most URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree- ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The author may be assured that the other party to the agree- ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society, to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of members stamped for them at mo expense to themselves except the cost of the stamp. 4. AscERTAIN what A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVES TO Both sides BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi- ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party WOL. VI. 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 yow 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. I3. ADVERTISEMENTS. — Reep 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, charity, or pure love of literature. You have to do with business men. Be yourself a business man. Society’s Offices:– 4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs. *-- -* e-- * ~ * 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 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 Y 2 ## p. (#552) ################################################ 198 TIE AUTHOR. 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- ſidential 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. er-- * ~ * THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE, . . . EMBERS 8, re 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 exclusively in its hands, and that all communications relating thereto are referred to it. 5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by appointment, and that, when possible, at least two days' notice should be given. 6. That every attempt is made to deal with all communi- cations promptly. That stamps should, in all cases, be sent to defray postage. - - 7. That the Authors' Syndicate does not invite MSS. . without previous correspondence ; does not hold itself responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice; and that in all cases MSS. must be accompanied by stamps to defray postage. 8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for lectures by some of the leading members of the Society; that it has a “Transfer Department’’ for the sale and purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register of Wants and Wanted” is open. Members are invited to communicate their requirements to the Manager. There is an Honorary Advisory Committee, whose services will be called upon in any case of dispute or difficulty. It is perhaps necessary to state that the members of the Advisory Committee have no pecuniary interest whatever in the Syndicate. NOTICES. HE Editor of the Author begs to remind members of the Society that, although the paper is sent to them free of charge, the cost of producing it would be a very heavy charge on the resources of the Society if a great many members did not forward to the Secretary the modest 6s. 6d. subscription for the year. - The Editor is always glad to receive short papers and communications on all subjects connected with literature from members and others. Nothing can do more good to the Society than to make the 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 r Communications for the Author should reach the Editor not later than the 21st of each month. All persons engaged in literary work of any kind, whether members of the Society or not, are invited to communicate to the Editor any points connected with their work which it would be advisable in the general interest to publish. Members and others who wish their MSS. read are requested not to send them to the Office without previously communicating with the Secretary. The utmost practicable despatch is aimed at, and MSS. are read in the order in which they are received. It must also be distinctly under-. stood that the Society does not, under any circumstances, undertake the publication of MSS. The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at 3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary for information, rules of admission, &c. Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they have paid their subscriptions for the year P If they will do this, and remit the amount, if still unpaid, or a banker's order, it will greatly assist the Secretary, and save him the trouble of sending out a reminder. - Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest or dishonest ? Of course they would not. Why then hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them- selves into literary bondage for three or five years P Those who possess the “Cost of Production * are requested to note that the cost of binding has advanced 15 per cent. This means, for those who do not like the trouble of “doing sums,” the addition of three shillings in the pound on this head. In other words, if the cost of binding is set down in our book at eight pounds, to this must now be added twenty-four shillings more, so that it now stands at £9 48. 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 ## p. (#553) ################################################ TIE AUTHOR. 199 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. *- a r- * FROM THE COMMITTEE, HE Committee beg to remind members that the Sub- scription for the year is due on January the First. The most convenient form of payment is by order on a Bank. This method saves the trouble of remembering. The Secretary will in future send reminders to members who are in arrear in February. The Author will not be sent to members in arrear after the month of March. At the end of the year the three retiring members of the committee, Sir W. Martin Conway, Mr. Arthur àBeckett, and the Hon. John Collier submitted their names for re- election and were duly re-elected members of the committee. At the meeting of Jan. 27th the committee proceeded to elect a chairman in the room of Sir W. Martin Conway, whose year of office expired on Dec. 31st, 1895. Mr. H. Rider- Haggard was unanimously elected chairman. G. H. THRING, Secretary. > c: THE ADDRESS TO AMERICAN AUTHORS, HIS address was published in the January number of the Author. It appeared in a great many papers, both of this country and the United States, on the morning of Dec. 25. It was sent out for signature to a list of English men and women of letters, not neces- sarily members of the Society. At a meeting of the Executive Committee, held on Jan. Io, 1896, the following resolution was passed :— “The Committee of Management of the Society of Authors, having investigated the circumstances under which the address to American authors and its covering letter were issued from the Society’s offices, have unanimously found that the address expressly purports to proceed from its signatories alone; that it was neither printed nor circulated at the expense of the Society’s funds; and that the use of the Society's letter-paper in soliciting signatures was unauthorised by them. The Committee, while entertaining all friendly feelings possible towards their American brethren, are of opinion that action on international ques- tions does not fall within the scope of their cor- porate powers.” This resolution dissociated the Address from the Society. That is to say, it was within the powers of the Committee, had they chosen, to adopt the Chairman’s action, and to make it their own. Since they did not do so, the address was sent out by Sir Martin Conway. After this resolution was sent round there appeared several letters in the papers. To these letters Sir Martin Conway replied by a letter to the Times on the 21st. The following is that part of his letter which refers to the address:– “I was asked on Saturday, Tec. 21, whether I would permit the use of the Authors’ Society organisation for the purpose of procuring signa- tures to a friendly address to American authors. I replied affirmatively, with the reservation that the address must not be sent out as from the Society, nor at the Society’s expense. A draft address was sent to me that night. I returned it the same night, saying that it was too long and went into too many details. I added that all we wanted was something brief and friendly. Here ends my knowledge.” The statement in the Author that the address had been sent out by the Society was passed by inadvertence. . The introductory paragraph which appeared in some papers was not a part of the address. There was no such paragraph when it was given to the secretary. - The number of authors who responded to the invitation and signed the address is 500. W. B -* -*_ºr ºr º ar- LITERARY PROPERTY. I.—MR. HALL CAINE’s REPORT ON CANADA AND THE COPYRIGHT QUESTION. After his mission as delegate of the SOCIETY OF AUTHORS to the Dominion Government. Delivered at the rooms of the Royal Medical Society, 2c, Hanover-square, Monday, Jan. 27, at 4.30 p.m. COPYRIGHT AN IMPERIAL QUESTION. T a moment when the air is full of wars and rumours of wars, it may appear untimely and almost presumptuous that English authors should intrude upon each other and upon the public a subject so limited in its class interest as the Canadian copyright question. But, in truth, this subject which concerns ourselves so closely is very heavily charged with Imperial issues. There is nothing in the Venezuela trouble, and certainly nothing in the trouble in the Transvaal, which is more liable to breed serious international and colonial dispute. Tet me explain. The Canadian Constitution took shape in the British North America Act of 1867. By that Act Canada. ## p. (#554) ################################################ 2OO TIIE AUTHOR. secured legislative independence, subject to a veto to be exercised by the Imperial Government. During these thirty years the Imperial veto has been practically a nullity. Like the veto of the British Sovereign over British legislation, it is never exercised. Competent judges are heard to say that let Canada do what she will the colonial office will not interpose. Canadian statesmen appear to have regarded the Imperial veto as a thing not to be reckoned with. They think of it in that light in this instance, and demand legisla- tive freedom. If the veto were exercised it is probable that they would ask for the reconstruc- tion of the Act of 1867. If the Imperial sanction of their demands were merely withheld they might (after the proper lapse of tin:e) call upon their Governor-General to promulgate the legislation of Canada. The Governor-General would then be compelled either to obey his constitutional advisers, the Premier and Cabinet of Canada, or to go home. There is no instance on record, so far as I know, in which the Imperial Government has advised the Governor-General to resist the will of the Canadian ministry. The Imperial veto would be like the Crown veto, a force con- stitutionally divested of its power. But what would be the result P. We should begin to ask ourselves whether a dependency which never brings us any revenue, which involves us in military and naval responsibilities, gives us no commercial advantages, and disregards our will on Imperial questions, is a dependency worth having. Such is Canada's power, and such the power of this copyright question over our Colonial relations, but its power over our foreign relations is no less serious. In 1891 America passed a Copyright Act, giving copyright to the subjects of all nations which gave reciprocal advantages to Americans. The President asked our Foreign Secretary if the British Empire granted such reciprocal advan- tages, and our Secretary replied that it did. Thereupon the President made a proclamation that there was copyright in the United States for all subjects of the British Crown. But if Canada were to enact a copyright law which Americans, rightly or wrongly, thought injurious to American interests, is it not likely, is it not certain, that they would demand the taking down of that proclamation ? I know it is said that it is to the interests of America to preserve her copyright arrangement with Great Britain. It is to the interest of her good and true men to preserve that copyright arrangement ; but no traveller in America can fail to see that besides the legitimate publishing trade in copyright books there is a vast and most active illegitimate trade in non- Copyright books. The American Copyright Act was wrested after the most zealous effort, and by the narrowest majority, out of the American sense of fair-play, against the machinations of a powerful class of unfair traders. That class has not grown less since 1891. It consists of a multitude of printers who would eagerly clutch at any hopeful chance of tearing down the President's proclamation at any cost to honest trade. And if it were torn down, if we lost American copyright, as a result of Canadian legislation, the quarrel would be England's quarrel first and only Canada's quarrel after- wards. - This much by way of explaining why we who are authors have asked public opinion to help us to escape from a legislative deadlock. Every stitch we make now will save nine later on. If we can settle this dispute with Canada on terms which are anything like satisfactory—satisfactory to ourselves, to the signatories to the Berne Con- vention, and to America—we may fairly claim the sympathy of the English people in removing a probable and even imminent danger of colonial or international quarrel. THE CASE FOR, ENGLISH ALTHORS. You will see that I regard Canadian copyright as an Imperial question in its ultimate issues, but in its immediate bearings it is of course a domestic and even a trade question. Our chief objections to the Canadian Act of 1889 were, first, that it was opposed to the principle of copyright by allowing that the publication of a book might be outside its author's control; next, that it required the multiplication of places of manufacture and so limited literary activity; next, that it fostered a scheme of license which seemed to us to be little better than legalised piracy, and paved the way for the ruin of the trade of bookselling; and, finally, that it offered temptations to dishonest traders from all parts of the world to make Canada, the ground for invading the copyright territories of other countries. Such was our case against Canada, and you know what we did to support it. With the co-operation of the Copy- right Association and the London Chamber of Commerce we petitioned the Colonial Office to exercise its Imperial veto. The results were what we, as students of history, should, perhaps, have foreseen. Our Colonial Office tried to make peace between Canada and ourselves. It sent for a representative of the Canadian Government, and he came to London last summer. It sent for Mr. Daldy as the representative of English publishers, and when the Society of Authors authorised me to act for it, the Colonial Office also sent for your representative. After