| 451 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/451 | The Author, Vol. 04 Issue 01 (June 1893) | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=%3Cem%3EThe+Author%3C%2Fem%3E%2C+Vol.+04+Issue+01+%28June+1893%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 04 Issue 01 (June 1893)</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Publication">Publication</a> | 1893-06-01-The-Author-4-1 | | | | | 3–36 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=4">4</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1893-06-01">1893-06-01</a> | | | | | | | 1 | | | 18930601 | be BHutbor.<br />
<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.)<br />
<br />
CONDUCTED BY WALTER BESANT.<br />
<br />
Vou. IV.—No. 1.] JUNE 1, 1893. [Prick SIXPENCE.<br />
CONTENTS.<br />
PAGE, | PAGE<br />
Warnings and Notices... tee ee ae ae aab ie | Omnium Gatherum for June. By J. M. Lely ... wee vee i<br />
Literary Property— | The 8.P.C.K. again ogee ees anne eee eh ee iB<br />
1.—Some Considerations on Publishing. By Sir Frederick A Note on Prefaces. By Sir F. Pollock... ae is ee a §<br />
Pee a ee What the Public Read. By Thomas Greenwood ... 0 wv 17<br />
2.—The Right of Translation. By H. G. Boo <n ... 9 | Horace’s Odes, L, 5. By A. S.Aglen ... oe sea Be coon as<br />
3.—Author and Publisher. Extractsfrom a paper sent round | Feuilleton. ‘‘ The Fire Post Office” ... ee ee se nas<br />
among Members by the Delegates to the Chicago | ‘Notes and News.” Bythe Editor... ae ees Gan maa oe<br />
Beene a ee | ‘““ Why a Congress ?” ee Se vs eee se See ee<br />
4.—Cost of Musical Production. By the Secretary ..- ... li | Correspondence—<br />
<br />
5.—Two Cases, 1. The Guinea Prize. 2. Copyright for Nothing 11 | 1.—The Donation of Books. By Rev. Prof. W. W. Skeat,<br />
The Responsibilities of Editors— \ Litt.D._ ... oe ae ces os ses eis pi Ae Oe<br />
1.—Report of the case Macdonald v. National Review ... 184 2.—An Experience. By. Rev. J. J. Haleombe ... Ase es Oe<br />
2.—Some Remarks on the Case. By A... + vst 14 | 3.—French Law... “ny a ees on 26<br />
3.—Letter from Sir F. Pollock on the Case ae te .. 15 | “At the Sign of the Author’s Head”... ees vas cee an 88<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
1, The Annual Report. That for January 1892 can be had on application to the Secretary.<br />
<br />
9. The Author. A Monthly Journal devoted especially to the protection and maintenance of Literary<br />
Property. Issued to all Members.<br />
<br />
3. The Grievances of Authors. (The Leadenhall Press.) 1s. The Report of three Meetings on<br />
the general subject of Literature and its defence, held at Willis’s Rooms, March, 1887.<br />
<br />
4. Literature and the Pension List. By W. Morrrs Conss, Barrister-at-Law. (Henry Glaisher,<br />
g5, Strand, W.C.) 38.<br />
<br />
5,<br />
<br />
6.<br />
<br />
The History of the Société des Gens de Lettres. By S. Squrre Spriaeex, late Secretary to<br />
the Society. Is.<br />
<br />
The Cost of Production. In this work specimens are given of the most important forms of type,<br />
size of page, &c., with estimates showing what it costs to produce the more common kinds of<br />
books. Henry Glaisher, 95, Strand, W.C. 2s. 6d.<br />
<br />
7. The Various Methods of Publication. By S. Squire Spriace, In this work, compiled from the<br />
papers in the Society’s offices, the various forms of agreements proposed by Publishers to<br />
‘Authors are examined, and their meaning carefully explained, with an account of the various<br />
kinds of fraud which have been made possible by the different clauses in their agreements.<br />
Henry Glaisher, 95, Strand, W.C. 3s.<br />
<br />
8. Copyright Law Reform. An Exposition of Lord Monkswell’s Copyright Bill now before Parlia-<br />
iment, With Extracts from the Report of the Commission of 1878, and an Appendix<br />
containing the Berne Convention and the American Copyright Bill. By J. M. Lety. Hyre<br />
and Spottiswoode. 1s. 6d. :<br />
<br />
9. The Society of Authors. A Record of its Action from its Foundation. By Waurmr Busant”<br />
(Chairman of Committee, 1888—1892). Is.<br />
<br />
<br />
4 THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
12. Cessron or Coprriaut.—Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTS.—Keep control over the advertise-<br />
ments, if they affect your returns, by a clause in the agree-<br />
ment. Reserve a veto. If you are yourself ignorant of the<br />
subject, make the Society your adviser.<br />
<br />
14. Never forget that publishing is a business, like any<br />
other business, totally unconnected with philanthropy,<br />
charity, or pure love of literature. You have to do with<br />
business men. Be yourself a business man.<br />
<br />
Society’s Offices :—<br />
4, PoRTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN’s INN FIELDS.<br />
<br />
ee<br />
<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
<br />
1. Every member has a right to advice upon his agree-<br />
ments, his choice of a publisher, orany dispute arising inthe<br />
conduct of his business or the administration of his pro-<br />
perty. If the advice sought is such as can be given best by<br />
a solicitor, the member has a right to an opinion from<br />
the Society’s solicitors. If the case is such that Counsel’s<br />
opinion is desirable, the Committee will obtain for him<br />
Counsel’s opinion. All this without any cost to the member.<br />
<br />
2. Remember that questions connected with copyright<br />
and publisher’s agreements do not generally fall within the<br />
experience of ordinary solicitors. Therefore, do not scruple<br />
to use the Society first—our solicitors are continually<br />
engaged upon such questions for us.<br />
<br />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This isin<br />
order to ascertain what has been the nature of your agree-<br />
ments, and the results to author and publisher respectively<br />
so far. The Secretary will always be glad to have any<br />
agreements, new or old, for inspection and note. The infor-<br />
mation thus obtained may prove invaluable.<br />
<br />
4. If the examination of your previous business trans-<br />
actions by the Secretary proves unfavourable, you should<br />
take advice as to a change of publishers.<br />
<br />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<br />
<br />
6. The Society is acquainted with the methods, and—in<br />
the case of fraudulent houses—the tricks of every publish-<br />
ing firm in the country. Remember that there are certain<br />
houses which live entirely by trickery.<br />
<br />
7. Remember always that in belonging to the Society you<br />
are fighting the battles of other writers, even if you are<br />
reaping no benefit to yourself, and that you are advancing<br />
the best interests of literature in promoting the indepen-<br />
dence of the writer.<br />
<br />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
<br />
THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE.<br />
<br />
SPECIAL report of the Authors’ Syndicate has been<br />
prepared and issued to those members of the Society<br />
for whom the Syndicate has transacted business.<br />
<br />
Members are informed :<br />
<br />
1. That the Authors’ Syndicate takes charge of the busi-<br />
ness of members of the Society. With, when necessary, the<br />
assistance of the legal advisers of the Society, it concludes<br />
agreements, collects royalties, examines and passes accounts,<br />
and generally relieves members of the trouble of managing<br />
business details. -<br />
<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors’ Syndicate are<br />
defrayed entirely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. This charge is reduced to<br />
the lowest possible amount compatible with efficiency.<br />
Meanwhile members will please accept this intimation that<br />
they are not entitled to the services of the Syndicate gratis,<br />
a misapprehension which appears to widely exist.<br />
<br />
3. That the Authors’ Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
<br />
4. That the business of the Syndicate is not to advise<br />
members of the Society, but to manage their affairs for<br />
them.<br />
<br />
5. That the Syndicate can only undertake arrangements<br />
of any character on the distinct understanding that those<br />
arrangements are placed exclusively in its hands, and that<br />
all negotiations relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
<br />
6. That clients can only be seen personally by appoint-<br />
ment, and that, when possible, at least four days’ notice<br />
should be given. The work of the Syndicate is now so<br />
heavy, that only a limited number of interviews can be<br />
arranged.<br />
<br />
7. That every attempt is made to deal with the corre-<br />
spondence promptly, but that owing to the enormous number<br />
of letters received, some delay is inevitable. That stamps<br />
should, in all cases, be sent to defray postage.<br />
<br />
8. That the Authors’ Syndicate does not invite MSS.<br />
without previous correspondence, and does not hold itself<br />
responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice.<br />
<br />
There is an Honorary Advisory Committee, whose services<br />
will be called upon in any case of dispute or difficulty. It<br />
is perhaps necessary to state that the members of the<br />
Advisory Committee have no pecuniary interest whatever in<br />
the Syndicate.<br />
<br />
ec<br />
<br />
NOTICES.<br />
<br />
HE Editor of the Author begs to remind members of the<br />
Society that, although the paper is sent to them free<br />
of charge, the cost of producing it would be a very<br />
<br />
heavy charge on the resources of the Society if a great<br />
many members did not forward to the Secretary the modest<br />
6s. 6d. subscription for the year. ;<br />
The Editor is always glad to receive short papers and<br />
communications on all subjects connected with literature<br />
from members and others. Nothing can do more good to<br />
the Society than to make the Author complete, attractive,<br />
and interesting. Will those who are willing to aid in this<br />
work send their names and the special subjects on which<br />
they are willing to write ? :<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor |<br />
not later than the 21st of each month. ; coe :<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
. THE AUTHOR. 5<br />
<br />
All persons engaged in literary work of any kind, whether<br />
members of the Society or not, are invited to communicate<br />
to the Editor any points connected with their work which<br />
it would be advisable in the general interest to publish.<br />
<br />
Members and others who wish their MSS. read are<br />
requested not to send them to the Office without previously<br />
communicating with the Secretary. The utmost practicable<br />
despatch is aimed at, and MSS. are read in the order in<br />
which they are received. It must also be distinctly under-<br />
stood that the Society does not, under any circumstances,<br />
undertake the publication of MSS.<br />
<br />
The Authors’ Club is now opened in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admissien, &c.<br />
<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year ? If they will do<br />
this, and remit the amount, if still unpaid, or a banker’s<br />
order, it will greatly assist the Secretary, and save him the<br />
trouble of sending out a reminder.<br />
<br />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (7). It is a most foolish and a most<br />
disastrous thing to bind yourself to anyone for a term of<br />
years. Let them ask themselves if they would give a<br />
solicitor the collection of their rents for five years to come,<br />
whatever his conduct, whether he was honest or dishonest ?<br />
Of course they would not. Why then hesitate for a moment<br />
when they are asked to sign themselves into literary bondage<br />
for three or five years ?<br />
<br />
Those who possess the ‘Cost of Production” are<br />
requested to note that the cost of binding has advanced 15<br />
per cent. This means, for those who do not like the trouble<br />
of “doing sums,” the addition of three shillings in the<br />
pound on this head. In other words, if the cost of binding<br />
is set down in our book at eight pounds, to this must now be<br />
added twenty-four shillings more, so that it now stands at<br />
£9 4s. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
as can be procured; but a printer’s, or a pinder’s, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothinz more exact can be arrived at.<br />
<br />
Some remarks have been made upon the amount charged<br />
in the “ Cost of Production” for advertising. Of course, we<br />
have not included any sums which may be charged for<br />
inserting advertisements in the publisher’s own magazines,<br />
or in other magazines by exchange. As agreements too<br />
often go, there is nothing to prevent the publisher from<br />
sweeping the whole profits of a book into his own pocket,<br />
by inserting any number of advertisements in his own<br />
magazines, and by exchanging with others. Some there are<br />
who call this a form of fraud; it is not known what those<br />
who practise this method of swelling their own profits<br />
call it,<br />
<br />
ee<br />
<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
<br />
——<br />
<br />
I.<br />
Some ConsIDERATIONS ON PUBLISHING.<br />
<br />
By Sir Frederick Pollock.<br />
<br />
(Reprinted by permission of the author and the editor from the Pall<br />
Mall Gazette, May 1 and 4.)<br />
<br />
I<br />
<br />
ANY points about the relations between<br />
authors and publishers appear to be<br />
still unsettled. By an unsettled point<br />
<br />
I mean a point on which materially different<br />
opinions are held in good faith by persons with<br />
<br />
reasonable and fairly equal opportunities of<br />
knowledge. It is not an unsettled point whether<br />
ignorant persons ought to be induced, by<br />
fallacious expectations of profit, to pay at an<br />
exorbitant rate for the production of work<br />
which no competent reader or reasonable man of<br />
business would ever have supposed to be profit-<br />
able. Such transactions are not genuine publish-<br />
ing at all. The so-called publishers who live by<br />
them have no more in common with any respect-<br />
able publishing firm than an Old Bailey tout with<br />
the President of the Incorporated Law Society, or<br />
a Chinese pirate with the captain of a P. and O.<br />
liner.<br />
<br />