hearing the case for every party, it proceeded to frame a number of modifi- cations of the Canadian Act of 1889. It was a ## p. (#555) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2O I well-meant and indeed an able effort. There were three several documents, but I have not submitted any of them to the Society. I knew they would not do. They were ingenious but not very practical. Yet it was with these suggested modifications in my pocket that I went to Canada. T had got my own plan of compromise, which I had formulated in a letter to Mr. Chamberlain. He had given me a letter to the Governor-General, and the chiefs of the Colonial Office had told me in effect to convince Canada and then come back to them. THE CASE FOR, CANADA — THE CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION. You know, Sir, that time and again Canada. has told us that in this matter, as in nearly every other that concerns the relations of England to the Dominion, we have not understood Canada's case. On going to Canada. I made it my first duty to see this question from the Canadian point of view, and I must frankly tell you that I had not been many days there before I realised that there was much truth in Canada's complaint. I went to Montreal, searched Canadian newspapers for months and perhaps years, visited printers, book- sellers, authors, and men in other walks of life, and came face to face with many startling facts. The first of them was this, that notwithstanding reams of writing, both there and here, Canadian copyright was a subject of which the Canadian people knew next to nothing at all. More, Canadian copyright was a subject for which the Canadian people cared nothing at all. What Canada, did know of and care for was the consti- tutional question of whether Canada should enact what law she pleased, or whether England should interpose to prevent her. This, and not the disputes of English authors and Canadian pub- lishers, was what had made a five years' outcry in Canada; this, and not a desire to denounce the Derne Convention, had produoed that marvel- lous unanimity in which, as Sir Charles H. Tupper has truly said, both parties and every member of Parliament had voted for the Act of 1889, and had continued to that hour to support it. CAN AIDA 7)69?"S^{S AMERICA. Such was my first lesson in Canada's case. The second was a more severe but no less salu- tary lesson. It chanced that on my arrival at New York I had been the guest of my friend and American publisher, Mr. W. W. Appleton. It also chanced that Mr. Appleton was chairman of the Publishers’ Copyright League of America. Again it chanced that I became unwell, and went with Mr. Appleton to Buzzard's Bay to recruit, and once again it chanced that my host's neigh- bour was Mr. Cleveland, and that I sometimes met the President while out fishing on the bay or drinking tea indoors of an afternoon. Finally it was known that Mr. Goldwin Smith had done me the honour to invite me to make his house my home in Toronto. A result of this series of. circumstances was that immediately on setting foot in Canada. I was met by an alarming and certainly plausible charge of having dallied in the United States to hold conferences with American publishers, of having visited American Ministers to intimidate Canadian Ministers, and of having cast in my lot with the avowel cham- pions of annexation, thus insulting the Govern- ment I had been sent by my brother and sister authors to conciliate, and outraging the classes whose interests I had come to investigate. Although this accusation did not convict me of nondiplomatic conduct, it opened my eyes to a great secret of the Canadian copyright agitation, by showing me that the agitation, which seemed to be merely a class dispute, came out of the national spirit absolutely, that it was a clear legacy of the old trouble with America, which found expression long ago on Queenston Heights and more recently on the Behring Sea. It also showed me, what was very helpful, that no appreciation of the Canadian view could be satis- factory that did not take account of Canada's relation to the United States in the trade and industry of book publishing. Following that trace I found much to make me sympathise with the Canadians, and something to explain their policy where it did not justify it. During the period of general piracy in America before 1891 Canadian publishers, like some English publishers, had retaliated wrong for wrong. If American pub- lishers appropriated “David Copperfield,” English publishers appropriated “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” and Canadian publishers appropriated “Ben Hur.” But there was this difference, from the American point of view, between the appropria- tion by English and by Canadian publishers. The English appropriation being made from the other side of an ocean only affected the authors, and they were then (as they are now) an ineffectual if rather vocal race; but the Canadian appropria- tion, being made merely on the other side of a boundary not marked off by nature, affected the publishers as well, and they are a race less given to clamour and more capable of reprisals. It was a bad, mad game of grab on both sides, English copyright books pirated in the United States went into Canada, and American copyright books printed in Canada went into the United States. Canada made a show of taxing the stolen English books in the interests of English authors; America only taxed the stolen American books in ## p. (#556) ################################################ 2O2 THE AUTHOR. the Interests of American revenue. Then came the American Act of 1891, and Canada went out, as they say, at the thin edge of the wedge. American copyright books being easily copy- righted in England, became thereby copyright in Canada also. English non-copyright books might still be appropriated in America, but in Canada, they continued to be protected. The Act of 1891 had left half the game of grab to the American pirate, but not one scrimpy handful of it to his Canadian brother. Perhaps this does not command your sympathy for Canada, but there are other disqualifications which will do so. When the good and true publishers in America at length and with noble effort put to rout the unfair traders of their own country, they also stole a march on the good and true publishers of Canada. Partly from distrust of Canadian pub- lishers, partly from a settled conviction of the American publishing mind that New York is the natural centre of book distribution for the entire American continent, the American publishers began to ask English authors to give them the Dominion of Canada into their bargains. The authors gave it. When I was charged with this in Canada. I answered that neither were we to blame, nor were the American publishers. The American publishers came to our doors in London, the Canadian publishers were always three thousand miles away; the American pub- lishers were many, the Canadian publishers were few ; the American publishers had great con- stituences and could give us good terms; the Canadian publishers had small constituences and could promise us little or nothing. But all the same Canada suffered, and the Canadian publish- ing interest visibly declined, with the passing of the American Act of 1891. Therefore it is the truth when Canada tells us that its publishing trade, both legitimate and illegitimate, has for the past five years been the victim of a policy of extermination. It is the truth when Canada. says that whatever the justice of the Act of 1891, Canada as a book publishing country has paid heavily for the advantage to British authors. No doubt the ultimate truth is, as the American publishers say, that Canada suffers from the disadvantage of the smallness of its area as a reading country. Canada is not a literary but a political expression. From the point of the English author Canada is almost limited to the province of Ontario. When we speak of the five million readers of Canada, we include some two millions of French who do not read English. Of the remaining three millions a great part do not read new books. They read the American magazines, two or three good magazines of their own, and their own excellent newspapers. And taken as a whole Canada, as a book publish- ing country, has suffered by the accident that while living under the shadow of English Imperial Copyright she has at the same time been made the scapegoat (perhaps the inevitable scapegoat) of American copyright law. CANADA TOO MUCH GOVERNIED. I had to learn a third lesson, Sir, before I was long in Canada, and it was that Canada in this matter of copyright, as in some other matters, was ridiculously over-governed. Whether it is true or not that there is too much governing going on in Canada, it is the fact that there is too much copyright law in operation there. Every author knows that when a publisher in Ilondon makes a contract with him for a book he asks for the sole and exclusive right to publish it in the United Kingdom. That is as it should be, but although Canada has its own copyright law, the sole and exclusive right to publish in Canada is more than any Canadian publisher can demand. When I reached Canada I found three copyright editions of “Trilby’’ on the bookstalls and three of “Marcella,” the American edition, the ordinary English edition, and the special Colonial edition. What possible chance was there for a Canadian edition without these could be expelled ! Some- times a Canadian publisher makes an effort to live even under the shadow of English and American copyright. The Methodist Book Com- pany of Toronto bought the Canadian copyright of Mr. Crockett’s “Raiders,” and published an edition at a dollar and a half. But presently there came the colonial edition from England at fifty cents, and the Canadian book at a dollar and a half was ruined. The Canadian publisher had purchased a territory which he could not hold. Why? Because Canadian law was living under the shadow of British copyright. ATTITUT) E OF THE CAN AIDIAN MINISTERS. Such then were the lessons I learned in Canada, but they did not at all convince me that the Canadian Copyright Act of 1889 was a cure for the evils of the Canadian publishing trade, or the difficulties of Canada's position in relation to England and to America. The more I thought of that Act the more sure I became that while of incalculable danger to us it was no good at all to Canadians. Going up to Ottawa I saw first the Prime Minister, Sir Mackenzie Bowell, and tackling him at once as an old printer, I urged that the Act was no good to the printing interest. He agreed, and he introduced me to the Minister of Justice, Sir Charles Hibbert Tupper. Sir Charles is a stout and able upholder of Canada's right to ## p. (#557) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2O3 rule herself, and I told him at once that I was not come to question her right to do so, but only to urge that she should not legislate to our injury and her own. Then I called together the interest- ing group of men of letters at the Capital and showed them that the Act would put them into a position of isolation among the authors of the world. Finally, I did my best to con- vince the booksellers that a scheme of unlimited licensing would in ten years' time exterminate the trade in books. I found the Premier and Sir Charles H. Tupper entirely sympathetic, fair, and openminded. They promised that the Act of 1889 should not be brought for- ward again, and they urged me to go on to Toronto, make my peace with the interested classes there, and then return with a concerted scheme to Ottawa. THE INTERESTED CIASSES IN CANADA. When I got to Toronto the Canadian pub- lishers and Copyright Association were waiting to receive me. It was not altogether with pleasant feelings that I entered the room at the hotel which they had engaged for our meeting. I remembered that in this very house, not long before, I had christened them a gang of rogues and pirates. It did not remove my uneasiness when they began by telling me that, owing to my behaviour in the United States, they had passed a resolution that they should not consult with me. “Very well, gentlemen,” I said, “in that case I will go home, but I leave you to decide for yourselves if it is good policy to send me back unheard.” To tell you the truth, I found my so-called pirates and rogues very good fellows indeed; very companionable, with a good deal to say for themselves, and capable of saying it in a highly efficient way. Next day, they rescinded the resolution not to meet me, on the ground that an English author appeared to be a reasonable being after all. We had some long and trying discussions after that, and I wish to tell you that the interested classes in Canada met me as your representative in a temperate spirit. . . By this time I had developed thc scheme which I had given to Mr. Chamberlain, and I propounded it, not as a legislator for English authors, not pro- mising that you would agree to it, but only as your representative, delegated to do his best to enable Canada and England to escape from a legislative deadlock. You know what the scheme is. It was founded on a recognition of the geographical position of Canada along the edge of a vast nation which had passed a protective Copyright Act, and was not a party to the Berne Convention. . Therefore it was an approximation in principle to the WOL. VI, American Copyright Act of 1891. But the same law can only be just in different countries where the conditions are the same. Obviously the con- ditions of the United States with a population of sixty-five millions and a great publishing industry were not the same as those of Canada, with a population of five millions and a publishing industry almost annihilated. So the compromise gave authors more liberal terms, more time to publish, and an almost unbroken control. The Canadian publishers took some days to consider the plan, and finally they gave a general assent to the principle. - THE COMPEROMISE. I went on to New York, met Mr. Daldy on his arrival as the representative of the English Copy- right Association, obtained his amiable consent, sympathy, and co-operation, and then returned to Toronto to draft a bill embodying the principle of the compromise. The general operation of that draft bill may easily be stated. It would put Canada on fair terms of competition with the |United States, enable her to publish the books for which she could find a profitable market, and leave all other books whatsoever under the opera- tion of the Imperial Act. A few days later we submitted this draft bill to the Dominion Ministers at a conference held in Ottawa. The Government did not undertake to accept it, but we were led to believe that in drawing up the measure which they had now decided to substitute for the abandoned Act of 1889 they would gladly use as much of our draft as in the exercise of their larger responsibility to the Canadian public they thought good and wise. Thus on leaving Canada after my three months’ anxious work there I left it with a great send-off of hope and expectation. I could not disguise it from myself that I had gone on a hostile errand, but Canada had received me, as your delegate, in a spirit of fair-play and sympathy. Ministers, the Press, and the interested classes alike had shown plainly that they had no wish to injure English authors, and that if we could show them a way to be true to Canada in the fierce competi- tion with a powerful neighbour they would try to be not only just to us but generous. ATTITUIDE OF AMERICA. There was still America to reckon with. The gravity of the Canadian copyright claims lay not so much in what we were to lose in Canada, for the real Canadian book market is still a thing of the future; not so much in the possible injury to the Berne Convention, for much as we prize its principle as the ultimate charter of our craft, its practical value is not great; but in the effect on the American Copyright Act of 1891, which has Z ## p. (#558) ################################################ 2O4 THE AUTHOR. increased the earnings of many authors by 20 or 30 per cent, and of a few by 80 and a IOO. I felt that my work would not be complete until I was in a position to return to my brother and sister authors in England with the assurance that if Canada adopted the compromise which we had proposed their market in the United States would no longer be imperilled. Therefore on our way home through New York Mr. Daldy joined with me in asking the two Copyright Associations of America to say if the proposed measure removed the objections which they had urged so strongly against the Act of 1889. The answer was gene- rous, prompt, and satisfactory. Through Mr. Putnam, representing the Publishers' League, and Mr. Underwood Johnson, representing the Authors’ Association, we received resolutions of congratulations and general approval. MORE RECENT DEVELOPMENTs. We brought the Draft Act back to the Colonial Office, and Mr. Chamberlain expressed his gratifi- cation at the prospect of an amicable adjust- ment of what threatened to be an awkward question. Parliamentary counsel has revised it with great insight and wisdom, and it has been returned to Ottawa. Since our return to England, however, there has arisen in Canada, a ministerial crisis of some gravity, involving two changes of importance to our interests. Dr. Montague has become Minister of Agriculture (the official who has charge of copyright), and he is a man of much literary culture, in whose hands the interests of authors will, I trust, be safe. But Sir Charles H. Tupper, who has spent great energy on the copyright question, has resigned his position as Minister of Justice. He promises, however, that he will give all the help he can to authors' inte- rests consistent with the just claims of Canada. I might perhaps tell you more if this were a private meeting of the executive committee, but it may be enough to say that we can fairly wait for the new Copyright Bill that is now being drafted by Mr. Newcombe, the Canadian Deputy Minister of Justice, with the assurance that it will embody the substance of our claim. Meantime, after five years' fruitless agitation, I think we may congratulate ourselves on some results. We have secured the abandonment of the Act of 1889, we have shown Canada a way to protect herself and yet hold on to the Berne Convention, and enable us to retain the substantial advantages of American copyright, we have come to terms of peace and goodwill with the interested classes in the dominion, and above all we have held fast to the great principle that an author has an inalienable right to the property he creates in books, * † ENGLAND AND HER, COLONIES. I have a last word to my brother and sister authors, and it is a serious one. If this compro- mise makes certain concessions to Canada, and it does, let us remember that Canada has claims upon us. She is an important section of our empire, and will inevitably play a great part in our future. We who are men and women of letters in England are only a little handful of people, and it is a grievous responsibility to ask England to exercise on our behalf her Imperial veto against a colonial kingdom. If we had to do so again, and England listened to us, the speedy result would be a re-adjusting of the British North America Act of 1867. When I met Mr. Goldwin Smith in Toronto he said he was all for one copyright for the whole empire, and for appealing to the Privy Council. One copyright for the whole empire will be our watch- word, too, the morning after America abandons her manufacturing clause and joins the Berne Convention. But for the present I beg respect- fully to answer Mr. Goldwin Smith out of his own mouth that it is a fallacy to be shunned, especially when the horoscope of Canada is being cast to treat the empire in a lump, to take it for granted that the destiny of all its parts must be the same, and to forget that Canada is under the disadvan- tage alongside the United States of falling under British copyright law. After travelling in our colonies I am no believer in the Imperial veto, and it is no terror to me that the veto is fast becoming a nullity. If Canada were to do what she liked within herself, even if she chose to indulge in civil war, I am by no means sure that it would be necessary for us, three thousand miles away and without special knowledge of her difficulties, to interpose. In short, I am convinced that the strength of our dependencies, as well as England's strength in them, will be in the measure of their self-control. I think they should be encouraged in habits of self-reliance and in a sense of responsibility. And if you ask me what is to be the good of dependencies which do not undertake to obey us, I say it should consist in the bond of blood, in allegiance to our flag and in the hope (which Mr. Chamberlain's wise circular encourages) of calling into existence an inter- colonial trade. CANADA AND ENGLAND. But I have a word to Canadian legislators also, if they will permit me, and their fair reception of your representative leads me to believe that per- haps they may. If we have solved this copyright question solely as a Canada-American question (which it is in the main), we have recognised at the same time that it is only one of the dangers ## p. (#559) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2O5 that lie between two countries whose geographical relations may be the cause of many dangers. It is hard to conceive of a just war between England and the United States. But if anything will ever make a war between England and America, or encourage a war otherwise made, it will be the friction of our great Dominion and the States alongside of it. An Englishman cannot cross the Niagara river without realising to his great pain that the fire that burnt so fiercely on Queenston Heights smoulders still on both sides of that turbulent water. The United States will never annex Canada politically until she has annihilated the Canadians, and hence the connection of Canada with England lays on Great Britain a heavy responsibility. Nowhere else in our Dominions, so far as I can see, are the burdens and perils of our empire so great. The more reason, therefore, that the relations between England and Canada should always be of the closest. Canadian loyalty to England is deep and strong, but there should never be a moment when England's good feeling towards Canada ought to be strained; there should never be a moment when Englishmen ought to feel that the dependency which involves them in grave military and diplomatic responsibilities and exposes them to misunderstanding with a great and friendly family of the Anglo-Saxon race, is unmindful of the wish and welfare of the mother country; there should never be a moment when Canada any more than England should forget there ought to be a community of interests in “all our glorious empire round and round.” II.--THE AMERICAN COPYRIGHT ACT. Mr. Moncure Conway said that, as a repre- sentative of the only purely literary guild in America—the American Authors’ Guild, founded four years ago, incorporated one year ago, numbering some 300 members—he desired to make a brief statement. While feeling admira- tion for the tact and ability with which Mr. Hall Caine had fulfilled his mission, he felt that in his narrative certain things were passed over, perhaps through feelings of delicacy towards America, and which might properly come from an American. And he (Mr. Conway) would take this opportunity of saying that, from long intimacy with this country, he knew that he was speaking in a land in which America had not one single enemy. The chief thing he had to say was, that the American Copyright Act of 1891, carried by aid of English authors, who were represented as hungering for it, carried with huzzas, was really the most disastrous blow to American literature ever passed into law; it for the first time legalised literary piracy in America. All books by new authors unable to secure simul- taneous publication in America, or unless for any pittance a publisher may throw them, and by authors who cannot afford to print and publish editions there entirely at their own expense, all such books are by the Act made lawful prey. American authors are thus brought into com- petition with an increasing mass of legally pirated literature. Some, though comparatively few, protested at the time against this wrong, but the heaviness of it has been increasingly felt since by authors. In this Canadian arrange- ment there will be compromises, and when they are being made he hoped it would be remembered that American authors ought to be consulted as well as the publishers. *- As. -->º = ~~ NEW YORK LETTER, New York, Jan. I I, 1896. HE American book trade has had an un- usually successful Christmas season, in spite of all the rumours of war with our kin across the sea, and in spite also of the sudden confusion wrought in the money market by these rumours. That the sober sense of the two great peoples who speak the English language would come to the rescue sooner or later and put an end to violent talk, everybody knew who under- stood the real feelings of the inhabitants of Great Britain and the United States. The address of certain British men of letters to the American people was telegraphed heré at once; and it has been well received. The Chicago Dial declares that this manly and brotherly appeal cannot “fail of being a great influence for good in any future emergency threatening the peaceful rela- tions of the two countries.” The New York Nation says that the letter is “but an echo of Tennyson's message, an expression of the real continuity of life that still binds this country to England, and a conviction that our best civil life and ideals are due to ‘that deep chord which Hampden smote.’” And yet for a while the crisis was serious; and even now no one can see just how a way out of the difficulty is to be found. It is well for the British people to understand that the feeling in the United States in regard to the increase.of the holding anywhere in America, North or South, of any European power, is quite as strong as the feeling in Great Britain in regard to the taking of Constantinople by Russia. Whether or not this was the original Monroe doctrine is a mere academic question of no real importance; it may ## p. (#560) ################################################ 2O6 THE AUTHOR. be called the Cleveland doctrine or anything else; it is none the less a fact to be reckoned with. Whether or not Great Britain is trying to extend her boundaries in South America is a question which only an impartial tribunal can decide; and that is why all the American friends of England regret so sincerely that Her Majesty’s Govern- ment has refused to leave the matter to arbitra- tlOll. It may seem to some that this is not a subject for discussion in the pages of the Author; but we who hold that literature is among the most powerful forces which mould the opinions of a free people, must avail ourselves of every opportunity to bring about a heartier understanding between the writers of the two great branches of the English- speaking race. And this is particularly a time for plain speaking. I offer no apology, therefore, for considering further two of the sentences in the appeal of the British authors to the American people. One of these declares that “there is no anti-American feeling among Englishmen.” I hope this sentence is true; but if it be true why was it necessary for Mr. William Archer to write his eloquent appeal to the British Press “not to embitter American feeling by untimely and unseemly taunts and gibes?” The second sentence I have to quote follows the first : “It is impossible that there can be any anti-English feeling among Americans.” I wish this sentence were true; but I know it is not. There is anti-English feeling among Americans, not among all, of course, but among most. It is proper that the English should know this and understand its causes, for it would do much toward the future peace of the world if this anti- English feeling of Americans could be changed by a removal of its causes. Some of these causes can be removed, and that is why I write this letter to the Author. “Why is it,” asked Colonel Higginson in a recent temperate essay on “Anglomania and Anglophobia,” “why is it that if no sane American could soberly contemplate the prospect of a war with any nation on earth, there is no question that a war with England would be more popular than any other in almost all parts of the United States?” Undoubtedly there are many causes. “There are the long traditions of the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812; and the instinctive dislike toward England of Repub- lican protectionists and of Irish-American Demo- crats.” The long traditions of the Revolutionary War and of the War of 1812 have a weight few Englishmen suspect, for those wars were not fought on British soil but on American. They took shape, for example, in the training given to the late Townsend Harris, whose biography has just been issued in London by Messrs. Sampson Low and Co., and who opened Japan to the world: he was brought up by his grandmother to “fear God, tell the truth, and hate the British,” for her house had been burnt over her head by British soldiers. But these are hostile traditions, which will die away in time; and so also will the other causes Colonel Higginson mentions, although these latter will go very slowly, I am afraid. The fourth reason Colonel Higginson gives for