Some months ago I said, as chairman of the<br />
Committee of the Society of Authors, and to a<br />
numerous meeting of that society, that I saw no<br />
reason why the genuine unsettled questions<br />
should not, if it were so desired, be effectually<br />
solved by conference between representative<br />
authors and publishers. In so saying I expressed<br />
my individual opinion, but I have every reason<br />
to believe that I had the general assent of my<br />
colleagues on the committee and of the members<br />
of the society present. At all events there was<br />
no suggestion of dissent. I retain the opinion so<br />
expressed, but I think a good deal of free indi-<br />
vidual exchange of ideas ought to precede any<br />
definite endeavour to put these questions in the<br />
way of solution, and I offer my contribution for<br />
what it may be worth. Being a lawyer first and<br />
a man of letters (if, indeed, I can properly claim<br />
that description) afterwards, I naturally apply<br />
the test of legal right so far as possible. It must<br />
by no means be inferred from this that I should<br />
wish in every or any case to see this test applied<br />
under the form of actual litigation. Perhaps it<br />
may be well to state that I speak for myself only,<br />
and that my experience of literary arrangements,<br />
partly in my own affairs and partly in other<br />
people’s, dates from some time before I had any-<br />
thing to do with the Society of Authors, and<br />
indeed before the society was founded.<br />
<br />
What is the author’s due share of profits? is a<br />
question sometimes asked. To begin with that<br />
question is to begin, it seems to me, at the wrong<br />
end. There can be no such thing asa due or fair<br />
share of profits in the abstract. Some bargains<br />
are obviously good, and some are obviously bad.<br />
The interest and difficulty lie in the middle<br />
region, and there no hard and fast line can be<br />
drawn, One can only say that if A and B, writers<br />
in approximately the same rank of reputation,<br />
write books of the same class and price for the<br />
same public, and if the two books sell equally<br />
<br />
well, and A makes say £100 by his book, while B<br />
makes £150 by his, then either B is in luck, or A<br />
has something to learn from B in the commercial<br />
<br />
<br />
6 THE AUTHOR. .<br />
<br />
part of an author’s business. But, again, it will<br />
not do to say that, commercially speaking, the<br />
author is a seller and the publisher a buyer, and<br />
each may make the best bargain he can. That<br />
may be the case in some forms of publishing, but<br />
it is not so in all. In truth a lawyer may be<br />
puzzled to classify the relation between author<br />
and publisher. According to the nature of the<br />
book and the terms agreed on, there may be a<br />
prevailing resemblance to sale, or to partnership,<br />
or to agency. One can seldom say that the rela-<br />
tion is precisely one of these three, but the<br />
interest of the parties in profits, as such, may be<br />
very different, as one or the other predominates.<br />
And where the relation savours of agency, it is<br />
not always the author who is more like a_prin-<br />
cipal. In the case of books written to order,<br />
which are many, it is plainly not so. However,<br />
the points of possible dispute occur mostly in<br />
determining what really are profits. I think for<br />
my own part that the type of agreement between<br />
author and publisher which involves taking an<br />
account of profits is one of the least desirable.<br />
Still, some sort of estimate of expected profit can<br />
hardly be dispensed with as a means of fixing the<br />
data, whatever the definite form of agreement<br />
may be.<br />
<br />
There is no reason for making any mystery of<br />
the cost of producing books, and, whatever may<br />
have been the etiquette of the trade a generation<br />
ago, Tam not aware that the best publishers do<br />
so now. Many authors, it is true, take no interest<br />
in business details, and would rather not know<br />
them. That is a luxury to which they are entitled<br />
for themselves if they can afford it, but people<br />
who depend on authorship for their living cannot<br />
be expected or advised to follow the example. I<br />
will even say that those authors who can afford<br />
the luxury should remember that their indolence<br />
may be prejudicial to others who cannot. Some<br />
elementary facts lie on the surface. We know<br />
that very few buyers pay the full “marked<br />
price” for a new book. The retailer, with the<br />
now usual discount of threepence in the shilling,<br />
gets only 75 per cent. of the nominal price, and<br />
when we have further allowed for trade discounts,<br />
and the special discounts on American and foreign<br />
sales, if any, we may say roughly that the total<br />
fund coming to the publishers’ hands in respect<br />
‘of a new book is somewhere about 60 per cent. of<br />
the “ marked selling” price, more in some cases<br />
or less in others, multiplied by the number of<br />
copies sold, The discount system probably tends<br />
to create an exaggerated notion of the actual<br />
returns on sales, and may in that way be mis-<br />
leading to young authors. On general grounds<br />
of straightforwardness and simplicity, too, the<br />
system-of net prices, now. partly introdueed by<br />
<br />
some houses, appears to deserve encouragement.<br />
But I have no doubt there are difficulties about it<br />
which it is hard for anyone outside the business<br />
to appreciate. New books are retailed in Paris<br />
at a discount, though a comparatively small one.<br />
On the other hand, I believe the American book<br />
trade has substantially solved the problem, though<br />
it has to deal with an immense area of distri-<br />
bution.<br />
<br />
This 60 per cent. (or whatever it may precisely<br />
be) of the nominal price is not profits. It is<br />
gross returns. Also we have to remember that<br />
returns do not all come in at the same rate.<br />
Some books will sell quickly, if they sell at all,<br />
while the sale of others may be expected to<br />
spread over years. Novels and travels on the one<br />
hand, dictionaries and books of permanent<br />
reference on the other, may be taken as typical<br />
examples of the fast and the slowly moving books.<br />
Deferred returns, of course, cannot be treated in<br />
the same way as immediate ones. Against the<br />
returns must be set the cost of production, which<br />
again is partly immediate, partly more or less<br />
deferred, and partly what may be called standing.<br />
By standing cost of production I mean the<br />
general establishment expenses which cannot be<br />
attributed to one book more than another. There<br />
are houses which are editing as well as publishing<br />
houses, so that to a large extent one may say<br />
they are their own authors. In one such case,<br />
perhaps a singular one, the regular staff includes<br />
a first-rate scholar and two well-known publicists.<br />
Here the establishment expenses must be a very<br />
sensible proportion of the whole. In the case of<br />
a house that undertakes little or nothing of its<br />
own motion, and exercises no discretion beyond<br />
that of the reader to whom MSS. are submitted,<br />
the establishment expenses may be reduced to the<br />
level-of common office expenses and warehouse<br />
room. I do not know of any leading house to<br />
which this description would be strictly applic-<br />
able. It is evidently a most difficult matter to<br />
make an exactly just apportionment of this<br />
element of standing cost among the individual<br />
books produced by a firm; and I believe this is<br />
one main origin of divers charges and deductions<br />
which used to be made against authors, and<br />
sometimes still are, under the name of “ customs<br />
of the trade.” The late Mr. James Spedding led<br />
the way, many years ago, in objecting to these<br />
alleged customs. ‘<br />
<br />
Now we must distinguish in point of law<br />
between the different forms of publishing.<br />
Where the agreement is for a share of profits as<br />
such, it seems to me that the relation of the<br />
parties is what lawyers call a contract of<br />
abundant faith. The author is entitled to full<br />
and true accounts, and to, be charged only with<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE<br />
<br />
actual expenditure, or the book’s proper share of<br />
it. And the difficulty of ascertaining that share<br />
is no reason for renouncing the attempt to<br />
ascertain it, and making it up in indirect ways.<br />
The publisher has a right to say, ‘“ We propose<br />
to charge such and such a percentage on the<br />
ascertained expenses cut of pocket for printing<br />
and so forth, as being the book’s fair share of<br />
standing cost of production.” The author may<br />
say in turn, “ Well, but you settle accounts only<br />
once a year, or half-yearly (or as the case may<br />
be). That is equival nt to a certain discount in<br />
your favour on the sum coming to me. Will not<br />
that go a good way towards covering the book’s<br />
share of standing cost?” Since these articles<br />
were first printed, a publisher has rejoined<br />
that the publisher, by his arrangements with<br />
the trade, has to give almost or quite as<br />
long credit as he takes. All this is matter for<br />
fair and business-like discussion. But the pub-<br />
lisher has no right to take a trade discount on<br />
the printer’s or stationer’s bill, and debit the<br />
account with the full nominal amount of that<br />
bill. No partner or agent would be justified in<br />
using such methods with his fellow-partner or<br />
principal, nor could he mend the matter by<br />
alleging a “custom of the trade.” Secret<br />
discounts and commissions no doubt exist in<br />
many forms of business, notwithstanding the<br />
repeated censure of the courts, but they are not<br />
therefore lawful. If the publisher chooses to<br />
say openly to the author, “I propose to take<br />
these customary trade discounts for myself in<br />
lieu of the book’s share of standing cost,” that<br />
is the proposal of a legitimate, though, in my<br />
opinion, a clumsy solution. The parties can<br />
agree, if they think fit, to this, as to any other<br />
terms clearly understood.<br />
<br />
Where the agreement is not for a share of<br />
profits by name, but for payment of a royalty or<br />
a lump sum to the author, there can be no legal<br />
question of accounting for profits, but the same<br />
questions and difficulties may enter indirectly<br />
into the settlement of terms. I propose to<br />
pursue this in another article, and to say a word<br />
on another somewhat troublesome question, that<br />
otf charges for advertising.<br />
<br />
II.<br />
<br />
Contracts between author and publisher may<br />
assume, as I pointed out, very different legal<br />
forms. In that firm which requires actual<br />
<br />
calculation and division of profits the relation is<br />
so like that of partnership as to demand, accor-<br />
ding to the best opinion I can form, the utmost<br />
good faith; not merely positive truth of state-<br />
ment, but the full disclosure of all material facts.<br />
Therefore secret profits, under whatever shape,<br />
<br />
AUTHOR. 7<br />
<br />
and screened by whatever excuse, are not admis-<br />
sible, It is not often, I should think, that it falls<br />
to the author’s part to incur expenses on the<br />
common account. But if in any particular case<br />
it does, the publisher will be equally entitled to a<br />
full return and verification of these, 'The parties<br />
may limit the definition of profits, however, in<br />
any way they think fit, provided they have a<br />
clear understanding. In ordinary retail trade,<br />
for example, the difference between the wholesale<br />
and the retail price of the goods is commonly<br />
‘alled the retailer’s profit. So it is in the book-<br />
selling (as distinct from the publishing) trade<br />
itself. It may be convenient for the author and<br />
publisher to take the divisible profits as the<br />
returns of the book less the specific cost of<br />
production, leaving the standing or “ establish-<br />
ment” expenses out of account, and thus exclu-<br />
ding the troublesome question of apportionment.<br />
This has, in fact, been a common practice. But<br />
these expenses have to be covered in the pub-<br />
lisher’s business as in any other. Unless and<br />
until a balance to the good is shown after deduct-<br />
ing the total of all expenses both general and<br />
specific from the total of returns, there can be no<br />
real profit on the Lusiness as a whole. If there-<br />
fore nothing is said about the book’s share of<br />
standing cost, the author’s nominal share of<br />
profits must be to some extent, however small,<br />
Jess than if this item was expressly brought into<br />
account, or else the publisher must give himselfa<br />
margin of interest on the sums coming to the<br />
author by deferring the payment for a certain<br />
time. The usual arrangements for making up<br />
and settling accounts yearly or half-yearly have<br />
preciseiy this effect, and it may be found that<br />
they work approximate justice between the<br />
parties. Whether the approximation may in<br />
ordinary cases be accepted by both parties as<br />
sufficient is one of the points, it seems to me,<br />
which can be worked out only by frank discussion.<br />
<br />
Any system of fixed payments has the merit of<br />
avoiding direct questions of account, whether<br />
the agreement be for a sum down in respect of<br />
an edition of so many copies, or for a royalty, or<br />
for royalty combined with one or more fixed pay-<br />
ments on account. Every form of agreement has<br />
its conveniences and defects, according to the<br />
nature of the case. Out and out sale of copy-<br />
right is seldom if ever advisable in a work of<br />
pure literature. But as regards legal and<br />
scientific works, where the author’s co-operation<br />
is practically indispensable for any future edition,<br />
sale of copyright, combined with adequate pro-<br />
vision for the author’s work on future editions, is<br />
both usual and reasonable In all these cases the<br />
author has nothing to do with calculation of<br />
profits after the agreement-is made. He is: to<br />
<br />
<br />
8 THE<br />
<br />