this anti-English feeling in America is the keen recollection of the British attitude towards the United States all through the Civil War. What a broad-minded and patriotic American thought and felt at that time is preserved for all time in that most vigorous of the “Biglow Papers ” called “Jonathau to John.” “Add to this,” says Colonel IHigginson, “the long series of insults so in- genously brought by ”—certain newspapers—“all studiously working to detach, to destroy, all English sympathy in the minds of that literary class in America which should be in case of need most friendly to England. It is impossible to estimate how much this mean literary antagonism has done to furnish fuel for the so-called Jingo side in a world where the gospel of turning the other cheek to the smiter is yet imperfectly established.” Now here is a cause of American anti-English feeling which it is in the power of English men of letters to remove. Here is where Colonel Higginson is at one with Mr. Archer. Here is a way in which the writers of Great Britain can show the friendly feeling which they protested in their recent appeal to the American people. Here is a state of affairs which can be remedied at last, and which is in as great need of remedy now as it was in 1819 when Washington Irving—than whom no American was fonder of England— wrote in the very first number of the Sketch Book an appeal to “English Writers on America” that they refrain from their brutal abuse of the United States. I wish that the Author could find room in its columns to reprint the whole of this sensible and kindly essay of Irving's, an essay of which Mr. Archer's letter was an unconscious echo. Irving himself felt so sharply on the subject that he refused to write for the Quarterly Review because it had so abundantly vilified America, and he refused this proffered literary work when he was in great need of money. Manners have mended in both countries since Irving's day, when the Quarterly Review vied with Blackwood’s Magazine in blackguardly abuse of their opponents in politics and literature; and with the improvement in politeness the language used in British journals in discussing American ## p. (#561) ################################################ THE 2O7 A UTHOR. subjects is now more choice than it was then, yet it still leaves much to be desired. Of course there is not a little vulgar abuse of Great Britain in some of the inferior newspapers of the United States ; there is far too much of it. But the better the newspaper in America is, the higher its standard of taste, the more courteous it is in its treatment of England and of English authors. Not in the Nation, not in the Dial, not even in the Critic, has any British man of letters found himself held up to ridicule because he was an Englishman. On the other hand what has been the treatment of American authors by the English press P. How often have American writers been sneered at in London reviews of high standing, because they were guilty of the crime of being Americans ? Why, to take a personal example, I could name one of the most accomplished of London journalists who writes about Mr. Howells with a careless insolence he would be ashamed to show toward M. Bourget. No American journalist of a position at all equivalent to this writer's is guilty of gibes and taunts like his. Gibes and taunts there are enough in American newspapers, but they are not written by gentlemen and scholars. Perhaps another example will make my meaning plainer still. As it happens, two American authors of high rank have written books about England, and one British author of high rank has written a book about America. But compare the tone of Emerson’s “English Traits” and of Hawthorne’s “Our Old Home” with the tone of Dickens’ “American Notes.” No finer tribute to the best qualities of another people has ever been written than Emerson’s ; and the very title of Hawthorne's work reveals his feeling toward England. What a contrast between the delicacy and the distinction of these two books and the underbred manner of Dickens ! Probably the matter of his book is accurate enough ; very likely he was far nearer to the truth than we were willing to admit. But what of that P Con- sidering the welcome Dickens had received in the United States, “American Notes '' was a book no gentleman would have thought of publishing. Mr. Archer very sensibly pointed that the com- munity of language which exists between the United States and Great Britain, and which we rely on as “the strongest of bonds between us, is, from another point of view, a source of danger,” since it enables each people to understand what the other may say against it. And he suggests that we Americans are very sensitive. We were, no doubt ; and we are still, although in a far less degree; and our skin is toughening yearly. Whether or not we are not as sensitive as you WOL. VI. are is an open question, which need not be dis- cussed. It is best for both sides to remember always that the courtesy of the debate is binding, and that personalities do not help the public business. In the speech which Lowell made at the first dinner of the Incorporated Society of Authors he said, you may remember, that “we Americans have sometimes been charged with being a little too sensitive ; but perhaps a little indulgence may be due to those who always have their faults told to them, and the reference to whose virtues perhaps is somewhat conveyed in a foot-note in small print. I think that both countries have a sufficiently good opinion of themselves to have a fairly good one of each Other.” X. Y. Z. *—- - --> e- NOTES FROM PARIS. & C HE man who lives without folly,” de la Rochefoucauld said it, “is not so wise as he imagines himself.” I wonder how much harm the mischievous old cynic did by printing this maxim. It must have served as an excuse and a palliation for folly, and worse than folly in thousands of cases. Possibly, probably, it consoled poor Paul Verlaine on many an occa- sion. Writers have an immense responsibility. How few of them realise it. I have written of Verlaine elsewhere. I cannot boast a great acquaintance with him, for I avoided his company rather than sought it. By the time when I first met him I had learned this wisdom of life, that it is a good thing always to avoid painful impressions. I believe that these leave on the mind cicatrices, if not bleeding wounds, the effect of which is felt all through life. I remember holding forth on this subject, by the side of the guillotine, one night in Paris, to a fresh young American who had come for the awful spectacle of a capital execution. He was very excited, and showed keen interest. I told him he would regret it. The memory of the hideous thing would haunt him, coming to him in happy quiet moments to disturb, to appal. He laughed at me then ; but since he has written to me. “You were quite right,” he said. “I wish I had never seen that horrid thing. It comes upon me at the strangest times and always makcs me miserable.” In the same way, I now always avoid painful books. One has a burden of sorrow ample enough to bear, without adding to it the woes of imaginary people. I do wish now that I had never made the acquaintance of little Dom- bey, or of the child in “Misunderstood,” or of the hundred and one pale pain-drawn phantoms A. A. ## p. (#562) ################################################ 208 THE AUTHOR. who haunt me. The other day—it was a glorious sunshine day—I was walking amidst most beautiful surroundings, and should have been happy if only to be living and moving then and there. A heavy feeling of oppression, however, weighed upon me. “What is it?” I at last asked myself, “that is so distressing me. Is it debt? No. Is it remorse for anything P Not at present. What then P” Suddenly I remem- bered. It was poor Tess. A dull feeling of sorrow, the ache of the old wound which Hardy had inflicted on me when I read his book, and was so sorry for la Durbeyfield. It was not till I had impressed upon myself that Tess, after all, had never really lived, that I was able to shake off the feeling of depression that haunted me. Léon Daudet is a most energetic young man. It seems but yesterday that he was telling me, over a dejeuner in Brown's Hotel in Piccadilly, of his intention of writing a book describing an imaginary journey by William Shakespeare in the North of Europe. The book has now been written and is out, and, like all Léon Daudet's books, is “bien €toffé.” Téon Daudet differs from most young French littérateurs in this respect; he does not only speak of his books, he writes them. There are so many “young masters ” who, in the words of Balzac, “spend their lives in talking themselves,” i.e., without working. Young Daudet seems to be taking after Zola, and to have adopted the latter's plan of doing so much work a day. It is a wonderful system, but unfortunately not one that agrees with the constitutions of most writers. Three of the most prominent contemporary Parisienne journalists are now in Mazas prison, under the infamous charge of blackmailing, their victim in this case having been the unfortunate young millionaire, Max Lebaudy. There seems to be little doubt that they did obtain money from the young man, but whether any jury will convict them, seeing that the party, alleged to have injured, is now dead, is an open question. The exposure will not greatly affect the reputa- tion of French journalism in France. Every Frenchman knows that a newspaper in France is regarded by its proprietor as a tool for money- making, in any and every way. Even some of the most prosperous papers accept subsidies, which an English journalist would consider dishonourable. Ut rea, ut grea. The working journalist in France is so miserably underpaid that he is often forced to do a bit of extortion on his own. His editor knows this, expects it, speculates upon it. Certain well-known papers live on blackmail and extortion in one form or another. There are subsidies from the railway companies, in return for which the paper keeps silence as to serious accidents on the lines, as to gross violation of duty towards the public. There is the annual cheque from Monte Carlo. But domestic scandal is the richest gold mine, and there is one paper in Paris which pays a large dividend extracted from this source alone. This is the paper which broke up the home of the late William Huntingdon and broke his heart. In operations of this kind the journalist works in con- junction with waiters at the supper-houses, with chamber-maids and so on. He has spies every- where. He has a tariff for all kinds of services. Information is worth so much ; a compromising letter so much. I remember a certain person who used to come to a café I frequented, who was pointed out to me as a very clever man, who made a thousand a year by directing black- mailing enterprises. One day he came into the café radiant but disfigured. He had a black eye, a swollen nose, and his lip was badly cut. But he exulted, and ordered champagne in gallons. I was afterwards told that he had that day received eighteen thousand francs from a husband for certain letters written by a foolish wife. The husband had paid the money, but had also given the man “what for,” and had helped him down stairs. Little did the blackmailer care. He was the hero of the evening. Eighteen thousand francs, you know, are not to be found in a mule's hoof, as the saying is in France. I subsequently learned a good deal about this man's methods. Not being fortunate enough to own an influential organ of his own, he was forced to share profits with such newspapers as would allow him to use their columns for his purposes. This is how he would proceed. Having heard from one of his spies, a waiter, say, at one of the restaurants which keep open all night, that some lady, in a foolish moment, had supped there with someone who was not her husband, he would begin operations by causing to be inserted in one of the newspapers a para- graph somewhat as follows: “A little bird whispers to me that two nights ago a fair lady, &c., &c. I understand that the initial of her Christian name is M. Who can she be P And what does her husband, poor fellow, think of it?” And so on. The lady would then be approached. As a rule, however innocent her freak might have been, she would pay what was demanded. If not, a second paragraph, giving a much closer descrip- tion, would be printed, with the threat that full particulars and details would shortly be forth- coming. This sort of thing is constantly being done. Even the demi-mondaines are laid under tribute. Everybody knows these things and nobody cares. De Lesseps entertained me one afternoon for a couple of hours with stories of ## p. (#563) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2O9 the attempts made to extract money from him and from his wife. The most infamous stories were printed about Madame de Lesseps, that model of womanly virtues. She has often told me of them, and we have laughed heartily. One gets indifferent in the end, and it is because of that feeling that these abuses flourish in France. I remember seeing a Parisian editor pocket 3OOO francs, payment for the insertion of a most scurrilous libel. It only struck me afterwards that the man deserved to be kicked. Still there is some excuse for the journalists. They are underpaid and poor, and yet are forced to mix in the best society, to dress well, to go everywhere, to entertain, to spend largely. I was amused the other day in reading the appendix to “The Wandering Heir" to find that most of what I recently said in reference to the blacklegs of our profession had already been said, and much more eloquently, by Charles Reade. The Rev. Stopford Brooke is still at Grasmere, confined to his room. He has been ailing since October, but is now much better, and is able to write for some hours every day. S. R. Crockett writes me that he expects to be in London towards the end of February, He will spend a week or two in town and will then go to Holland for a few weeks. He is working as hard a.S €Wel’. A young American artist, named Ralph Goddard, has settled down in Paris and is engaged in modelling the portraits of our leading writers, for casting in the form of bronze medallions. Mr. Goddard has already completed a set of twelve medallions of the best-known English and American authors. He is very enthusiastic over his work. Mr. Edward H. Cooper, a popular member of the Authors' Club, is now staying in Paris and is working hard at a novel on the turf, which promises to be a book of very great interest. Mr. Cooper spent several weeks at Newmarket studying his subject, and collected quantities of notes to work upon. I am afraid that our three friends of the Authors’ Club, who went out to Ashanti with the expedition as “special correspondents,” must have been rather disappointed with the course of events, or rather, want of events, out there. Still they have shown their pluck, and are a credit to our club. And peace is the preferable thing. ROBERT H. SHERARD. > º NOTES AND NEWS, R. HALL CAINE’S admirable address on his Canadian mission will be found in another place. Rumours of wars and the upsetting of Ministries have put the copyright question in the background, but it is hoped that, when the subject is taken up again, it will be at the point where Mr. Hall Caine left it. In answer to one or two recent objections that the Author might be made a paying property, the objectors must be reminded of the purpose for which the Author was started and is continued. It is not a review or a general magazine; it does not invite contributions of the ordinary kind; it is not in any sense a rival to the Athenæum or the Bookman ; it is a paper whose object is, like that of the Society, nothing but the maintenance and defence of literary property; it points out what is meant by royalties; what are the tricks sometimes practised in profit-sharing agreements; what clauses in agreements mean or may mean—for instance, two or three months ago it pointed out the danger of signing an agreement which gave a publisher the right of charging against a book as much as he pleased, by advertising it in his own Organs, for which, of course, he paid nothing. It opens its columns for suggestive experiences, for everything to do with the literary life. But these things can hardly be made interesting to the general public. Probably the paper has attained nearly as large a circulation as it will ever reach. Two thousand copies are printed; about 14OO are sent to members; about 500 more—I do not vouch for the exact figures—are subscribed by the public. And in the end not many copies I'êIYla,IIl OWeI’. There is one way in which the Author may be made to pay. It is sent to every member free. But the choice is left open to the member to remit to the secretary the yearly subscription of 6s. 6d. If only half the members did so the Author would more than pay its way. The formation of a Publishers’ Society should be hailed as a step which has long been wanted. There are many outstanding grievances which can only be amended by fair and open discussion. There are many cases brought to our notice which should be referred to the Society of Publishers. The knowledge that such cases would be referred to the committee of that body would make such of its members as have hitherto played tricks with impunity hesitate. It may ## p. (#564) ################################################ 2 IO THE AUTHOR. become possible at length to arrive at a plan of publishing which may be recognised by men of honour on both sides as fair and reasonable. I do not think that our side will be found backward in advancing an end so eminently desirable. One will, perhaps, be able to speak of the subject with greater fulness in following numbers. In another column will be found a statement of facts connected with the Address to American Authors. Speaking as one who strongly approved of the Chairman’s action, it is very satisfactory to learn that the response amounted to 500 signa- tures—that is to say, to more than one-third of those to whom it was sent. To persuade 500 authors to joint action is extremely creditable. That some writers would disapprove of any address at all was foreseen ; that some would disapprove of the form and style was also inevitable; and that the appearance or sugges- tion of any difference in opinion would be hailed as a chance of making an attack upon the Society was also inevitable. In point of fact those who received the address were simply invited to sign it if they approved; if they did not approve, then not to sign. That the invitation was sent out on the Society's paper against what now appear to have been the Chairman’s orders may perhaps be ex- plained by the circumstances of the time — being Christmas week—with the secretary absent for four days. Our New York correspondent, it will be seen, speaks highly of the effect which the address produced in the States. This was expected. Not one single word of adverse criticism to the style or the sentiments of the paper has come over, to my knowledge. I thought at the time, and I still think, that the address as amended from the first rough draft was admirably calculated for its purpose. My own name and that of another writer have been freely tossed about by our friends the critics. We have kept silence because there was nothing to say except that, whatever part we took in the matter, we should, under similar circumstances, act in exactly the same manner again; that we are both perfectly satisfied with that part; and that we think the action of the Chairman was wise, generous, and opportune. And so, I believe, think the five hundred who followed his lead. Private letters from America entirely confirm this view. Here, for instance, are some lines which came with a private letter, expressing the pleasure which the address gave the writer:— LET US HAVE PEACE. Flash the words under the wave, Let us have peace. What though the impotent rave * Let us have peace Leave it for barbarous hordes To brandish their sabres and swords, Ours but the weapons of words, Yet words way condemn or may save. Straight from the heart and the brain, Ring out the anthem of peace PENS of the island and main, Flash out the written word, PEACE Dipped in your heart's blood, still write, Till nations shall stand in their might, And brothers with brothers unite To banish this spectre of Pain Johnstown, N.Y., Jan. 8, 1896. J. OLIVER SMITH. The attacks upon the literary agent have been renewed in various magazines. I wonder if the writers think they can abolish the literary agent by abusing him. Here, for instance, are three reasons absolutely unanswerable to show why he will continue and flourish so long as his clients have confidence in his integrity and ability. (I.) He has been proved to be extremely useful to writers whose works mean literary property. (2.) It is to most of such writers the greatest relief to have the commercial side of their work taken off their hands. (3.) All writers will con- tinue, whatever the papers may say about the agents, to exercise their undoubted right of managing their own affairs in their own way. In other words, no one has the slightest right to interfere, whatever way a man chooses for the conduct of his own business. A free library has been started at Nuneaton, George Eliot's birthplace. It is proposed to set apart one room for the preservation of the MSS. and letters and relics of George Eliot. Should there not also be a collection of all her works, including the article which she wrote for the Westminster Review º' These could all be re- covered, I suppose, by the help of the editor's papers and accounts. WALTER BESANT. *- A -º * * * FEUILLETON. AN OBJECT LEsson. THINK it may become a man's duty to present himself as an object-lesson — an awful example. I am a peculiarly atrocious example, of fifteen years' standing. I append my balance-sheet in illustration of the statement. ## p. (#565) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2 I I I began to write in 1880. I was an under- graduate member of a venerable University at that time—Christminster, in fact. I wrote plays. Shortly afterwards I came into a little money and removed to London. My dramatic work was freely rejected. One acting manager, indeed, spoke of trying to get a lever de rideau put on for me; I went to see him—I was young, and I omitted to sketch out 1.is own share in the finan- cial dealings. That piece was not played. I thought the systematic rejection might be due to my handwriting ; so I had my three plays very beautifully printed and bound. Two of them were quite short, and the cost was about £36. They yet await representation. - Then I determined to give a matinée. I engaged a secretary, and we wrote to one or two leading actors, and drew up a form of invitation to the Press. One of the leading actors came to See me. He sat upon my play, and I in turn repressed the secretary and the matinée. Then I thought I, ought to qualify as a playwright by going on the stage. I did go round the provinces for about two years; and have come to the con- clusion that this sort of anxious qualifying is almost invariably a mistake. After this I went to Paris. Then I went to live in the country. Here that temptation assailed me which has completed me as an awful example. I felt that I could write a novel. I wrote it—it was a Cornish story—and I hit upon a capital title for it. It did not seem worth while to sit and wait for its recurrent rejection, so I sent it round as a novel that I would publish at my own cost. On these terms it was accepted. My own solicitors drew up the agreement, and I paid £60. The novel appeared in due course. The publishers went bankrupt in due course. I was out of pocket. But the Athenæum said a good word for the booklet, the Daily Telegraph gave it a little breeze aft, and the Morning Post —O unexpected friend —spoke of it with enthu- siasm. A thousand copies were sold—in five years. I bought the last shop-worn examples myself. Those Press notices (there were some nice Scotch and Irish ones as well; though I must admit one reviewer called me not only mad, but a woman), more than outweighed the cheque to debit. And I tried the drama again. I failed again. Not, however, from the aesthetic point of view, for I had the good fortune to meet Miss Alma Murray, and she allowed me to see and touch a lock of Shelley's hair. I concluded that I would write another novel. It cost me eighteen months' hard labour and an illness. Two publishers rejected it; the third accepted it. He offered me £30 for the copy- right, or a royalty of 2s. 6d. per copy. I chose the latter, and signed the publisher's form of agreement. After many months the book was published. Again many months and I received £8. Soon afterwards the publisher allowed his business entity to fail and be reconstituted. This time the Saturday Review complimented me; so did the Scotsman. I thought I had a start. Of course I got nothing more for the book. I believe it still has a small sale, but I have no claim on it. The publisher parted with it as a “remainder.” I wrote another novel, and nobody would have it at any price. I suppose that was just; for it did not clearly make for righteous- ness. Then came a morning when I awoke to find myself not famous, but ruined. The thing was not half done, it was rounded and complete. Of course everybody but myself saw that it was entirely my own fault. I could not see that, and do not; but then this only shows my density. Some men would have blown their brains out. But it is an uncanny manoeuvre at best—I did contem- plate it. And though I can understand a single man justifying it to himself, I do not see how a married man with a couple of lads could come at the justification. More especially if his wife is his best friend, and has even so failed in the obvious duty of woman as to refuse to stifle her regard for her husband with the baby, when invited to do so. I took the less easy course, and learned shorthand and typewriting, and furbished up the languages I had learned for pleasure for business weapons. England being the land of stanch relations, nearly all my ac- quaintances and the large majority of my friends dropped me at this time. When I had duly prepared myself to enter the writhing mass of those competing at the foot of the ladder, I found I was still a failure. I was thirty years of age, and I had no business references or experiences; so I could not get employment, and there really seemed nothing for it but a retreat to the quiet of the cemetery or the society of the workhouse. I was sitting one day in a cheap eating-house, contemplating this dismal alter- native, when a Spaniard of my acquaintance came in, hurried up to me, and, with tears in his eyes, told me he had found me work, and wrung my hand. The friends of my adversity have been a Spaniard and a Scotchman. It was hard work, and began at the rate of £96 per annum. I had not only to write shorthand and work the Remington, but translate French of all sorts, German of all sorts, Spanish and Portuguese of all, sorts; interpret French evidence in court; stumble through Danish, Swedish and Norwegian letters, and typewrite Italian. My hours were from nine in the morning to six nominal (this ## p. (#566) ################################################ 2 I 2 THE AUTHOR. means seven) in the evening. But it was not the workhouse, nor was it the cemetery. And I was earning my living at last. Besides, I was to have all the Bank holidays except one, I had very seldom to work on Sunday, and—after the first year—I was to have a fortnight in the autumn away from work. Soon I was “raised” to £120 a year; then I was actually offered £150, if I would sign a “stringent contract” for three years. For certain reasons not here to be dis- cussed, the life I then endured was so exactly like what I imagine the life in hell to be that I refused this opportunity, raised my shorthand to 140 words a minute, and strove to get a foothold in journalism. In this I failed again. Then, by a singular fluke, I became secretary to a well-known man of letters, since dead. He was alternately brusque and kindly; he had seen a great deal of life and plenty of fighting, and it seemed to me that he was far more interesting than the popular romances which he dictated to me. I got 35s. a week, plenteous leisure, and a number of wrinkles from him. Then I became a ghost. This subterranean passage in my life cannot be opened up to mortal eyes, for obvious reasons. I found that when I wrote a book, lock, stock, and barrel, and another man put his name on it, it was worth over £300 (this money was actually paid), and when difficulties arose, and it became known—long after the book's acceptance—that my ghostly name ought to figure on the title-page, this same book was returned by an important syndicate to the first purchaser as a thing worthless. And yet this very syndicate had read it and valued it as above—when the other name was there. I cannot help thinking that there is good material for reflection in this, if one could only get at the right point of view. Next I tried collaboration. I collaborated with a man who, I was told, “sold well.” I had seen more than a column of big type given to a work by him in a leading London daily. We wrote three stories together, and they satisfied my ex- perienced collaborator. But my particular Nemesis was not tired of following me—had not sat down to rest for a time even. Those three stories are still for sale. Balance-sheet of fifteen years’ literary work: T)R. 38 CR. 39 Printing three plays ... 