get what he bargained for, and the publisher is<br />
equally bound to pay it, whether the profits turn<br />
out more or less than was expected. The only<br />
account to be rendered is of the number of copies<br />
printed and sold, with the distinction of home<br />
and foreign sales where required. It is possible,<br />
no doubt, to manipulate a royalty agreement so<br />
as to make it unfair to the author. It is even<br />
possible that the actual number of copies sold or<br />
printed should be falsified. But this takes us<br />
beyond the region of disputable usage; if such<br />
things happen, they are downright fraud. They<br />
are no more legitimate publishing than obtaining<br />
goods by false pretences from a wholesale house<br />
without any intention of paying for them is<br />
legitimate retail trade. Good publishing houses<br />
are. about as likely to do such things as the<br />
Clarendon Press to print its Bibles on stolen<br />
paper. Many authors, however, continue, through<br />
sheer inexperience and in the face of repeated<br />
warnings, to fall into the hands of low-class pub-<br />
lishers, who are much akin in their own way to<br />
the low-class speculative solicitor. Such cases<br />
constitute a large part of the work of the Society<br />
of Authors. No one who has not seen that work<br />
in detail—and probably an honourable publisher<br />
least of all—will easily realise the kind or amount<br />
of the petty police of authorship, if I may so<br />
term it, which daily calls for attention.<br />
<br />
Sometimes books are published without any-<br />
thing being distinctly said or understood as to<br />
the terms. It is difficult to say what the legal<br />
presumption ought to be in such cases. The<br />
general usage of publishers is to treat the book<br />
as published on half profits, in which I see<br />
nothing to complain of. If the author could<br />
have made better terms, it was his own fault that<br />
he did not make them while he might.<br />
<br />
I turn to the specific question of payment for<br />
advertisements. Under a profit-sharing agree-<br />
ment, for half profits, or two-thirds, or as the<br />
case may be, this, like other outgoings, is a matter<br />
of quasi-partnership account. Only the actual<br />
cost, whatever it is, ought to be debited. There-<br />
fore, if P. publishes A.’s book on the terms of<br />
dividing profits, and the book is advertised in P.’s<br />
own magazine, only the cost of paper and. print<br />
should be charged in respect of that advertise-<br />
ment, and, possibly, some fractional addition for<br />
any increased cost of distributing the magazine<br />
which may be due to the bulk of advertisements.<br />
The same principle seems to apply to what are<br />
called exchange advertisements. If Q. advertises<br />
P.’s books in return for P. advertising Q.’s,<br />
there is no real outgoing except for the paper and<br />
print. Ido not see on what ground any further<br />
charge against the book can be justified. :<br />
<br />
In the case of an agreement for royalties or<br />
<br />
AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
fixed sums this question does not arise. Expendi-<br />
ture on advertisements, like all other expenditure,<br />
is under such an agreement solely the publisher’s<br />
affair. There may perhaps be an implied term<br />
that the publisher shall cause the book to be<br />
advertised to a reasonable and usual extent. But<br />
it is so obviously the publisher’s interest to do<br />
this, and he is so obviously, in most cases, the best<br />
judge of the ways and means, that there should<br />
not be much room for dispute on this head.<br />
<br />
Publishing on commission is a different matter.<br />
Here the publisher is really the author’s agent<br />
and nothing else. He owes the author a true<br />
and undisguised account «f whatever passes<br />
through his hands, but it rests wholly with. the<br />
author to determine the amount and manner of<br />
expenditure. He may give the publisher specific<br />
instructions, or a general or limited discretion,<br />
or he may do his own printing and advertising if<br />
he thinks fit, though it can seldom be convenient<br />
to advertise independently of the publisher. As<br />
the publisher is not bound to undertake any<br />
expense at all, he is of course entitled to be paid<br />
for advertisements in his own publications. The<br />
author will probably have little difficulty in<br />
s-curing the benefit of trade terms; I do not see<br />
that he can claim them as of right. If the author<br />
publishing on commission is a wise man he will<br />
probably do little without consulting the pub-<br />
lisher; but in this form of publishing it is. the<br />
author who pays the piper_and calls the tune,<br />
and the practical working of the arrangement, as<br />
a matter. of personal relations, must be left. to<br />
the good sense of the parties. The fact that<br />
publishing on commission is not very common<br />
shows, first, that few authors are willing to take<br />
any risk, and secondly, that not many are willing<br />
to take much trouble.<br />
<br />
A true partnership between author and pub-<br />
lisher, in which the author takes a share of risk<br />
as well as of profits, is in point of law as possible as<br />
any other arrangement, and there is no reason<br />
why it should not be perfectly equitable; but I<br />
have never heard of such an agreement being<br />
made in fact, until I saw a case reported (of<br />
course without names) in the May number of the<br />
Author. The proceedings appear to have been<br />
quite unbusinesslike on both sides, so the example<br />
fails to be instructive. If anything like this does<br />
occur in regular practice, the example would have<br />
to be sought in the case of one member of a<br />
publishing house writing a book and publishing<br />
it with his own firm. Some publishers are also<br />
men of letters and authors, a fact sometimes for-<br />
gotten. 1 do not know what arrangements<br />
they are in. the habit of making for their own<br />
works. If any of them felt at liberty to give us<br />
the benefit of their double experience, it might<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 9<br />
<br />
help to.clear up misunderstandings. I will con-<br />
clude with two elementary cautions to young<br />
writers. An author who still has his reputation<br />
to make cannot expect to be dealt with on the<br />
same footing as one whose reputation is made;<br />
and, whether one’s reputation is made or not, the<br />
publisher is almost always the navigating officer<br />
of the ship, and approaching him in the spirit of<br />
a sea-lawyer is not the way to secure a prosperous<br />
voyage.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
II.<br />
Tue Rieut or TRANSLATION.<br />
<br />
In the last number of the Author a correspon-<br />
dent, “F. T.,” calls attention to an apparent<br />
discrepancy between the stipulations of the<br />
Berne Copyright Convention, and the provisions<br />
of the International Copyright Act, 1886, in<br />
regard to the right of translation.<br />
<br />
The explanation is as follows:<br />
<br />
Art. V. of the Berne Copyright Convention<br />
grants the exclusive right of translation for ten<br />
years certain. This period, however, as is shown<br />
in the records of the conferences at Berne, was to<br />
be considered as a minimum of protection to the<br />
author in this respect, without granting which,<br />
at the least, no country could join the union.<br />
Any country which is a party to the union<br />
preserves, nevertheless, the faculty of giving<br />
more extended protection to the author, either<br />
internationally or by way of the domestic law.<br />
This is shown by Art. XV. of the International<br />
Convention, which provides:<br />
<br />
It is understood that the Governments of the countries of<br />
the union reserve to themselves respectively the right to<br />
enter into separate and particular arrangements between<br />
each other, provided always that such arrangements confer<br />
upon authors, or their lawful representatives, more extended<br />
rights than those granted by the union, or embody other<br />
stipulations not contrary to the present convention.<br />
<br />
It is true that Great Britain has not concluded<br />
any such separate and particular arrangements as<br />
are alluded to in this article, but it was con-<br />
sidered, in framing the Act of 1886, that in regard<br />
to international copyright, translation is often<br />
more important than copyright in the original<br />
work; and consequently that the translating<br />
right—as the chief international means of repro-<br />
duction—ought (with the reserve of ten years,<br />
during which an authorised translation must<br />
appear) to be protected in England as fully as<br />
the copyright in the original work. This appears<br />
to be the effect of the Act and order in council as<br />
they stand, though it is possible that the matter<br />
might have been expressed somewhat more<br />
clearly in the order in council. H. G. B.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
VOL. IV.<br />
<br />
III.<br />
AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER.<br />
<br />
The following extracts are taken from a<br />
paper sent round among the members of the<br />
Society by the delegates to the Chicago<br />
Conference :<br />
<br />
Risk.—What is meant by the word “risk?”<br />
When there is risk at all in the production of a<br />
book, it must be remembered that there are two<br />
risks, not one. There is (1) the risk of the author,<br />
and (2) the risk of the publisher. What is the<br />
author’s risk ?* He contributes the work itself,<br />
on which he has expended years—months—a<br />
lifetime, perhaps, of labour. He risks his repu-<br />
tation—his success—his career. In addition to<br />
this he risks the expenditure of time, labour,<br />
maintenance, preparation —in fact, everything<br />
that has made him capable of producing the<br />
work. He hopes, in the first place, for a<br />
reward in recognition of faithful work, of<br />
genius, of discovery, of successful research, and<br />
this must always be regarded as the first and<br />
most important reward; his secondary reward<br />
is such a proportion of the proceeds as is<br />
equitable.<br />
<br />
When there is risk at all, the publisher takes<br />
the risk of the money spent on producing the<br />
work.<br />
<br />
Let us see what this means. The conditions<br />
of publishing have very greatly changed during<br />
the last fifty years. Literary property has<br />
enormously increased, and is increasing more<br />
and more. Formerly, almost every book was<br />
a lottery; half-a-dozen publishers joined in<br />
taking the risk. Now there are writers by the<br />
score in every branch—educational, scientific,<br />
artistic, historical, imaginative — whose books<br />
are certain to succeed, 7.e., the authors are known<br />
beforehand to enjoy such a clientéle that there is<br />
no risk whatever in producing books by them.<br />
There are also subjects which at certain times and<br />
emergencies command a sale. Therefore it is the<br />
natural endeavour of every publisher to secure<br />
some of these writers, and to discover some of<br />
these subjects. It is also his endeavour to incur<br />
as few risks as he can; that is to say, not to<br />
publish, if he can help it, books which are<br />
speculative. Some few publishers there are<br />
who can afford to take up speculative books.<br />
The great majority cannot; they are enabled to<br />
seem as if they could by the eagerness of authors<br />
who, to get their works published, are easily<br />
induced to pay the whole, or a large part—or, in<br />
some cases, double the cost of production. This<br />
<br />
* Of course, we are not speaking here of papers for<br />
<br />
encyclopedias, dictionaries, or journals, or for books under-<br />
taken at a certain price agreed upon.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
B<br />
<br />
<br />
10 THE. AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
diminution of risk, this extensive practice<br />
of making authors- pay for their own produc-<br />
tion, are hard facts which are constantly<br />
being denied or softened down, in some way or<br />
other. . Generally the denial rests on the false-<br />
hood, “advanced over and over again, that the<br />
Society maintains that no publishers ever take<br />
risks. oe =<br />
<br />
But, if there are risks, what are they? It<br />
must be remembered that the “risk” does not<br />
mean advancing any money, or paying the printer<br />
immediately. The publisher has credit. He<br />
pays by bills, or he pays some months after the<br />
work is done. Let us consider how this may work<br />
out. A book is published at a cost (without<br />
moulding or stereotyping) say, of £100 (see<br />
“ Gost of Production,” p. 81). The book is—say<br />
—a collection of essays: it sells at 6s. which is<br />
about 3s. 6d. to the publisher. We will suppose<br />
that there was “risk;” that is to say, it was not<br />
certain that the book would sell enough to<br />
repay the cost. We will suppose that it does<br />
not prove a success, that only about 400<br />
copies go off. These produce the sum of<br />
£70. There remains a loss of £30. This has<br />
to be paid at a certain time after production, and<br />
after the first returns have come in. Nowa pub-<br />
lisher of experience may make an approximate<br />
estimate of the copies he can dispose of on<br />
the first appearance even of a risky book.<br />
If, for instance, the book is a good book, even on<br />
a subject not calculated to be widely popular,<br />
he may depend upon the free libraries, of<br />
which there are now nearly two thousand in<br />
this country and the colonies, taking a certain<br />
number. He can also depend-upon a certain<br />
‘subscription of the trade at the outset. His<br />
“risk,” therefore, is not by any means the actual<br />
cost of production, but the difference between a<br />
tolerably certain sale and the cost of production.<br />
This explanation enables us to understand how it<br />
is that apparently large risks—to which some pub-<br />
lishers point in support of their curious desire to<br />
get their business regarded as a gambling or purely<br />
speculative one—may be, and often are, really risks<br />
of a very small difference. It is not here pretended<br />
that the estimated minimum circulation is aheays<br />