36 | A story in Timsley's Cost of publishing one Magazine, Dec., 1888 o novel..................... 6O | From a 2-vol. novel...... 8 A “Ghost” story sold for £60 ; actually re- ceived .................. 25 96 33 Net result, 363 loss. You suppose I am cured P No. “As flies to wanton boys are * authors “to the gods.” I still have manuscript going the rounds. But may others profit by me ! “MR. BROOMIELAw.” *—s LITERATURE IN THE PERIODICALS. BookMAKING. L. Simons. To-Morrow for January. AN AUTHOR’s CoMPLAINT. George Redway. Athenæum. for Jan. 18. ADVERTISEMENT As A GENTLE ART. National Review for January. AUTHORS AND Politics. Speaker for Jan. 18. RELICS OF THE BRONTiš FAMILY. Herbert E. Wroot. Good Words for February. THE POETRY OF EMILY BRONTiš. Atalanta for February. ' THE YOUNG MAN WHO WANTS TO WIRITE. Kernahan. Young Man for January and February. THE Gosph.I. Accord ING TO THE NovKLISTS. I.- CHARLEs DICKENs. W. J. Dawson. Young Man for February. RoBERT Louis STEvºNson AND EDINBURGH. Francis Watt. Art Jowrmal for February. THE READING ROOM AND IRON LIBRARY OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM. A. W. Jarvis. Pall Mall Magazine for February. PARALYZERS OF STYLE. cott's Magazine for February. THE ADVANTAGE OF FICTION. M. G. Tuttiett (Max- well Gray). Nineteenth Century for January. THE PARSON IN ENGLISH LITERATURE. Review of Reviews for January. An Editor. Florence Glover. Coulson Frederic M. Bird. Lippin- Religious LANCASHIRE NOVELISTs’ SERIES. III. — WILLIAM HARRISON AINsworth. Edmund Mercer. Manchester Quarterly for January. THE “CONCEIT * IN LITERATURE. Thomas New- bigging. Manchester Quarterly for January. ACCRETIONS TO THE TROY-MYTH AFTER HOMER. Wm. Crauston Lawton. Poet-Lore (Boston) for January. HAUNTS OF THE POETs. II.--THE SCOTTISH HIGH- LANDS AND SCOTT. Benjamin Taylor, F.R.G.S. Atalanta for January. LoRD DE TABLY : A PortRAIT. Edmund Gosse. Com- temporary Review for January. SHAKESPEARE AT ELSMORE. Jón Stefánson. Com- temporary Review for January. - RECoLLECTIONS OF THOMAS CARLYLE. Blackwood's Magazine for January. How AMERICAN HISTORY Is WRITTEN. Blackwood's Magazine for January. THE ANTI-MARRIAGE LEAGUE. wood’s Magazine for January. WoRDsworth’s “PARSON SYMPson.” January. HOW I BECAME A NOVELIST. for January. - ONE OF HAWTHORNE’s UNPRINTED NOTEBOOKS. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Atlantic Monthly for January. WAs GEORGE ELIOT A HyPoCRITE P Julien Gordon. Cosmopolitan for January. MATTHEw ARNOLD’s LETTERs. Herbert Woodfield Paul. Forwm for January. LIVING CRITICs. Hugh Walker. Mrs. Oliphant. Black- Temple Bar for Edna Lyall. Good Words IV.-MR. R. H. HuTTON. . Professor Bookman for January. ## p. (#567) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2 I 3 THE Book SALES OF 1895. J. H. Slater. Athenæum for Jan. 4 and II. THE OLD NURSE IN FICTION. Spectator for Jan. 4. PoETRY AND THE BARBARIANs. Satwrday Review for Jan. 4. CRITICISM AND IDEALs. JAMESON’s RIDE. Times for Jan. I I. THE POET LAUREATE’s RIDE. Andrew Lang. Morming for Jan. I5. ABOUT PAUL VERLAIN.E. Daily Chronicle for Jan. I4. Boys AND THEIR Books. Westminster Gazette for Jan. 17. THE ETHICS OF MR. Sw1NBURNE’s PoETRY. Satwrday Review for Jan. 25. CRITICISM AND THE CRITIC. January. Speaker for Jan. 4. First Poem by new Poet-Laureate. Selwyn Image. Savoy for NOTABLE REVIEWS. Of Professor Sully’s “Studies of Childhood. Athenæum. for Jan. 4. Of James Russell Lowell’s “Last Poems.” for Jan. 4. Of Purcell’s “Life of Cardinal Manning.” Athenæwm for Jan. 18, Times for Jan. Io and 13, Daily Chronicle for Jan. Io. Of Recent French Novels (Works by Jules Case, Georges Ohnet, Edouard Rod, and Alphonse Daudet.) Blackwood's Magazine for January. $ Athenæum. $: $ #: In the new little monthly review, To-morrow, Mr. L. Simons discusses the whole subject of bookmaking, and tries to point the way to a better state of things. He holds the balance between author and publisher. “The accusation of ‘greediness’ (he says) brought against some modern authors, as certainly holds good against some publishers.” The publisher may wish to give an author or an artist a push, but in the end he will have to look at financial results, and— The successful author has no doubt to pay for his still struggling colleague, and if he refuses to do so the end of the latter has come. If to-morrow the Society of Authors were to become a huge co-operative publishing establish- ment, would the case stand differently P Mr. Simons deplores the literary agent's func- tion—of dealing with literature as though he were selling bread and cheese ; and he instances the arrangement between M. Zola and his pub- lisher as a lucid example of an author taking his work as a profession in the best sense of the word. But if the publisher's share be largest at the beginning when he has full risk, and the author's largest when the public buy him in appreciable numbers — that system, roughly, thinks Mr. Simons, would meet the cases; and he concludes thus:— The moment to turn “bookmaking ” into a profession again, helping it out of the trade groove into which it has fallen, has never been more opportune. The English pub- lishers, who have been undermining each other by a compe- tition such as would have been thought entirely unworthy of their position by their foreign colleagues, are at last going to unite. It will probably be the task of this new union to come to an understanding with the Authors’ Society and fix the rate of royalties to be paid to authors for various class of works, according to the sales. Then the author will find his reward in the number sold and therefore in his popularity ; there will be no more bargaining or under- mining ; the author will simply choose the publisher in whose integrity, taste, and “push ’’ he will have most con- fidence, and the competition between publishers will once more become a matter of “fair sport.” A novelist—Miss King—stated recently in the Athenæum that her book, price 3 s. 6d., was being sold by the booksellers as if it were published at 6s., its outward appearance probably inducing them to ask the higher price. On this complaint is based Mr. Redway’s article, which is a plea for the abolition of the discount system. (Though Mr. Alfred Wilson writes, in the same journal on the 25th ult, doubting whether Miss King's novel, while being ticketed at 4s. 6d., was sold at that). “If it can be demonstrated that the public will as readily pay 4s. 6d., or 3s. 6d., or 2s. 8d. for a volume, it is clear,” says Mr. Redway, “that the 3s. 6d. ‘net’ book, for example, may as well be advertised at 6s. and retailed at 4s. 6d., since publisher and author will thus obtain an extra shilling per copy from the public.” He prefers the German system of book distribution: With us the bookseller, under the “net” system, is merely an agent; under the “discount " system, merely a speculator. Therefore— In England the chances of success of an unknown author become fainter every year : if he write a book of a popular character its fate must depend upon whether the handful of “discount' booksellers, and the largest libraries and rail- way bookstalls, have anything more important on hand, at . the moment than the launching of his book. On the multiplication of book shops depends the future of literature as a branch of commerce, and the discount system is “strangling English literature '’; so, asks the writer, Who will bell the cat P for the abolition of discounts and the bringing to pass of the following conditions: Booksellers might become as common as tobacconists if the old rates of profit on single copies were in vogue. The bookseller's shop might become an exhibition of the newest and best books, irrespective of their immediate popularity. An army of professional students of catalogues would arise, who could afford to make full use of parcel post and telegraph office, with the result that the bookbuying public, even in the remotest part of the kingdom, might be as well served with new books as with postage stamps. The National Review paper is an attack on the existence of the literary agent. What a delightful trade (exclaims the writer) and how charmingly inexpensive | The writer believes that to the literary agent we are indebted for the flood of rubbish in the reading world just now, and for many other things. “Individuality is the one interesting, real thing in the universe,” says Mr. Selwyn Image, who suggests a journal in which critics would have a free hand entirely, with the one proviso of ## p. (#568) ################################################ 214 THE AUTHOR. blanching the libel court. The critic would write in the first person and in the style his humour smiled upon at the moment; he would sign his article always, but would be free to change his signature as the occasion prompted him. For, says Mr. Image— If a man is worth listening to at all (and when one can get at him I expect there breathes not a soul but is), let us hear what he thinks and feels, what he likes and hates, and let us hear it his own way. For the attainment of this end the tyranny of the editorial “we” is fatal; but fatal, too, is the antithesis that on every occasion a man should write over his own signature, or over a signature known to be his. The literary tastes of schoolboys are strikingly illustrated in the Westminster Gazette article. Taking the lists from four public school libraries, here is our summary of the foremost results in the aggregate :- Henty, 307 times taken out in the course of several terms; Ainsworth, 276; Haggard, 259; Marryat, 221 ; Jules Werne, 220; Ballantyne, 217 ; “Q.,” 199; James Grant, 185. Scott gets only I Io, Stevenson, 84. Clarke Russell, Dickens, Kingston, Hume Nisbet, Blackmore, Manville Fenn, Whyte Melville, Conan Doyle, R. Boldre- wood, and Mr. Kipling have been taken over Ioo times. *— z-- ~~~ BOOK TALK. D" CONAN DOYLE'S series of stories of adventure which has been running in the Strand Magazine, entitled “The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard,” will be published in book form this month. He has recently finished a new story of the Regency period, called “Rodney's Stone,” which also will appear serially. A novel which is to contain lessons for women who try to live their own lives is “The Things That Matter,” by Mr. Francis Gribble, which Messrs. A. D. Innes and Co. will publish. Mr. R. D. Blackmore has written a romance of Surrey life entitled “Darill,” which will appear in Blackwood’s Magazine. Mr. Crockett’s “Cleg Kelly,” which appeared in Cornhill, will be published in book form soon, and his new work, which is a Galloway story called “The Grey Man,” will follow in the autumn. Mr. George Moore is getting near a finish with his new novel, but some months will elapse yet before it appears. The title is “Evelyn Innes,” and the theme of the book the struggle between the spiritual and the sensual life. After a long and dangerous illness, Miss Eleanor Studder has returned to literary work with an article running through Notes and out in book form soon. Queries on the Saxon Yule. A story from her pen is in the hands of Messrs. Nelson to be produced as soon as their arrangements permit. Mr. Frederic Breton has written a novel laid in the Western Highlands of Scotland, entitled “The Trespasses of Two.” It will be published by Messrs. Hutchinson and Co. They also announce “A Provincial Lady,” by Mrs. Harcourt William- SOI). Mr. Clive Holland is the author of “A Lure of Fame,” a novel to be published by Mr. George Redway. - Mr. Quiller Couch is about to publish a volume of essays which he has named “Adventures in Criticism.” “Ia,” a Cornish story, which ap- peared in Yule Tide at Christmas, will also be Messrs. Cassell and Co. are his publishers. Mr. Frankfort Moore is so well up to date as to publish a short story about Ashanti. It is called “Dr. Kumahdi of Ashantee,” and will appear in Messrs. Constable’s Acme Series, for which also Sir Robert Peel has written a tale. “Rita" has written a story entitled “Joan and Mrs. Carr,” which Messrs. T. W. White and Co. have in the press. “A Riverside Romance,” by Mrs. Edward Kennard, and “A Fight with Fate,” by Mrs. Alexander, are also coming soon from Messrs. White. “A Foreigner : an Anglo-German Study,” is the title of a book by E. Gerard (Madame de Laszowska) which Messrs. Blackwood and Sons are about to publish. The first mountaineering book of the year is likely to be “The Japanese Alps,” by the Rev. Walter Weston. While residing at Kobe as British chaplain, Mr. Weston, who is a member of the Alpine Club, explored what he calls the “unfamiliar” mountain regions of Central Japan. This book is the result. It will be profusely illustrated from the author's photographs. Mr. Murray is the publisher. - The extraordinary title “The Most Gorgeous Lady Blessington’ has been given to a biography of the famous Countess which Mr. J. Fitzgerald Molloy has prepared and Messrs. Downey will issue. There will be letters in it by Tom Moore, Lord Lytton, Disraeli, Dickens, Galt, and others. Messrs. Downey have also in hand a story by Colonel Davis, entitled “Three Men and a God.” The two-volume work “Democracy and Liberty,” by Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, M.P., is in the press of Messrs. Longmans, who have also in preparation the late Professor Froude's Lectures on the Council of Trent; “The Astronomy of Milton's ## p. (#569) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 2 I 5 Paradise Lost,” by Thomas N. Orchard, M.D.; and “East and West: Reprinted Articles,” by Sir Edwin Arnold, K.C.I.E. Professor Brander Matthews contributes a volume on “Bookbindings Old and New '' to the well-known Ex-Libris Series published by Messrs. George Bell and Sons. The work is to be illus- trated with examples of the most skilful binding, and its letterpress will deal with the subject from the days of Grolier to those of Cobden Sanderson. At a book sale at Sotheby’s a few days ago Shakespeare’s “Poems,” 1640, the first collected edition, but with defective portrait and four leaves missing, brought 32 I ; a copy of the fourth folio edition of Shakespeare, 1685, want- ing a portrait, 345; and Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” 1667, first edition, with the first title-page, £90, The Duke of Argyll has been at work, off and on, for fifteen years upon his book “The Philo- sophy of Belief,” which Mr. Murray will have ready shortly. The same house expects to issue the first portion of Gibbon’s unpublished works —autobiographies, journals, and correspondence —edited by the Earl of Sheffield, about Easter. Mr. Percy Hemingway's book of verse, entitled “The Happy Wanderer, and other Poems,” will be issued by Mr. Elkin Mathews this month. This publisher has also a volume in preparation by Mr. Vincent Sullivan, which will have a frontispiece done by Mr. Selwyn Image. Mr. F. G. Edwards has written a “History of Mendelssohn’s ‘Elijah'” (this year, by the way, is the jubilee of the first performance of the oratorio, which took place at Birmingham Festival) in which there will be new matter gathered from unpublished letters of the com- poser and his contemporaries. The work will be published at an early date by Messrs. Novello, Ewer, and Co. Penny standard works are not alone Mr. Stead's field now, for Messrs. George Newnes Limited have begun a series of which the first was Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield.” Messrs. Jarrold and Sons also publish good “ penny populars.” Mr. Swinburne's lyric, too, “A Word for the Navy,” published nine years ago at 5s, is now in slightly revised form appearing in an edition of Ic,OOO copies at one penny each. A cyclopædia of architecture in Italy, Greece, and the Levant is being edited by Mr. W. P. Longfellow, and will be published soon by Mr. |Fisher Unwin. The most important of January's moderate output of books were “The Life of Cardinal Manning,” by Edmund Sheridan Purcell (Mac- millan)—which has been received with extra- ordinarily diverse feelings; “The Life of William Carleton,” the Irish novelist, continued from the point where the autobiography breaks off, by David J. O'Donoghue (Downey and Co.); and “New Poems by Christina Rossetti,” edited by William Michael Rossetti (Macmillan). Mr. Gladstone's edition of Bishop Butler's works (Clarendon Press) should also be named. New light on Burns's career, particularly his residence in Irvine, his notion of migrating to America, and his relations with Elizabeth Paton and Mary Campbell, is to be supplied by Mr. Wm. Wallace in his edition of the biography by Dr. Chambers to be published soon by Messrs. W. and R. Chambers. The second edition of Mr. Ernest Hart's work, “Hypnotism, Mesmerism, and the New Witchcraft,” will have new chapters on “The Eternal Gullible,” and a note on “The Hypnotism of Trilby.” The works of the well-known American writer Mr. John Burroughs are about to appear in a Riverside Edition in nine volumes, illustrated with portraits. Messrs. J. M. Dent and Co. are the English publishers. The same house announces an edition of Marryat, edited by Mr. R. B. Johnson, and illustrated with etchings, for publication in the early spring. Messrs. Rout- ledge are also publishing a complete edition of Marryat, in monthly volumes, edited by Mr. W. L. Courtney. What is said to be by far the largest Greek papyrus known—mamely, “The Revenue Laws of Ptolemy Philadelphus,” in the Bodleian Library— has been translated, with commentary and appen- dices, by Mr. B. P. Grenfell, and will be published shortly at the Clarendon Press. Professor Mahaffy writes an introduction, and the volume will be accompanied by a portfolio containing thirteen facsimiles. Mr. E. F. Knight, who acted for the Times in the recent Madagascar Campaign, is issuing a book about it through Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Co., entitled “Madagascar in War Time : The Experiences of a Special Correspondent with the Hovas during the French Invasion of 1895.” A new edition of the late Mr. Stevenson's “Picturesque Notes on Edinburgh” (originally published eighteen years ago, and now out of print) will be ready this month. The illustrations are entirely new, consisting of eight copper plates, four of which are etchings, and over fifty other engravings in tint and line. Mr. T. Hamilton Crawford, Royal Scottish Water Colour Society, ## p. (#570) ################################################ 2 16 TIIE AUTIIOIR. has done the work. Messrs. Seeley and Co. are the publishers. Stevenson’s “Songs of Travel” are being pre- pared for issue by Messrs. Chatto and Windus, apart from the volume in the Edinburgh Edition containing them. The supplementary series of the Edinburgh Editionwill number seven volumes. Mr. Edwin Lester Arnold’s recently published book, “The Story of Ulla,” has done something to prove collected short stories are not always unpopular. A second edition is already being prepared by Messrs. Longmans. Mr. Bloundelle-Burton’s new novel, “In the Day of Adversity,” having now finished its serial course in London and Australia, will be published immediately. It will be produced in volume form in London and New York simulta- neously—by Messrs. Methuen and Co. here, and by Messrs. Appleton and Co. in the latter city. The period is that of Louis Quatorze—which has been a special study of Mr. Bloundelle-Burton for many years—and the events connected with the burning of the French fleet at La Hogue form a portion of the incidents dealt with. l “A Sextet of Singers” (The Roxburghe Press). In this little volume of eighty-three pages we sample the graceful, sympathetic verse of half a dozen writers whom—one and all—we could profitably listen to oftener and at greater length. They are George Barlow, J. A. Blaikie, “Paganus.” (L. Cranmer-Byng), Vincent O'Sullivan, Walter Herries Pollock, and Sidney R. Thompson. As illustrating the spirit of poetic feeling that may be said to animate the whole sextet, the following stanzas from “Once More,” by Mr. Barlow, will Serve : . Once more, with skies above her Of endless perfect air, With sunlit leaves to love her And whisper, “Thou art fair;” Once more—and statelier, surer, When summer's hymn was done— From woman’s mouth came purer The anthems of the sun : Once more, in honeyed metre That charmed grief to repose, From woman’s lips came sweeter The lyrics of the rose. Each says: “Though hearts preceding Were broken one by one, Yet follow we Love's leading As hope pursues the sun. A thousand shipwrecks follow The North wind’s course, maybe : Does one fierce shipwreck hollow One slight gulf in the sea P Nay! all the sea is smiling, As if no ship were slain; The blue waves are beguiling The white sails forth again.” A new novel, entitled “In Oban Town,” by Mr. C. McKellar, author of “Greece: her Hopes and Troubles,” “A Jersey Witch,” &c., will shortly be issued by Mr. Alexander Gardner, Paisley. H.R.? [.. the Duke of Sparta, Crown Prince of Greece, has accepted a copy of Mr. McKellar's work on Greece in very gracious terms. “Thoughts for Book Lovers,” compiled by Harry S. Lumsden. (Aberdeen : Lewis Smith and Son. Is. 6d.) A virtuous-looking brochure, in which a useful collection is made of what well- known writers have said upon the value of books, and how they should be read. As an assistant in a public library, Mr. Lumsden has had oppor- tunity of noticing the diverse ideas among readers as to which way most pleasure and profit lie, and he thus seeks to guide them. “Goethe's Faust.” The First Part. With a Literal Translation and Notes for Students. By Beta. (David Nutt. 3s. 6d.) The translator justifies the publication of another translation of Faust be:ause much indispensable light has been thrown on many passages since Hayward's admirable work was written. In this well- executed crib for beginners, therefore, Beta supplies the latest interpretations, following Sabatier's text generally, and giving new notes to aid students. The lengthy record of errata which prefaces the book will doubtless be removed in a second edition, which must come quickly. “The Commandment with Promise.” By the Hon. Gertrude Boscawen. (Elliot Stock.) This is a handsome book with a gracefully written story for children; its lesson—obedience. “Drifting through Dreamland.” By T. E. Ruston. (Elliot Stock.) There is great flexibility in the choice of the subjects treated in this volume of verse. They range from “The Worst Boy in the School” and “The Fighting Parson’’ to “Via Vitae" and “The Gate of Heaven.” The author's insight appears well in “Via Vitae '’ among the longer poems; but for simplicity and direct feeling, this, from “A Love Song,” the last piece in these 154 pages, is best : There are many finer ladies, But they ’re not so fine to me; You are all that I could wish for—- You are all you ought to be. Just a woman, brave and tender, Quick to aid and quick to love : Made for earth, yet nearest heaven— One who works, yet points above. “Divers Ditties.” By Alec. McMillan, M.A., Bengal Civil Service (Retired). (Archd. Con- stable and Co.) Anglo-Indians will be most interested in this book, as nearly all the verses in it deal with that life. But there are some adap- ## p. (#571) ################################################ THE AUTHOR. 217 tations of English poems, and, moreover, Mr. McMillan has a largely human touch, so home readers can enjoy his verse as well. There is a pleasant swing in “Anundorum Borooah” and “The Road to Pepityapore”; and sometimes the writer takes to homely Scots—presumably, like Mr. Crockett, for his stomach’s sake. Here is an example of Mr. McMillan's song: In the stately repose of a ripe womanhood, With the grace of a goddess of Hellas she stood, And the glory of summers a score, Fronting the sun that to setting was nigh, All under the shade of a tamarind high, On the road to Pepityapore. “Spring's Immortality, and Other Poems.” By Mackenzie Bell. (Ward, Lock, and Bowden. 3.s. 6d.) This is a second edition of Mr. Bell's volume, so warmly received when it first came out for its delicate feeling and thoughtful workman- ship. The author has made some revisions, and prefixed a poem addressed to Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman. “The Story of an Old Oak Tree.” By C. Thorpe Fancourt. (London: Elliot Stock.) The tree relates its own experiences with a little boy and some birds and squirrels. Tried on a little girl, the result showed that the little book is able to please. - “Tales told by the Fireside.” By the Rev. Charles D. Bell, D.D., Canon of Carlisle. (Elliot Stock.) Canon Bell, whose poems are well known, appears in a new line—that of a story- teller. The book contains seven stories. They are all stories concerning one family. The author's new departure will be welcomed by many friends. “Sung by Six.” (R. Aickin and Co. Limited, Belfast.) This is a pretty little volume of verse, nicely printed and bound, with a very dainty frontispiece. The Six are Messieurs—or Mesdames —S. K. Cowan, J. H. Cousins, W. M. Knox, L. J. McQuilland, W. T. Anderson, and J. J. Pender. This is presumably the first appearance of these poets in public. Now, on the mere possibility that only one of them arrives at worldly fame, how valuable will this work become in after years! Have we not, by the way, already heard this tune : It occurs in the first page we open. Half the light and the love and the laughter, Half the fruit and the fulness of earth, Have sunk in the gloom that hereafter Will make mute all life's music and mirth. “Our Household Insects,” by E. A. Butler. This is a volume of Longman's Silver Library. It is rather a gruesome book, with its pictures of fleas and parasites, and bloodsuckers, but it } as the great merit of doing well what it pro- fesses to do. Astronomy, Prehistoric Man, Another addition to the Silver Library is the book of “Leisure Readings,” by Edward Clodd, Andrew Wilson, Thomas Foster, A. C. Ranyard, and Richard Proctor. The book first appeared in 1882. It contains a collection of papers on Illusions, and Ethnology. The last paper — that on “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”—hath a belated air. Not many people now care much about “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” Rider Haggard’s “Montezuma's Daughter" and Mr. Andrew Lang's “Cock Lane and Common Sense” have also been added to the Silver Library. “Suggestions for the Promotion of Unity in Christendom,” by George Edward Turner (Elliot Stock), is a book which recommends itself, by its title, to those who believe that such unity is possible. *– ~ * - - - CORRESPONDENCE, I.—AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERS, S an Associate of the Authors’ Society for the past three years, I have followed with attention and admiration your un- swerving insistence on the rights of authors vis-à-vis publishers. I do not presume to suppose that any point of view in the contro- versy should occur to one with little expe- rience in literature and agreements which has not for years been fully weighed by you, nor to offer suggestions for publication. When there is a definite and philanthropic object to attain, every- one agrees that it is necessary to adopt a definite strategy of attack, and to remain silent perhaps on those points of view which do not tell directly in favour of the contention. I jot down some thoughts suggested by this first month's number of the new year, rather as a silent indorsement of an unknown member in recognition of the immense patience and persistence of the Society in the struggling authors’ behalf. The January number, as do most numbers, raises passim most of the grounds which rouse the Society's indignation. They are, cursorily, secret or unwarranted charges (office expenses, cost of advertisements, &c.); “publishers' services,” exaggerated importance of ; “remunera- tion,” impropriety and misleading use of the word for the earnings which “belong to the creator; ” binding oneself for a term of years; the literary agent; unjust percentage of profits taken by publisher in return for “risk,” &c. The basis of discussion, and the fighting tone tactically adopted by the Society, may be gathered from ## p. (#572) ################################################ 2:18 THE AUTHOR. such sentences as these : “We speak of agree- ments between two honourable men, both of whom desire nothing more than is fair, and both of whom would scorn the dirty tricks of secret profits and lying returns.” “Let us set forth the conditions as dispassionately as possible" (recognition of the animosity that has long formed part of the controversy on one side at least). “What are the publishers’ services? What does he actually do for the book P. The requisite knowledge is equally possessed by his clerks.” “Literary property belongs to the creator, not to the middleman” (the word “re- muneration ” therefore inapplicable—almost an insult). “The following magnificent offer was recently made by a publisher of no small note. If he relied on the ignorance of the author, he was within his wrongs.” This insistance, indignation, exposure, must be viewed by authors, with gratitude; it is a battle stubbornly fought for them on astute and recog- mised controversial principles. And the basis of operations, the fortress on which the attack rests, is one, the only one, which must exact, and obtains, the sympathy and support of civilised society. The recognition of this basis is the groundwork of these remarks. What is it, then P The basis of the authors’ claims is nothing Tmore or less than morality—Christian morality; it insists that both parties should be actuated by