nearly reached, and that the publisher’s deficit is<br />
never greater than £30. But this example of<br />
what a considerable failure may really mean is<br />
given, because the supposed magnitude of the<br />
publisher’s losses has been widely used to justify<br />
‘his appropriation of the lion’s share in profits,<br />
where profits have ensued. Nor is it stated<br />
that credit removes all risk, but only that it<br />
modifies risk. Nor is it maintained that all<br />
persons calling themselves publishers can obtain<br />
credit, but only (which everyone knows) that<br />
<br />
substantial men of business can do so. And<br />
again, still further to remove misapprehension,<br />
or distortion, we are speaking of books written<br />
by individual writers; not of dictionaries, books<br />
of references, &c.<br />
<br />
Secret Prorirs.—On this subject the Society<br />
has spoken strongly from the very beginning.<br />
There must never be allowed, in- any kind<br />
of business where the parties are associated<br />
as partners, joint venturers, or as principal-and<br />
agent, any secret profits. The very Secrecy<br />
either implies the intention of, or opens the door<br />
to, fraud. The too common practice of secretly<br />
overcharging the cost of production has been<br />
defended as a “custom of the trade.” That is<br />
not the case. (1) A “custom of the trade” is a<br />
thing recognised by both sides and known and<br />
allowed. These secret charges have never been<br />
recognised; to the young author they are<br />
unknown; to the experienced they have ever been<br />
a constant cause, of exasperation and suspicion.*<br />
There has never been a time when the author,<br />
almost inarticulate and powerless, has not<br />
protested with rage, even though without power,<br />
against secret profits. (2) A “custom of the<br />
trade” is uniform. This practice is not<br />
uniform. One house may make a practice—<br />
never openly advertised or defended—of charging<br />
a percentage on the cost of production; another<br />
may do nothing of the kind; a third may charge<br />
what it pleases, e.g., a certain house was found,<br />
some time ago, to have charged £90 for advertis-<br />
ing, when they had only spent £10. In fact, if the<br />
principle of secret charges is allowed at all, it<br />
means that the author gives the publisher the<br />
absolute right to falsify the figures to his own<br />
advantage, as much as he pleases, and surrenders<br />
the power to protest, even though the publisher<br />
should swamp the whole proceeds by a correspond-<br />
ing increase in the cost of production. This,<br />
indeed, has often been done. To allow secret profits<br />
at all is to open the door for many kinds of fraud.<br />
And it is certain that no court of law would<br />
acknowledge that to be a trade custom which<br />
allows a publisher to falsify as much as he pleases<br />
every account that he renders. In fact, the prac-<br />
tice of making secret profits is, most certainly,<br />
from whatever point of view we regard it, a fraud<br />
upon the author.<br />
<br />
“ Orrice Exprnses.’’—Some publishers insert<br />
a clause claiming a percentage on the returns<br />
or on the cost of production for “ office expenses.”<br />
An open claim is one thing ; ‘secret profits are<br />
another. The former may at least be argued ; the<br />
<br />
latter cannot for a moment be defended. “tot<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
* See Charles Knight's * Shadows of the Old Booksellers,”<br />
p. 228.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE<br />
<br />
course a publisher is quite within his right should<br />
he say “I shall not argue the point. Those<br />
are my terms; take them or leave them.” It<br />
then becomes a simple question whether it is the<br />
author’s interest to accept or to refuse. If we<br />
argued the matter, I should, myself, submit the<br />
following reasons, among others, why “office<br />
expenses” should not be made a charge: A pub-<br />
lisher cannot with his own hands do all the work;<br />
he therefore engages servants—more servants as<br />
his business increases. But are we to pay for<br />
his servants? It is not for his establishment that<br />
we pay, but for his services. In that case we<br />
ought to pay a greater amount to a publisher who<br />
keeps a large establishment of clerks. Indeed, it<br />
has been advanced gravely as regards a certain<br />
large house, that they cannot pay so great a royalty<br />
as other houses on account of their vast establish-<br />
ment. This is the reductio ad absurdum of the<br />
claim for office expenses. But we do not pay w<br />
solicitor in proportion to the number of his clerks,<br />
ora physician in p:oportion to his carriages and<br />
horses. Besides, if the maintenance of clerks and<br />
servants and the payment of rent are to be con-<br />
sidered, the author has an equal right to put<br />
in a claim for his own expenses and servants<br />
and rent. He may with as much force as the<br />
publisher argue that he has to live first and to take<br />
his profit next.<br />
<br />
14, Wuart 1s Prorit ?—In every other kind of<br />
business that can be named, profit is taken to<br />
mean the difference between the sale of an<br />
article and the cost of production or purchase,<br />
i.e., between what it “fetched” and what it cost.<br />
A first charge on the trader’s profit in every other<br />
kind of business is the expense of the establish-<br />
‘ment. Why should the publisher alone, of all<br />
men in business, demand that his profit should<br />
be reckoned to begin after his establishment,<br />
over which the author has no control, has been<br />
paid for?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
IV.<br />
Cost or Musica PropvctTIon.<br />
<br />
After considerable difficulty the secretary has<br />
made some advance with regard to the cost of<br />
musical production—a question which is con-<br />
stantly being brought before him by the<br />
members. He has obtained the cost of pro-<br />
duction of any ordinary song, and he is in<br />
communication with a gentleman who will give<br />
printers’ estimates for any work submitted to the<br />
secretary,<br />
<br />
The following is the cost of production for 500<br />
copies of a song consisting of 5 pages, exclusive<br />
of the cover :—<br />
<br />
VOL. IV.<br />
<br />
AUTHOR. i<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
© sd.<br />
<br />
*Plate for tue COVER 6.8... a Oo 12. 6<br />
<br />
+Five Plates at 4s. 6d. per plate......... 1.2 6<br />
Printing 5d. per 100 copies, per plate ;<br />
<br />
28. id, Per 500 GOPles .-.....2.....-.. O10 5<br />
Printing 500 titles, 1s. per 100..... SO) 5 0<br />
Paper, 2 sheets of 4 pages; 1000<br />
<br />
sheets for 500 COPIeS ose...secesevee ees O16 8<br />
<br />
357 4<br />
V.<br />
<br />
Two Casss.<br />
<br />
i<br />
A GUINEA PRIZE.<br />
<br />
“ Publish it as a one guinea prize story.”<br />
<br />
“JT think that will make the troublesome<br />
beggar sick.”<br />
<br />
Some people’s wit is cruel and vindictive, and<br />
these are the people to whom a sharp reminder<br />
that a biter can sometimes get bitten does no<br />
harm.<br />
<br />
It happened that a paper recently adver-<br />
tised for stories, and trapped a good one, for<br />
which the author wanted £2 2s. per 1000 words,<br />
and for which the newspaper only wished to pay<br />
tos. There was some correspondence about this<br />
difference of price, and while it was pending, the<br />
editor came to the conclusion that he could use<br />
the story and pay for it in the manner he<br />
proposed above.<br />
<br />
Perhaps he said, “ Whether I have to pay him<br />
or not what he asks, I can promote him to the<br />
dignity of a prize winner, with one guinea against<br />
his name for the amusement of his literary<br />
friends,” and thought, “I have no doubt I can<br />
safely leave any risk to the bluster of my<br />
solicitor.”<br />
<br />
However, at the instance of the Society, a claim<br />
was made for the balance of the price. A metro-<br />
politan small debts court took a different view<br />
from the defendant, and the solicitor availed not.<br />
The court expressed itself as taking a very<br />
strong view about the proceedings of the<br />
newspaper in the circumstances,<br />
<br />
The case was adjourned for the production of a<br />
letter, the contents of which were sworn to be<br />
inconsistent with the plaintiff's evidence, and<br />
inconsistent with the publication of the story at<br />
a guinea at all. Was the letter imagined, and<br />
evolved from the hope that the plaintiff and his<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
* This is a very cheap plate, being printed only in black<br />
and white. A coloured plate may cost £5 or £6.<br />
+ These plates are equivalent to the cost of composition,<br />
and there is one plate to every page.<br />
BQ<br />
<br />
<br />
12 THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
solicitor, or one of them, might be absent on the<br />
adjournment ?<br />
<br />
The action was adjourned, the defendant<br />
paying the costs of the day.<br />
<br />
With some difficulty an exact note of the matter<br />
so far was taken, and on the adjournment the<br />
matter was picked up at the exact spot it was<br />
dropped at, with a reminder as to the meaning of<br />
this note, and that the court took 2 strong view<br />
if the letter were not produced, and both the<br />
ruthless prize-winner and his solicitor were<br />
there.<br />
<br />
That the opening exclamation may reasonably<br />
have actually been made, may be inferred.<br />
The defeated defendant editor was vitupérative<br />
and abusive, and called the proceedings black-<br />
mailing.<br />
<br />
The plaintiff bore this meekly, and the solicitor<br />
said “one witness.”<br />
<br />
II.<br />
GzTtina CopyriaHT For NorHINa.<br />
[Copy.]<br />
<br />
Dear Mapam,—lI have been looking into the<br />
returns of the Series, and I find that of<br />
the amount paid you for royalty in your book<br />
called “A. B.,” there is still £10 8s. 4d. not<br />
worked off by sales. Even the stock remaining<br />
on hand will not balance the amount over-paid.<br />
As we are desirous of closing our books, and<br />
realising the stock, we propose to write off the<br />
amount standing against it, and shall be pleased<br />
if you will kindly sign, and return in course, the<br />
enclosed form of agreement.—Thanking you in<br />
prospect, we are, dear Madam, yours truly,<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
C. D. anp Co.<br />
“Mem. of agreement made this 27th day of<br />
March, 1893, E. F., of ——, hereinafter called<br />
<br />
the Author, of the one part, and C. D. and Co.,<br />
hereinafter called the publishers, of the other<br />
part. It is hereby agreed that, in consideration<br />
of the sum already paid to the author for<br />
“Making or Marring,”’ she relinquishes all<br />
further claim upon the publishers for royalties in<br />
respect to her book, and the copyright is also<br />
transferred to the publishers.<br />
“Sioned the 27th day of March, &e.”<br />
<br />
What does this mean? A royalty was agreed<br />
upon, and, apparently, duly paid. It is now found<br />
that there is a loss of £10 odd on the book. But<br />
the wordsare not plain. Dothe.words mean aloss<br />
on the book, or do they mean that the author has<br />
been paid for more books than were sold? In<br />
either case it is certainly proposed that the writer<br />
should actually give the copyright to the pub-<br />
lishers. -Why ?- For no consideration whatever.<br />
Is it worthless? Then why do they want her to<br />
<br />
assign it formally ? If it is not worthless, why<br />
should she give up her property for nothing ?<br />
Probably what it means is an intention of re-<br />
issuing the book in another form, perhaps selling<br />
it to another publisher — in any case making<br />
money out of it.<br />
<br />
Let authors, especially ladies, refuse absolutely<br />
to sign any paper at all until they have sent it to<br />
the Society for examination.<br />
<br />
> oc<br />
<br />
THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF EDITORS.<br />
<br />
I<br />
<br />
HE question of the responsibilities of<br />
<br />
editors, which has been simmering in the<br />
<br />
organ of the Authors’ Society for many a<br />
<br />
month, came up, through an interesting case,<br />
<br />
before Judge Lumley Smith at Westminster<br />
County Court yesterday afternoon.<br />
<br />
Towards the end of October, 1892, Mr. W. A.<br />
Macdonald, “ publicist,” sent to the editors of<br />
the National Review the MS. of an article called<br />
“The Humanitarian Spirit Examined.” The<br />
editors caused it to be put into type, and a proof<br />
to be sent to the writer. Two months afterwards<br />
Mr. Macdonald wrote to the editors, protesting<br />
against their dilatoriness in publishing the<br />
article. He went on to say that a demand had<br />
arisen for a brief survey of his social science, and<br />
that he could “see no object in further procras-<br />
tination.” On receipt of this letter the editors<br />
ordered two revise proofs of the article to be sent<br />
to the author, and intimated that the types would<br />
be distributed. ‘We dealt with your article,”<br />
they wrote, “as we deal with articles generally.<br />
We put it into type, meaning to publish it at the<br />
earliest opportunity. As this arrangement does<br />
not suit you, we are returning the article in a<br />
revised proof.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Macdonald then put himself under the<br />
guidance of the Society of Authors. The secre-<br />
tary, Mr. G. Herbert Thring, wrote to the editors<br />
requesting that, either they would name an early<br />
date for publishing the paper, or send a cheque<br />
for payment at the usual rate. The acting editor<br />
of the Review answered that, his chief being a<br />
member of the council of the Society of Authors,<br />
and he himself being indebted to the secretary for<br />
valuable advice in certain literary affairs of the<br />
late Bishop of St. Andrews, he felt obliged to<br />
make a proposal, and would make it gladly. He<br />
would put the article into type again on two con-<br />
<br />
ditions: the publication of it to be at the editor’s<br />
<br />
convenience, and the cost of the first setting to be<br />
<br />