fairness, honesty, and honour. It insists on the rights of the author to the profits on his own work. This is a distinct assertion of the modern social doctrine; in barbarous times the greater portion of humanity were slaves, and had no other rights, either in law or morality, than those they could claim by force. In this century, and this country, it seems ridiculous even to go down to this. What other principle is ever employed in anything than the fundamental doctrine of individual liberty P Well, it seems a flagrant paradox to express, but the common experience of life points to the fact that in business, might, and might alone, is still, as it always has been, the only individual right. The only difference to barbarism is that sword and targe are replaced by fraud and cunning, or tact, patience, self-reliance, and the strong will. In business a man's only practical Tight is the profit that he can get; and literature, from the point of view of the Society, is a |business. To exemplify this, before making deductions, let us look round. Authors are not the only creators; there are altists, mechanical inventors, business men. Every man who aspires to rise is a creator; a speculator, a shopkeeper, can only grow rich by the ideas of his brain, which are creations. Let us take inventors. How does the world treat them in the matter of rights? They sell their patents for what they can get, and there is no morality yet discovered which can adjust their claims on the principle of even half profits in the result. Stevenson's invention was worth, roughly, a hundred millions. Would anyone think of giving it him if he came to life again P. The highest justice that civilisation has yet conceived is a lump of bronze, and that posthumous. There is therefore no practical existent morality which can justify, by precedent, a claim to a given share in the profits of a man's work. It is an accepted worldly maxim that the capitalist takes the lion's share, and the inventor just what he can get, with no reference to the value of his patent. A new tie-clip, as a rule, brings more profit than a steam-engine; a gaudy design on a tin plate than the invention of porcelain ; a bread pill than the discovery of the circulation of the blood. From a business point of view, then, the author has no ground to consider himself exceptionally ill-used, or immorally treated; no right to brand the publisher with extortion, or complain of his fraud. To be honourably treated is the excep- tion; to be cheated, the universal rule. The point of view that you have seemed, very properly, to hold in the background is that the publisher does not really stand to the author in the relation of agent, middleman, but simply of capitalist to patentee. I invent a pill—call it a book. Who asked me to—who wants it P. If I choose that line of aspiration, or livelihood, instead of opening a pin-shop, it is my misfortune, or my choice; I have got to work it on exactly the same moral prin- ciples as obtain in any other line of speculation. I have either got to swallow my pill myself, or to sell it to the capitalist for what he will give, in order that he can make an innocent and long- suffering world swallow it for my benefit; and I get the additional unearned increment of kudos, by having my name stamped on every bolus. But, if we have not the right to appeal to practical morality, we most certainly retain the inalienable prerogative of members of an en- lightened civilisation to put in the foreground with all the clamour of the world a sentimental morality which forms the theory of Christian ethics. It is hypocritical, it is true; but it is the universal custom in politics, advertisement, finance. When did we ever prosecute a filibuster- ing war without flaunting this moral indignation in the van P. These controversial tactics are there- fore just as much justified as our wrongs are the natural outcome of business “morality.” Let us, then, by all means continue to appeal ## p. (#573) ################################################ THE AUTHOIR. 2 IQ to a sense of moral equity as the basis of our claims for the pecuniary recognition of our work; but let us at the same time acknowledge clearly to ourselves that we are not adjusting some cruel and exceptional wrong, but simply “striking for higher wages” like any other trades union. In practical fairness, based on the moral fairness of our ideal, let us wage the war with no fictitious resentment against the publisher, but simply with a doggedly good-humoured determination to sweat him as much as we can, just as until we formed our union he used to sweat us. In practice, we can no more regard him as our mere agent or middleman than the labourer can regard the capitalist as existing only to put his labour on the market. It is a trite maxim, but none the less true, that if there were fewer publishers there would be fewer authors; for the rank and file, he provides labour and keeps in work many of us who without him would find our calling gone. And it is difficult to assert that the world would be much the worse off for our loss, any more than it would if the patent-pill works were closed. We can therefore only expect the market wages. As for actual cheating, it is disgusting; but are not many handicraftsmen cheated by con- cealing the true value of their work? Despite the superior dignity of letters, if we carry out our social doctrine of equality to its conclusion we are bound to hold our trade, from a business point of view, on the same level with all other efforts of man; the majority of us are mechanical workers for money, and our sublimest flights of art for art’s sake may be paralleled by the bricklayer's dainty dalliance with the trowel. We must, then, adopt the mechanic's principle in fighting for higher wages, and that is simply trades unions and the strike. We have formed the union : the logical outcome must be a strike. Can we strike? Even here we are in just the same position as tea-shop maids, labourers, shipbuilders, engineers ——perhaps a trifle better, since, after all, ours is almost the smallest trade in point of numbers, and it is easy to identify each of the hands. In a lock-out there will always be many of us inclined to play blackleg for our bread and butter, and that, as elsewhere, can only be provided against by a strike fund to support us for a year. And if we require 381 a week to the labourers' IOS., we have many wealthy members. But if our union were ever really to come to pronounced action, it could do it with far less loss and suffering than that incurred by poorer guilds ; and we have two lines of action—separate or joint. Let us suppose that the Society has drawn up an instrument guaranteeing, as far as humanly possible, the minutest rights of authors, and abolishing every imaginable form of fraud, extortion, and slavery, and that it only remains to force it on all present and future publishers with every conceivable safeguard—-how are they to be compelled to accept it? It could be done by from twenty to fifty of our most popular writers alone, while the small fry went on picking up crumbs. If these twenty or fifty authors were to bind themselves to submit no works for five years to any publisher who refused the declaration of rights, making allow- ance for the large number of juniors who could easily be persuaded to follow the Society's advice under their example, in two years sufficient of the leading houses would have given way to provide work for all the genuine talent of the country; and the rest would follow suit or fail. Or, it could be done by the same twenty to fifty successful authors subscribing the funds to start an immense publishing concern of their own. With 32O,OOO capital guaranteed, and the scheme definitely set on foot, a thousand smaller authors would be found to support it with annual subscriptions or saleable manuscripts with pay temporarily deferred. - Or, as a combination of these two schemes, a smaller publishing house might be started which would find work for any “marketable ’’ author who would agree to boycott reprehensible firms. Even if there was no more to be gained than the comfort of dealing with honourable men, there is Surely sufficient esprit de corps to make such a business pay, and that means to make it a serious competitor in the publishing world. And the declared competition of a single reputable firm on the lines of fairness and audits against extortion and fraud is sufficient to set the ball rolling which will make literature the finest pro- fession in the world. One last word on this oft-made suggestion of authors uniting to publish their own works, and one that has probably struck many as at least most interesting. That is, that now or never is the time; and that the now means the establish- ment of one of the most flourishing and paying businesses that has ever sprung into being. The Society of Authors has, perhaps unpremeditatedly, worked up public opinion and literary esprit de corps to just that ripe pitch whose natural and permissible outcome is a great mercantile under- taking. The whole body of young authors, the literary world of the next generation, has been alarmed, disturbed, and perplexed by ideas of their wrongs which, by business morality, are simply the universal struggle for life, the common lot of all ambitions. They have been made to think that they are being defrauded by no matter how generous an agreement; they have been ## p. (#574) ################################################ 22O THE AUTHOR. taught to look to the Society as their sole refuge from starvation or sweating. And the majority of established writers are already, by the generous impulses of the art, committed to the support of the league. The union of half a dozen leaders of literature would probably find the capital to start a publishing house, already advertised as no other house has ever been, to which every young author, necessarily including the few geniuses of the next generation, would flock. Surely with the support of a few leaders, and the ick of new genius (which, even more than established names, makes the fortune of existing houses), the new firm would have excellent pro- spects of success. But only now—during the next few years. It has not taken the Society ten years to accomplish the splendid results already felt ; in another ten years it will, by its persistent and irresistible momentum, have completed the revolution — pacifically. That is its aim ; and it will have achieved it nobly and simply, by a theoretical appeal to the principles of human justice. But it will have lost the opportunity of making authors complete arbiters of their own success. C. W. MASON. 59, Oaklands-road, Cricklewood. II.-FREE FROM LIABILITY. I have been much interested in the report, on page 184 of the January number of the Author, of a case tried in the courts respecting the return of a MS., in which it was held that the editor's “notice” freed him from liability, even though he failed to show that he had “used his best endeavours” to return it. In this case the author got back his MS. But suppose it had been lost or destroyed—what then P Can any person divest himself of his legal obligations to his fellow-subjects merely by announcing that he does not intend to observe them P. It used to be held that he could ; but that view is not held now. Railway companies, by a bye-law, used to mulct a passenger who had lost his ticket by making him pay over again, merely to save the trouble of verifying his statement; but that bye-law has been upset. It used to be held lawful to shoot a dog, even though a valuable animal, if found trespassing, provided a notice to that effect was publicly exhibited; but that view, I believe, is no longer held. I have seen a printed notice, dating from last century, that “Any person found trespassing in this plantation will be shot /* That notice might have been held good in law then ; could it be pleaded in answer to an indictment for murder now P In 1891, I sent a short tale to the editor of a certain sporting paper, which prints every week a notice that MS. sent without invitation will not be returned. I was not aware of this notice when I sent the MS. It can be easily understood that the MSS. usually submitted to a paper of that class would possess only a passing interest; if not used at once, they would become worthless. But my MS. was a tale, suitable for other papers as well as this spºrting journal; it was neatly typed and bound in pamphlet form, and the typewriting cost me 6s. to 8s. Hearing nothing of the MS. after several months, and getting no reply to my letters inclosing stamps, I applied to Mr. Squire Sprigge, then secretary of the Authors’ Society; and he, after some correspondence with the sporting paper, informed me that the editor denied all liability, in consequence of his notice. I sustained, therefore, a pecuniary loss of 6s. to 8s. Had the editor the right to do this P I think not. He must have seen at a glance that the MS. had cost money to type it, and that its non-return meant a pecuniary loss to the author. Had he the right to destroy my property, according to an arbitrary rule which he had made himself? Seeing that the MS. was of some value (I mean in a pecuniary sense), he might have put it aside on a shelf and waited till it was called for. But he made away with it instead, apparently to save the trouble of posting it. I sent him stamps for that purpose. Now, the question is this: Does any person, no matter who, editor or not, with notice or without it, possess the legal right to make away with my property merely to suit his own convenience P I fancy not. Only that I was living at a distance from London at the time, I would have tested the matter by a summons, and demanded either the return of the MS. or compensation for the loss sustained. But I have yet a year or two for consideration of the matter before my claim is barred by lapse of time. Perhaps some of our legal friends will enlighten us on the subject. III.-LESS THE ExCHANGE. When a writer is living abroad, is it customary for the publisher when sending him a cheque from London to stop the difference in the exchange, or ought not the author to have the advantage of living in a country where the exchange is high P For years I have always received cheques with the sum agreed upon intact, but the other day I had one with the deduction of the exchange carefully made, accompanied by a form of receipt on which the full sum was written. I should like to hear what is con- sidered fair in this matter. A MEMBER. 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 09 (February 1896) Subject The topic of the resource The Author, Vol. 06 Issue 09 (February 1896) 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 1896-02-01-The-Author-6-9 publications The Author