deducted from the honorarium. The secretary<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 13<br />
<br />
did not accept this proposal. He did not even<br />
submit it to Mr. Macdonald. He had not, he<br />
said, made his demand without having consulted<br />
the solicitors of the Society ; and he had to repeat<br />
it. he editors did not take any notice of that<br />
letter. Two or three weeks afterwards Mr. John<br />
Joshua Sprigg, solicitor, to whom Mr. Thring<br />
had referred Mr. Macdonald, made to the editors<br />
a proposal pretty much like that which they<br />
themselves had ineffectually made to Mr. Thring.<br />
The acting editor replied that it could not be<br />
acceded to. The rejection of it at the instance of<br />
Mr. Thring, he said, had deprived the editors of<br />
an opportunity to publish the article when it<br />
would have happened to be topical. The Duke<br />
of Argyll’s “Unseen Foundations of Society”<br />
had been published that month (February), and<br />
that important work had given much publ inte-<br />
rest to the subject of Mr. Macdonald’s paper.<br />
Thus the time when the paper would have been<br />
topical and valuable had passed. The editors<br />
could not now publish it on any consideration, and<br />
they would not pay for it.<br />
<br />
Hence the action which has just been heard.<br />
The plaintiff claimed £11 11s. in name of remune-<br />
ration, and £11 11s. in name of damages for<br />
refusal to publish. The action was defended on<br />
the ground that there bad been no contract.<br />
<br />
The witnesses for the plaintiff were himself,<br />
Mr. Clayden, of the editorial staff of the Daily<br />
News, and Mr. Corrie Grant, barrister and<br />
journalist, all of whom said that they under-<br />
stood the sending of a proof to be an acceptance.<br />
The plaintiff himself, in cross-examination, was<br />
forced to admit that he knew nothing from<br />
experience of the principles upon which great<br />
monthly reviews in England were conducted.<br />
He understood, among other things, that the<br />
Saturday Review paid its contributors at the<br />
rate of ten shillings a column. Mr. Grant, cross-<br />
examined by Mr. W. T. Raymond, counsel for<br />
the defendants, admitted that he knew nothing<br />
of the usages in connection with monthly maga-<br />
zines and reviews. He had offered articles to<br />
such periodicals himself, but had never had any<br />
accepted. Mr. Clayden, in cross-examination,<br />
said he knew of no essential difference between<br />
articles written for a daily newspaper and articles<br />
written for a monthly review.<br />
<br />
The learned judge interposed the remark that<br />
the newspaper articles were ephemeral. Mr.<br />
Raymond observed that that was an important<br />
consideration, An article for a daily newspaper<br />
would probably lose its value with the lapse of a<br />
day or two; a certain kind of monthly review<br />
article was totally different.<br />
<br />
The witnesses for the defence were the acting<br />
editor of the National Review, the assistant<br />
<br />
editor of the National Observer (Mr. Dunn), Mr.<br />
Herbert Stephen, and Mr. Chapman (of Messrs.<br />
Chapman and Hall, publishers of the Fortnightly<br />
Review).<br />
<br />
The acting editor of the National Review<br />
admitted having sent the MS. to the printers,<br />
and having ordered a proof for the writer ; but he<br />
denied that there had been any contract. He had<br />
considered the plaintiff’s letter of protest against<br />
the editor’s delay in publishing an intimation that<br />
the editors should return it if they could not<br />
publish it immediately.<br />
<br />
Mr. Walters, counsel for the plaintiff, asked<br />
witness whether he had not accepted the paper<br />
—yes or no.<br />
<br />
Witness: There are some questions which<br />
cannot be answered absolutely either by a Yes or<br />
by a No. That is one of them. The paper was<br />
accepted conditionally. Conditionally—that was<br />
the point. It would have been published if the<br />
understanding governing those matters had been<br />
shared by the writer. Articles offered to editors<br />
of reviews were in two categories. First, there<br />
were articles on urgent topics of the day.<br />
These, if accepted, were published without delay.<br />
Then, there were articles, the subjects of which<br />
were of a quite different kind—articles which<br />
were as timely, as a rule, in one month, or even<br />
in one year, as in another. If an editor put one<br />
of those general papers into type, he did so,<br />
unless there was an explicit arrangement as to<br />
the time of publishing it, on the understanding<br />
that it was to be used when he pleased. The<br />
plaintiff’s article was of that category. The note<br />
accompanying it merely intimated that there it<br />
was. The writer made no stipulation as to when<br />
it was to be published. He did not even express<br />
a wish. Therefore, when the writer sought to<br />
import into the matter a condition which had not<br />
been stated, it became clear that there was no<br />
arrangement, no contract, at all; and he had<br />
immediately returned the article.<br />
<br />
Mr. Walters: You returned it in kingly indig-<br />
nation ?<br />
<br />
Witness: Yes, if it pleases the learned counsel<br />
to phrase it so. The sending of the proof had<br />
been an incident which seemed to confuse the<br />
issue. The proof had really nothing to do with<br />
the case. It would not have been sent if the<br />
unacceptable condition had been stated at the<br />
<br />
roper time, which was when the MS. was being<br />
submitted. No contract had been broken; for<br />
there had been none to break. In spite of the<br />
<br />
proof-sheets, the case really stood as it would<br />
have stood if, the condition as to time having<br />
been stated by the writer on submitting the<br />
article, the MS. had been returned there and<br />
then, He had settled the question whenever he<br />
<br />
<br />
- THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
knew the writer’s conditions. If the writer had<br />
at first even expressed a wish as to the time of<br />
publication, witness would have returned tho<br />
article immediately.<br />
<br />
The assistant editor of the National Observer<br />
corroborated the previous witness as to the two<br />
categories of articles. He had known general<br />
articles held over, in proof, for many months.<br />
He himself, if the writer of such an article—an<br />
article which had been volunteered—complained<br />
of delay, would have given him the option of<br />
withdrawing it.<br />
<br />
Mr. Herbert Stephen, who spoke as a con-<br />
tributor to weekly and monthly reviews, said that<br />
articles which had been ordered by editors were<br />
subjects of a contract. They had to be paid for<br />
whatever happened. On the other hand, articles<br />
which were sent without invitation—howsoever<br />
long they might be kept and whether proofs were<br />
issued or not—were not accepted unless and until<br />
they were published. He would not dream of<br />
claiming payment for such an article, if it were<br />
not published, howsoever long it might have been<br />
retained.<br />
<br />
Mr. Chapman said that, as a matter of course,<br />
editors intended to publish articles which they<br />
put into type. They would not incur the cost of<br />
type-setting if they had not that intention. In<br />
a general way, therefore, sending a proof was to<br />
be regarded as an acceptance. ‘There were excep-<br />
tional cases, however. If the writer of a paper,<br />
about which there had been no arrangement as<br />
to time of publication, claimed publication soon,<br />
the editor would be justified in returning the<br />
paper. He had made no contract, and had<br />
incurred no responsibility.<br />
<br />
Mr. Raymund and Mr.<br />
addressed the judge,<br />
<br />
His Honour gave judgment. The plaintiff<br />
had had something to sell—an article. He had<br />
sent it to the editors of the National Review,<br />
who might possibly buy it. The editors had<br />
caused the article to be put into type, and a proof<br />
to be sent for revision to the writer. He had<br />
seen no letter from the plaintiff in which the<br />
plaintiff had expressly asked the article to be<br />
returned. Mr. Hodgson, he thought, had gone a<br />
little beyond his rights in determining this matter<br />
so abruptly. It would have been better if,<br />
like Mr. Dunn, Mr. Hodgson had considered that<br />
the writer should have the option of having his<br />
article returned. The article, admittedly, was a<br />
thing of value. The property in this article had<br />
been for a time in the possession of the editors of<br />
the National Review, and out of the possession<br />
of the writer. In his opinion, then, the issue of<br />
the proof had constituted acceptance. Judgment<br />
for the. plaintiff—£11 11s. to cover the whole<br />
<br />
Walters, having<br />
<br />
article—with costs. There could be no damages,<br />
for the plaintiff had suffered none; and, indeed,<br />
the claim on account of them had been with-<br />
drawn.—Pall Mall Gazette, May 17th, 1893.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Il.<br />
<br />
The case turned partly on the question whether<br />
the sending of a proof toa contributor by the editor<br />
of a monthly magazine constitutes acceptance of<br />
anarticle. There were certain letters on which<br />
counsel might also have relied, but the judge<br />
gave it as his opinion that the setting up of the<br />
article, and sending it to the contributor for proof<br />
correction constituted acceptance. On this case<br />
one would remark (1) That if the assistant editor<br />
had communicated his view of what the proof<br />
meant on sending it the case would not have<br />
arisen; that it would have been considerate and<br />
courteous to have done so; that it is deplorable<br />
that he did not do so; the more so because the<br />
contributor in his examination showed himself<br />
quite ignorant of the conduct of periodicals. It _<br />
was next, surely, a great mistake to confuse the<br />
case of daily newspapers and weekly journals,<br />
which must very largely consist of comments on<br />
things of the moment, with the case of monthly<br />
magazines, which stand on a very different footing.<br />
It is quite obvious that many things must be set<br />
up for the former which may never be used unless<br />
at the moment. With some papers the contribu-<br />
tor is not paid for such articles. He takes his<br />
chance.<br />
<br />
Not so with the monthly magazines. The cost<br />
of setting up articles on the mere chance of using<br />
them is so great as to make the actual setting up<br />
mean acceptance. The writer has had as much<br />
experience as most men in writing for monthly<br />
magazines. He has been rejected. He has had<br />
to wait, but the editor has always courteously<br />
informed him of the reason of the delay. Never<br />
once has he received a proof which was not taken<br />
by him and meant by the editor as an accepted<br />
proof. Nor has he ever heard of a single instance<br />
in all his experience of a contributor receiving a<br />
proof and hearing afterwards that it was not<br />
meant for acceptance.<br />
<br />
In the report of the case one does not find that<br />
the witnesses for the defendant were asked certain<br />
questions of vital importance. There were three<br />
—observe that not a single editor appeared—<br />
(1) the assistant editor of a weekly paper; (2)<br />
Mr. Herbert Stephen, among other things, a con-<br />
tributor to weekly and monthly reviews; (3) a<br />
publisher. The questions which should have<br />
ee put were three :<br />
<br />
What experience have you had in ‘the<br />
editing of monthly magazines ?. :<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 15<br />
<br />
2. Has any article of your own to a monthly<br />
magazine been treated as Mr. Macdonald’s was ?<br />
<br />
3. Can you tell the court of any single instance,<br />
in your experience, in which a contributor to a<br />
monthly magazine was so treated ?<br />
<br />
The publisher, for instance, said it was “ most<br />
unusual.” Could he remember such a case? Or<br />
has an editor ever told him of such a case?<br />
<br />
Tn these columnsthere have been many letters of<br />
complaint concerning the treatment of contributors.<br />
The complaints have been generally directed<br />
against editors or proprietors of the smaller maga-<br />
zinesand journals. It too often happens that the<br />
desire of the, editor is to get his contributions<br />
for nothing; but in many cases the ground of<br />
complaint is the discourtesy of these small<br />
editors, who seem to think that a contributor<br />
has no more right for consideration than a<br />
crossing-sweeper. Read the following, which<br />
was published, not in the Author, but in the<br />
Atheneum of March 25:<br />
<br />
“ In the one case, my stories, after being retained for over<br />
two years, were returned to me, on my making inquiry<br />
about them, with merely the excuse that no room could be<br />
found for them. Of course I had assumed that the tales<br />
were accepted, and would be published as soon as con-<br />
venient. No expression of regret for the useless delay and<br />
the disappointment caused was made to me, and no notice<br />
was taken cf my surprised remonstrance. I may add that<br />
the magazine is a long-established one and its editor is a<br />
well-knownman. The second editor of whom I complain is,<br />
Iam sorry to say,a lady. She has accepted contributions<br />
of mine for her magazine, twelve years ago, which she has<br />
never inserted or returned. One contribution, after being<br />
accepted, was, indeed, after a long interval, returned—too<br />
late for acceptance in any other magazine, as it referred to<br />
a now past event. Another contribution, the longest of<br />
all, was lost, for when I asked for it back, I was told it<br />
could not be found. The worst case of all is that of<br />
another editor, who, after having retained a story for more<br />
than a year, published it in his magazine, and took no notice<br />
whatever of many repeated applications I made for pay-<br />
ment, enclosing stamped envelopes, and for the return of<br />
two more tales. At last, in despair, I had to call in legal<br />
assistance. Not until a summons had been served was the<br />
payment for the three stories made.”<br />
<br />
This is an encouraging experience, is it not?<br />
In three separate journals not the least considera-<br />
tion, not the most common courtesy, shown<br />
towards the contributor.<br />
<br />
Considering, therefore, (1) that if proof does<br />
not mean acceptance it would cost the editor<br />
nothing more than a printed slp to say 80; (2)<br />
that we may reasonably expect of our high-class<br />
magazines such treatment of their writers as may<br />
not give an excuse to the baser sort, it is a great<br />
pity that the National Review was concerned<br />
with it. It is also a great pity that the Saturday<br />
Review, confusing issues, which the judge care-<br />
fully separated, has. thought proper. to publish<br />
a savage-onslaught on the,Society of Authors for<br />
<br />
their action in the matter. ‘The Society never<br />
did a worse day’s work; ” contributors “will find<br />
the gates shut and barred.” Editors will no<br />
longer read their offerings. Why ? Because, if this<br />
ruling is accepted, editors will henceforth—.e.,<br />
the one or two editors of weeklies who want to<br />
send out proofs of unaccepted articles, and the<br />
possibly one or two editors of monthlies who want<br />
to do the same thing—will henceforward find<br />
it desirable to exercise towards the contributor<br />
the common courtesy of explaining to him what<br />
the proof means.<br />
<br />
That is all. Perhaps the members of the Society<br />
will reassure themselves. A.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Ii.<br />
To the Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.<br />
<br />
Sir,—The part of the Society of Authors in this<br />
ease bas, £ think, . been misconceived or<br />
exaggerated in some comments which have<br />
appeared. ‘The Committee of the Society does not<br />
assume to lay down general propositions of law,<br />
nor to defend the interests of any one class of the<br />
Society’s members (who include editors as well as<br />
contributors) against any other. In fact at least<br />
one member of the council and past member of<br />
the committee is both the editor of a leading<br />
journal and an occasional contributor to leading<br />
magazines. Mr. Macdonald's case was taken up<br />
by the committee in the regular course and on its<br />
individual merits. They were advised that in all<br />
the circumstances his claim was well founded, and<br />
that advice has so far been justified.<br />
<br />
I need hardly add that County Court judg-<br />
ments, however learned and able the judge may<br />
be, have never been supposed to form binding<br />
precedents in point of law like the judgments of<br />
a superior court.—I am, yours, &c.,<br />
<br />
May 23. F, Pouuock.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
bbe)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
OMNIUM GATHERUM FOR JUNE.<br />
<br />
od<br />
<br />
Subjects for Books or Articles.—The Referen-<br />
dum; The Adoption of Children ; Regulation of<br />
Advertisements ; The Chicago Conference ; ‘The<br />
Heavenly Twins”’; Tennyson's ‘ Timbuctoo”’ ;<br />
Altruism in Smoking.<br />
<br />
Head Lines.-—These are very valuable as guides<br />
to a reader, and should be-jointly cared for by<br />
printers and author. The mere repetition of the<br />
title as the left-hand head line is to be deprecated<br />
as waste, for the title is best known from the<br />
cover. Double head lines may sometimes be of<br />
<br />
<br />
i THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
use, and in biographies dates. In diaries,- the<br />
month as well as the year should be given.<br />
<br />
Quality before Quantity —It is much easier<br />
for an author to write a long book than a short<br />
one, and just as cheap fora publisher to advertise<br />
a dear book as a cheapone. Beyond doubt, how-<br />
ever, from the reader’s point. of view brevity in an<br />
author is as valuable as it is rare. specially is<br />
this to be noted in the case of biographies, which<br />
should very seldom exceed one volume.<br />
<br />
Acknowledgments of other Authors.—It is sub-<br />
mitted that these are better rendered in separate<br />
foot-notes beneath the matter acknowledged than<br />
in the lump in a preface or elsewhere.<br />
<br />
Editor and Contributor.—It is suggested that<br />
a contributor’s remuneration might be divisible<br />
into three (not necessarily equal) independent<br />
parts, corresponding to (1) composition; (2)<br />
correction of proof; and (3) publication. The<br />
relationship of editor and contributor seems to<br />
require more definite regulation than it has yet<br />
obtained, with the view of satisfying, as far as<br />
may be, the desire of the contributor for publica-<br />
tion as well as payment, and the desire of the<br />
editor for a proper mixture of topical and general<br />
articles. The complete satisfaction of both these<br />
desires is impossible.<br />
<br />
Machine-cut Pages—It is suggested that<br />
every author should insist on machine-cut pages<br />
for his book, offering to bear the expense (which<br />
I have been informed is only 10s. per 1000 copies<br />
ofan ordinary book) himself, in event of his<br />
publisher declining to bear it. The ros. will be<br />
returned a hundredfold in better reviewing and<br />
more readers.<br />
<br />
Inducements to Literature-—These are four,<br />
being (1) Love of fame, both present and posthu-<br />
mous; (2) payment; (3) love of composition,<br />
including in “composition” the arrangement of<br />
head lines and the choice of type and binding ;<br />
and (4) love of influence. The second is the<br />
most tangible, and has (hitherto) been the least<br />
regulated, but little good literature is consciously<br />
produced without some admixture of at least the<br />
first three.<br />
<br />
The Authors’ Club.—The dinners at this club<br />
are particularly good. J. M. Lery.<br />
<br />
nee<br />
<br />
THE §.P.C.K. AGAIN.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
. AY I ask you in fairness to admit this<br />
letter into your paper, in answer to<br />
the article with the above heading,<br />
<br />
dated April 1. In that article you state that,<br />
<br />
“A woman who writes popular stories, can<br />
<br />
produce at her best not more than three in<br />
<br />
two years—say, even two in a year. She is<br />
paid £30 apiece, we will say, for them—zee.,<br />
she can make £60 a year.” Now the tales for<br />
which the Society gives only £30 are very short<br />
—z200 pages, more or less—and necessarily very<br />
simple. If a womanis so constituted that, while<br />
making literature her profession, and ‘giving as<br />
much time to it as those do who look to earn<br />
their bread by any profession, she can only write<br />
two such tales in a year, she had better give up<br />
the attempt, and take to something more suited<br />
to her capacity. The more ordinary rate of work<br />
is this:—The Society, some time in the latter<br />
part of November, offers me £80 for a story,<br />
whereof not one line is then written, and which<br />
they expect to have, and do have, delivered<br />
complete by the middle of the following March.<br />
<br />
This, I may observe, is not specially rapid work,<br />
<br />
as I live at home and write in the midst of many<br />
<br />
engagements and distractions, from which women<br />
who write for their bread may, if they choose,<br />
be free. The Society may, therefore, truly say<br />
that they pay me (and others who write for<br />
them) at the rate of £240 a year—a very fair<br />
remuneration for work that need not strain the<br />
energies of any woman “at her best.” I may<br />
add that I thoroughly agree with the writer of<br />
the letter, which, as you say, reopens the contro-<br />
versy of 91. The immense sales of the Society’s<br />
books are not chiefly due to the name of the<br />
author, or to the name of the Society purely in<br />
its capacity as publisher, but to the careful super-<br />
vision which is given at the cost of much time<br />
and labour, and owing to which hard-worked<br />
clergy and others can buy the books by hundreds<br />
for school prizes and parish libraries, secure,<br />
without reading them, that there will, at any<br />
rate, be nothing in them to render them unworthy<br />
of that kind of official sanction.”<br />
<br />
HELEN SHIPTON.<br />
Old Brampton Vicarage, Chesterfield.<br />
<br />
[1. I still think that a “ short story” of about<br />
200 pp., which means 60,000 words, would take<br />
so much out of a writer that two in the year<br />
is as much as he, or she, should or could<br />
attempt. :<br />
<br />
"2. I still think that £30 paid for work which<br />
is well known to the purchaser to be worth three<br />
times, or ten times, that sum in the market is a<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
sweating price, and that to pay sweating prices<br />
for work is iniquitous, even for the miserable<br />
sweaters of needlewomen — themselves _half-<br />
starved. What it is for a religious society, my<br />
readers may fill in for themselves. Perhaps it is<br />
righteous and just, and an action carried out in<br />
the true spirit of the Divine Master’s teaching.<br />
<br />
3. The S.P.C.K. pays this lady, she tells us,<br />
£80 for a work on which she spends three months<br />
and a half. She calls this at the rate of £240 a<br />
year. I think that it is nothing of the kind,<br />
because I am very certain from long experience<br />
that a person who would try three solid works of<br />
fiction of good average length in one year would<br />
in the second year be writing rubbish, and in the<br />
third year drivel.<br />
<br />
4. The large sales of the Society are due, says<br />
this writer, to the supervision which enables<br />
clergymen to buy books in confidence that they<br />
will contain nothing contrary to good doctrine.<br />
<br />
Partly, no doubt. Yet this does not constitute<br />
a claim on the property. Take a house; suppose<br />
a sanitary engineer at great trouble examines<br />
that house and finds it perfectly habitable. Does<br />
his report to that effect give him a claim to half<br />
the property? Always the same confusion ;<br />
always the blindness which cannot see that<br />
literary employment, literary pay, literary<br />
property are bound by the same laws which<br />
regulate other property. You may steal it ;<br />
you may underpay and sweat your employés ;<br />
you may overreach the producer and take more<br />
than your own share. You may even do this<br />
with the Blessing of Bishops. Yet the Eighth<br />
Commandment remains.<br />
<br />
ee<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
PREF ACES.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
MUST respectfully but stoutly protest<br />
against my learned friend Mr. Lely’s<br />
attempt to lay down a Procrustean rule as<br />
to the length of prefaces. One page may be<br />
altogether too much, or two pages much too<br />
little. The preface to Savigny’s ‘System des<br />
Leutigen rémischen Rechts,” one of the best<br />
pieces of scientific writing in any language,<br />
covers fifty pages, and there is not a word too<br />
much of it.<br />
Tf Mr. Lely means only that anything shorter<br />
_ than two pages should be called a Notice or<br />
Advertisement, and anything longer should be<br />
called an Introduction, I have no objection to<br />
make, except that hard and fast rules of this-kind<br />
are apt to give more trouble than they save.<br />
<br />
ba F. Potioc..<br />
VOL, EV: mo<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
WHAT THE PUBLIC READ.<br />
<br />
HAVE read with considerable’ imterest the<br />
: article in the last issue of the Author on<br />
“ Libraries—New and Old.” There is no part<br />
of that article which has pleased me so much as the<br />
statement that “the mass of people—those whom<br />
we regard as having no taste and no cultivation,<br />
will always prefer good literature to bad.” My<br />
own experience as a librarian, some twenty years<br />
ago, of a public library in a large manufacturing<br />
town bears out this fact, and I feel sure that a<br />
very large proportion of the present librarians of<br />
these institutions will be prepared to support the<br />
statement. It is one universal experience of those<br />
in charge of public libraries that borrowers begin<br />
their use of the library by reading the lighter<br />
books of fiction, and drift gradually to the better<br />
and more satisfying books in the same section of<br />
literature, and from this proceed to works of<br />
history, travel, science, and the more advanced.<br />
books of mental and political philosophy.<br />
Numerous instances have come under my own<br />
observation, where the reading of “‘ Adam Bede”<br />
or “ Westward Ho!” has been anew revelation to<br />
a borrower, and which borrower has not been con-<br />
tent until he or she has goneright through the works<br />
of George Eliot or Charles Kingsley. I could,<br />
again, instance cases of youths to whom the read-<br />
ing Church’s “ Stories from Homer” has come as<br />
a veritable new birth; and those youths, now<br />
grown into men with families, have, to<br />
my knowledge, gone through most of Car-<br />
lyle, Ruskin, John Stuart Mill, and, where they<br />
have had access to libraries, Herbert Spencer and<br />
Freeman and other historians. If I am not<br />
taking up too much of your space, I should like<br />
to give a list of the books read during this last<br />
winter by two working men who have the run of<br />
my own little library. One is a bricklayer and<br />
the other a carpenter. Both start work early in<br />
the morning, and their time for reading is in the<br />
evening and on Sundays. The carpenter is a<br />
Devonshire man, and his range of reading is per-<br />
fectly amazing. He began last winter by reading<br />
Matthew Arnold’s “Culture and Anarchy,’ and<br />
followed by reading some of Arnold’s poetry.<br />
There followed Grant Allen’s “Colours of<br />
Flowers;” Trevelyan’s “Life of Macaulay ;”<br />
Stuart Mill’s Three Essays on “ Religion,”<br />
“Liberty,” and “Representative Government ; ”<br />
Ruskin’s “ Unto this Last” and “ Queen of the<br />
Air,” and at the present moment he is reading<br />
J. R. Green’s “Conquest of England.” For<br />
lighter reading he took “ Peveril of the Peak”’<br />
and “ Romola” to read aloud, as he said, to the<br />
wife.<br />
c<br />
<br />
<br />
18 _ THE ‘AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
My friend the bricklayer tackled at the begin-<br />
ning of the winter Carlyle’s “ French Revolution,”<br />
and dipped occasionally as he went along in<br />
Thiers’, Mignet’s, and Burke’s books on the<br />
same subject. John Morley’s “Diderot ” and<br />
Frederic Harrison’s ‘Progress and Poverty”<br />
have been taken by him, and, although he may<br />
not have read the books through from cover to<br />
cover, he has done more than glance at them.<br />
For fiction he has had “Pendennis” and “ Alec<br />
Forbes of Howglen.” The first book taken out<br />
of our Stoke Newington Public Library was ‘‘ The<br />
Origin of Species,” and that by an elderly working<br />
man who is far from being well off in this world’s<br />
goods. These are not solitary instances by any<br />
means. There is not a librarian throughout the<br />
country who could not quote similar cases. The<br />
juvenile libraries established in connection with<br />
these institutions show that there is a very large<br />
proportion of books of light science, travel, and<br />
history read by the young borrowers from these<br />
libraries.<br />
<br />
The three-volume novel is dying fast, and I<br />
look upon this as good proof that the public<br />
taste for literature is upwards, and not down-<br />
wards. These three-vol. editions are now rarely<br />
bought by public libraries.<br />
<br />
If we could obtain from the publishers reliable<br />
figures of the actual number of copies sold of<br />
certain works, I believe that we should have<br />
abundance of evidence that the public taste for<br />
books is far better than is generally imagined.<br />
Tbe record of a day’s issues from any represen-<br />
tative public library, or a list of the books read<br />
by any average reader of one of these libraries<br />
during a given period, would give additional<br />
proof in the same direction.<br />
<br />
It is the supply which creates the demand.<br />
The issuing of standard books at low prices,-and<br />
the establishing of libraries open to all without<br />
let or hindrance, soon produces a large con-<br />
stituency of purchasers or borrowers, as the case<br />
may be. The sale of reprints, such as Cassell’s<br />
National Library series, Walter Scott’s reprints,<br />
the Minerva series, the Ancient Classics for<br />
English readers, and other sets, could be in-<br />
stanced. These have, in many cases, sold by<br />
thousands.<br />
<br />
From a long experience and a close observation,<br />
I have no difficulty in coming to the conclusion<br />
that the public taste for reading has vastly<br />
improved during the last twenty years, and is<br />
still improving. I have too much faith in the<br />
results of the Elementary Education Act of 1870<br />
to allow me to think otherwise upon the question.<br />
<br />
THOMAS GREENWOOD.<br />
<br />
ee<br />
<br />
HORACE’S ODES, I, 5.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
** Quis multa gracilis?”<br />
What slender youth, with liquid scents bedewed,<br />
Is courting you, on roses thickly strewed,<br />
Pyrrha, in pleasant grot ?<br />
For whom twist you that golden hair in knot<br />
Simple yet charming? Ah! how oft he’ll weep<br />
For Heaven’s changed looks, and troth you would not keep,<br />
And wonder, slow to learn,<br />
How rough in murky winds Love’s sea can turn!<br />
<br />
Now, lapped in golden joys, he fondly sees<br />
You always free, and always glad, to please ;<br />
Poor fool ! he little knows<br />
<br />
The fickle breeze that now so softly blows.<br />
<br />
Fatal your smile to whom your smile is new!<br />
On yonder wall my votive tablet view,<br />
And, in the Sea-god’s shrine,<br />
Read, how I’ve hung my garments dripping brine.<br />
<br />
A. S. AGLEN.<br />
<br />
FEUILLETON.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Tue Frre Post-OFFIce.<br />
“ My search is for the living gold.”—Lowell.<br />
<br />
OME years ago I was the honoured recipient<br />
S of a letter. It was rather a long one,<br />
being written upon both sides of three leaves<br />
of foolscap, and filling them well. No sooner was<br />
this epistle written—so I learnt afterwards—than<br />
the author thereof resolved to burn it; but the<br />
fire had gone out by two or three o’clock in the<br />
morning, the time when it was finished, so he put<br />
it in his pocket, resolving to post it in the fire on<br />
the following day. Now, by some curious chance,<br />
it came to my hands before the flames had had<br />
the opportunity of devouring it. A promise was<br />
extorted from me that I would burn it as soon as<br />
ever I had done withit. I fully intend to keep<br />
my promise, if I am alive to do so, when that<br />
time arrives—meanwhile the manuscript remains<br />
in my possession.<br />
<br />
This little incident set me thinking that if all<br />
the essays, articles, stories, poems, &c., could come<br />
to light again which have been written and posted<br />
in the fire by despairing lovers, authors, poets,<br />
preachers, and politicians, what extraordinary<br />
revelations would be manifested. A kind of<br />
“Land of Lost Toys” would rise out of chaos,<br />
and the thoughts of many hearts would be<br />
revealed.<br />
<br />
Yet this fire post-office must have done much<br />
for the purification of literature, and the good of<br />
mankind in general. Some people find mfinite<br />
relief in writing down their angry thoughts<br />
addressed to the person who has annoyed them,<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE<br />
<br />
and if these documents are forthwith committed<br />
to the flames by the writer of them, no further<br />
mischief can ensue. But, after all, this is only a<br />
refuge for the weak; it would be better not to in-<br />
scribe one’s angry thoughts at all; besides, it<br />
wastes the paper!<br />
<br />
There is, however, a higher and better use for<br />
our fire post-office, other than that of a mere<br />
safety valve.<br />
<br />
Let us think of the verses it has consumed ;<br />
yet out of the many, many millions not one true,<br />
poetic thought has perished. For poetry is as<br />
gold, which the fire has power to purify but not<br />
destroy. The weak expression of poetic thought<br />
is surely better burnt.<br />
<br />
“Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold.”<br />
<br />
It may happen that when the hungry flame has<br />
had time to burn itself out, having made a meal<br />
of the laboured manuscript of some young artist,<br />
and he rakes amongst the ashes, peering into<br />
them with eyes still smarting with the smoke,<br />
and fumes of disappointment, in which the<br />
flames rose up, that he will discover there some-<br />
thing that rings true, that gleams in the refuse,<br />
something, in fact, that is a lump of purest gold.<br />
<br />
But it is no longer in the form of poetry that<br />
it comes to him, perhaps it is prose; but prose<br />
of the high, poetic order, destined to appeal with<br />
living force to the great. throbbing, aching heart<br />
of mankind. -<br />
<br />
Thus was Carlyle’s “French Revolution”<br />
posted in the fire and took no hurt.<br />
<br />
Sometimes the thing left by the flames has no<br />
part in the world of letters; it turns out to be<br />
music, or the art of painting, a power of inven-<br />
tion, or best and rarest of all, the gift of loving<br />
and making home lovely.<br />
<br />
Once upon a time there lived a dear boy who<br />
wanted to write poetry. Or, at all events, he<br />
wanted some adequate means of expressing the<br />
strange yearning that fell upon him from time to<br />
time, especially in the loveliness of spring-time,<br />
when he noted the flickering of the sunlight<br />
through young green beech leaves, and longed<br />
insanely to be a part of it all, and to distribute<br />
this loveliness amongst those who knew it not.<br />
<br />
He began writing verses, but they were lifeless,<br />
and altogether without power to express his<br />
thoughts or satisfy the craving, for<br />
<br />
Still the shadow of our incompteness<br />
Spoils our perfect dreams,<br />
<br />
Just a little lower than our meaning<br />
Are our highest themes.<br />
<br />
With silent tears and salt, wherewith to season<br />
his sacrifice, he humbly committed his verses to<br />
the flames, and bravely resumed his work at<br />
some dull office desk. The boy grew up to bea<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
2<br />
<br />
man, but he did not write any more poetry, at<br />
least not in verse. The sacrifice, however, had<br />
been accepted, and the hungry flam-s, when they<br />
were appeased, left him his gold.<br />
<br />
It was with a lavish hand that he dealt it out<br />
to a hungry mob. Hungry for happiness, hungry<br />
for some of the beauty of life, hungry for highe.<br />
and better thoughts. Thus he gave willingly<br />
out of the abundance of his own poverty, and<br />
surely, in the words of another poet, he might<br />
sa<br />
<br />
: Tam a happier and a richer man<br />
<br />
Since I have sown this new joy in the earth,<br />
"Tis no small thing for us to reap stray mirth<br />
In every sunny wayside where we can.<br />
<br />
eS<br />
<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
HE delegates to the Chicago Conference<br />
| leave England on the 1oth of June. Papers<br />
entrusted to them can be posted up to<br />
Thursday, the 8th. After that they must be<br />
addressed to the “Delegates of the English<br />
Society of Authors, care of the Chairman,<br />
Literary Congress, World’s Fair, Chicago.” Once<br />
more it is requested that members will do their<br />
best to increase the importance of the mission,<br />
and of the Congress itself, by sending notes and<br />
opinions, however short.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
A memorial is to be erected in Freshwater to<br />
the late Poet Laureate. The place was his<br />
residence, his favourite residence, for many years.<br />
I believe «since the year 1850. There are two<br />
proposals before the projectors—a committee<br />
formed in Freshwater itself. One is to substitute<br />
for the existing wooden beacon on the highest<br />
part of the Freshwater Down a stone tower. The<br />
other is the erection of a granite monolith in the<br />
form of an Iona cross at the corner of Farringdon-<br />
lane, along which the poet often walked. The<br />
committee ask for £500. About half that sum<br />
has already been collected. Among our members<br />
there are many, doubtless, who would like to take<br />
a part in this memorial to our late President<br />
Contributions may be sent to Lieut.-Colone.<br />
Will, R.A., Golden Hill Fort, Freshwater. I<br />
would suggest, however, that a subscription of<br />
quite a small amount—say half-a-crown or five<br />
shillings—sent to Mr. Thring might be forwarded<br />
by him in a lump, as from our members. Mr.<br />
Thring undertakes the trouble of receiving and<br />
acknowledging such subscriptions. It is an<br />
opportunity for the Society to work together and<br />
unanimously.<br />
<br />
<br />
20 THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
There has been a great deal of talk during the<br />
month over Mr. Colles’s paper in the New Review.<br />
The subject of literary property possesses a re-<br />
markable fascination for those who have no share<br />
in it; they are always talking about it. As they<br />
know nothing whatever of the subject, they are,<br />
of course, the louder and the more positive in their<br />
denunciations and contradictions of those who do.<br />
It is really quite wonderful to consider the non-<br />
sense talked about writers and incomes. Some of<br />
it is designed deliberately to deceive and to mis-<br />
lead, but most of it is written in pure ignorance,<br />
and because everybody who writes a book, or for<br />
a newspaper, or for a magazine, believes that this<br />
fact at once and by its own inherent virtue ¢on-<br />
fers upon him the knowledge of all the statistics,<br />
the extent, the prospects, and everything else of<br />
literary property. For the most part he begins<br />
with declaring—or assuming—that there is no<br />
such thing. He has in his mind four rooted<br />
<br />
prejudices. Thus:<br />
1. Literary property is only valuable by<br />
chance.<br />
<br />
2. Those who grow rich in literary property<br />
are successful gamblers.<br />
<br />
3. All who write books are needy mendicants.<br />
<br />
4. It is beneath the dignity of genius to con-<br />
sider the commercial aspect of literature.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Do you doubt the last piece of foolishness ?<br />
Then read the following: “ Genius is too shy to<br />
be tempted by these many material advantages.”<br />
This is a quotation from the Daily Graphic—<br />
generally a very sensible paper, which is sometimes<br />
allowed to become silly on this subject. Why, the<br />
whole of literary history proclaims aloud the fact<br />
that genius is only too delighted with as many<br />
material advantages as can be offered. The same<br />
writer, referring to Mr. Colles’s paper, asks<br />
whether the “ protection of literature can create<br />
literature?” Yes; in this way. Genius writes<br />
best when genius sits in a comfortable library,<br />
with well-filled shelves, in a decent house, and<br />
without apprehensions as to the dinner of to-<br />
morrow. Secure to genius these advantages,<br />
and you will enable genius to work. Small,<br />
indeed, have been the contributions of genius<br />
starving and ragged and dependent. Of course,<br />
at the bottom of this question lies the old, old<br />
confusion of thought as to the commercial and<br />
the literary value of work. The two things cannot<br />
be measured by each other. But the confusion<br />
will remain. There is, however, the other point<br />
which Mr. Colles touched upon—the fact that<br />
Necessity—not that of starvation and rags, but<br />
ordinary Necessity, the Necessity which stands<br />
behind all of us—has caused the production of<br />
<br />
the best work. One would always most earnestly<br />
advise aspirants not to attempt an actual liveli-<br />
hood by literature. Let them have something else<br />
to lean upon at first. But, once embarked, it is<br />
best to feel that work must be done.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
There was an article in the British Weekly for<br />
May 4 on the alleged Decay of Literature, which is<br />
a charge, as Mr. Payn points out in the //lustrated,<br />
generally advanced by those who do not read<br />
it. It touches, also, on Mr. Colles’s paper,<br />
calling the writer “an authors’ agent.” This is<br />
not polite, but the writer, I suppose, does not<br />
know that Mr. Colles—a barrister as well as<br />
a writer—has given—literally given—nearly<br />
three vears of work to the building up of the<br />
Author’s Syndicate—not a publishing house,<br />
but a machinery by which authors may get<br />
managed for themselves at small expense the<br />
practical conduct of their own affairs—such<br />
management as the Society cannot give. Now,<br />
this three years’ work has made Mr. Colles practi-<br />
cally the greatest living master of the subject—<br />
far greater than any single publisher or any<br />
editor can be. He knows the practice of every<br />
house and every magazine; he also knows, as a<br />
Father Confessor, the private affairs of authors<br />
by the dozen. But the fact is not generally<br />
understood. However, the article contains a<br />
passage which shows the conventional way of<br />
looking at things, and adds another maxim to the<br />
stock of four prejudices above enumerated. It<br />
is this, and it makes the fifth :<br />
<br />
5. Good work can never become popular.<br />
<br />
This is the passage:<br />
<br />
The projectors of new magazines would be insane if they<br />
went to the best writers and asked them to deal seriously<br />
with important subjects. They must choose what will<br />
attract readers, and that, as a rule, is not literature. There<br />
are modest pecuniary rewards for good work still; a<br />
remnant is left. But great circulations and huge payments<br />
mean in nearly every instance the robbery, impoverishment,<br />
and degradation of literature.<br />
<br />
The italics are ours. My knowledge is not so<br />
great as that of Mr. Colles, but I suppose it will .<br />
not be reckoned as presumptive if I “claim,” as<br />
the Americans say, some knowledge after eight<br />
years’ work in the Society. If I were a projector<br />
of a new magazine, I would imitate the Con-<br />
temporary and the New ; I would go to the very<br />
best men that we have got and I should ask<br />
<br />
them to “deal seriously with important sub-<br />
<br />
jects.” As regards the books and subjects that<br />
attract readers, I refer to Mr. Thomas Greenwood’s<br />
paper on this subject (p. 17), in which you ewill<br />
see what the public does read, and therefore-what<br />
it wants. As for great circulations and huge pay-<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
— @<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
ments meaning mere “robbery, impoverishment,<br />
and degradation of literature ”—one simply stares<br />
and wonders. How about Walter Scott, Dickens,<br />
Byron, Pope, Thackeray, George Eliot ? Did<br />
their immense circulation, their huge pay-<br />
ments, impoverish and degrade their work ?<br />
But of what is the writer thinking? Something<br />
else must be in his mind. Does he mean that<br />
when a great and popular writer such as Scott or<br />
Dickens produces a work like “ Ivanhoe”’ or<br />
“David Copperfield,’ which has an immense<br />
circulation, and brings in huge sums of money,<br />
the publisher is to keep all the proceeds ?<br />
Here, again, comes in the customary confusion of<br />
<br />
ideas. It must not be allowed that there can<br />
be any such thing as literary property. Good<br />
work gets modest pecuniary reward. Big<br />
<br />
rewards mean bad work. Why? Because the<br />
people won’t have anything but bad work.<br />
Again, let us refer to Mr. Thomas Greenwood’s<br />
paper; and again, let us remember that Mr.<br />
Colles writes what is, not what he thinks may<br />
be, and that separates him by a vast gult,<br />
which cannot be crossed, from the other people<br />
who write perpetually about literary property.<br />
And let us remember that when we speak<br />
of literary property we are not speaking of<br />
novels, we are speaking of all kinds of literary<br />
property, educational—a branch far wider than<br />
that of fiction—historical, scientific, dramatic,<br />
artistic, everything. It is to be hoped that Mr.<br />
Colles will issue his paper separately with addi-<br />
tions and facts to strengthen his case.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
No answer has been proffered to my questions<br />
on the French Academy in the Author of last<br />
month. I have, however, made certain inquiries.<br />
I find, first of all, that, so far as I can learn, not<br />
a single volume, essay, paper, or article has been<br />
published in the English language upon the<br />
influence of the Academy, excepting a certain<br />
paper by Matthew Arnold. That it has been the<br />
subject of innumerable epigrams in France we all<br />
know. That it has never been seriously attacked<br />
in France we also know. So in this country the<br />
Royal Academy of Arts has been stung and<br />
teased by epigrams, but has never been seriously<br />
attacked by artists either singly or collectively.<br />
Tt is an institution which must remain. All that<br />
has been attempted is to attack its methods of<br />
election, exhibition, and instruction. How, then,<br />
has the prejudice against the French Academy,<br />
which undoubtedly exists among, many of our<br />
greatest scholars and most honoured men of<br />
Jetters, arisen? ‘This is the question that I want<br />
answered.. With what trammels did the<br />
<br />
‘Academy. bound-and vex the genius of Beranger<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
21<br />
<br />
or Victor Hugo? How was Voltaire bound and<br />
fettered by the Academy? These are questions<br />
which may very fitly occupy the columns of the<br />
Author ; and I hope that we may arrive, by means<br />
of this question, at some solid groundwork of fact.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Meantime, I submit, or repeat, my own view,<br />
apart from the question of influence, effect, or<br />
trammels, into which I am not prepared, off hand,<br />
to enter. I contend that it is most important that<br />
a nation should be instructed, and constantly<br />
reminded, of the things most worthy of honour;<br />
that national distinctions—unless we admit, as<br />
Englishmen do, ‘hereditary distinctions—ought<br />
not to exist or to be granted for any other<br />
cause than achievement in the lines which are<br />
worthy of honour; that mere money getting is<br />
not one of those achievements, though the<br />
advance of the nation by enterprise, forethought,<br />
and quick sight in commercial matters un-<br />
doubtedly is one of those achievements—witness<br />
the splendid history of Thomas Gresham ; that<br />
art, literature, and science are, as clearly as the<br />
professions of arms, diplomacy, administration,<br />
law, and justice, objects worthy of the highest<br />
honour ; that in national and official Functions, on<br />
all occasions of State, to pass over the followers of<br />
art, literature, and science, as if they did not<br />
exist, is unworthy of a civilised nation; that to<br />
withhold from them the national distinctions<br />
argues either that these distinctions are worth-<br />
less and below the consideration of cultured men—<br />
but, in that case why are they accepted by those<br />
men, of the highest culture and intellect, who sit<br />
upon the judicial bench?—or that artists and<br />
authors are beneath the consideration of the<br />
State.<br />
<br />
These are my propositions. Ihave talked them<br />
over with a good many men of reason. I cannot<br />
pretend to have carried every one with me; but I<br />
have certainly carried most of those with whom I<br />
have talked. As for reasons against these pro-<br />
positions, I have heard none. It seems nonsense<br />
to say that artists and poets ought to be contented<br />
with their own work. This was said some time<br />
ago by Lord Selborne, a lawyer whom the world<br />
justly holds in the greatest respect. But, that<br />
being so, why was he not contented with being<br />
plain Mister Palmer? It is always alleged that<br />
there would be intolerable jealousies. Perhaps,<br />
jealousies: there is a good deal of humanity<br />
about men of imagination ; they suffer from what<br />
Emerson called the over-soul ; but not intolerable<br />
jealousies ; not worse than are found among<br />
barristers and among city men. To counter-<br />
balance these jealousies the French Academy<br />
seems to confer upon its members exactly the kind<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
22<br />
<br />
of distinction which best suits men of letters ; they<br />
are not confounded with the ordinary Orders, and<br />
yet they receive national honour and national rank.<br />
As a correspondent writes to me, “the Academy<br />
confers upon men of letters a status which is<br />
both honourable and envied. In this way at<br />
least it has proved most serviceable to litera-<br />
ture.” One has only to compare the position of<br />
the men of letters in this country for the last<br />
200 years with that of-the men of letters in<br />
France for the same period, in order to under-<br />
stand what the Academy has done in this respect.<br />
That the French Academy is too limited in<br />
numbers ; that its method of election is humiliat-<br />
ing to those who wish to enter its ranks; that 1t<br />
has too often passed over good men, may be<br />
admitted. Having re-stated my humble view,<br />
once more I ask, What are those trammels by<br />
which the Academy is-alleged to have hampered<br />
literature ?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In another column we reproduce, by permission<br />
of the author and of the editor, the two papers<br />
written for the Pall Mall Gazette by Sir<br />
Frederick Pollock on Publishing. They appeared<br />
on May 1 and May 4. The importance of these<br />
papers is that the problems they discuss are<br />
seriously treated by a lawyer for the first time<br />
since we began to consider our position in the<br />
offices of the Society and in the pages of our<br />
journal. Our chairman of committee does not<br />
expect that everybody will agree with him abso-<br />
lutely and in all points. But I think that most<br />
of us are with him in essentials. It must be<br />
observed that his challenge for a discussion has<br />
not been taken up. TI do not think, indeed, that<br />
it will be. One letter, signed “A Publisher,’<br />
was written with the view of diverting the attent-<br />
tion from the real points at issue. Otherwise there<br />
is an apparent desire to avoid discussion.<br />
<br />
Sir Frederick Pollock, among other points, lays<br />
stress upon the following (the inverted commas<br />
do not always mean Sir Frederick’s own words) :—<br />
<br />
1. “There is no such thing as an abstract fair<br />
share in profits.”<br />
<br />
That is perfectly true. But the same maxim<br />
applies to all kinds of business. All we can ask<br />
for is such an adjustment of profits as may be<br />
recognised by honourable men on all sides as<br />
reasonable.<br />
<br />
2. “There should be no mystery as to the Cost<br />
of Production.”<br />
<br />
3. The “establishment” charges.<br />
<br />
On this subject I refer to certain remarks of<br />
mine ~ printed on p. to. When, I ask, the<br />
“establishment charges.” have been made, what<br />
claim ‘has the publisher for anything else P?: What<br />
has: he: dotie?: : Let’ us -hear-.what ‘he ‘himself<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
thinks. The book is sent to press, advertised,<br />
bound, delivered, and accounted for by the<br />
establishment. It is quite a thing of routine.<br />
What else has the publisher done ?<br />
<br />
4. ‘ Accounts, full and true, must be rendered.<br />
There must be no falsifying of accounts—no secret<br />
profits.” And all the world cried “ Hear!”<br />
<br />
5. “ The sale of copyright is not advisable in a<br />
work of pure literature.”<br />
<br />
I do not agree with this. I think that if a fair<br />
price is paid it may be best for the author to<br />
sell. He has, at least, nofurther trouble. Now, a<br />
popular known author knows pretty well, or can<br />
ascertain through his agent, the extent of his<br />
popularity. Thus, if under a fair royalty his. book<br />
would produce £a a year fora term of years, or,<br />
what is more likely, a kind of descending series of<br />
arithmetical progression — say the following:<br />
a+(a—b)+(a—26)+4+... for m years, when it<br />
will vanish or nearly vanish, it may be worth the<br />
author’s while to accept a sum representing the<br />
equivalent of that series in full.<br />
<br />
6. “ For advertisements only the actual cost—<br />
the money paid—must be charged.”<br />
<br />
“This does not include books published on com-<br />
mission, in which case the publisher is clearly<br />
entitled to charge for advertising in his own<br />
magazine.” Yes, but after the author has con-<br />
sented to make that an organ for advertising his<br />
book, and only to a certain defined extent.<br />
<br />
Very good. These papers embody in other<br />
words—and fresher words—the principles which<br />
we have advocated for eight years. No secret<br />
profits; no mystery of accounts; open dealing.<br />
These are the essentials.<br />
<br />
SEERA Caen”<br />
<br />
A lady journalist, it is reported, has been<br />
informing an interviewer that she makes by her<br />
profession, and by working no more than an hour<br />
and a half every day, the very respectable income<br />
of a thousand pounds a year. This was only a<br />
week ago. A thousand pounds a year! Hark!<br />
Do you hear? It is the frow frou of a hundred<br />
thousand skirts, the rush of two hundred thousand<br />
feet, the cry of a hundred thousand tongues.<br />
Like lightnings are the flashings of their eyes—<br />
forked lightnings before which editors will sink<br />
and fall. For they, too, are crowding into the<br />
profession. A thousand a year! The accountants<br />
at fifteen shillings a week, the cashiers at twelve,<br />
the typewriters at a pound, the translators, foreign<br />
correspondence clerks, shorthand clerks, gover-<br />
nesses and teachers, writers of penny novelettes,<br />
nurses, lady guides—all are throwing up their<br />
meagre appointments, and -are rushing into the<br />
calling which gives a thousand pounds:a year,<br />
three pounds -a day,: for. an‘ hour: and a-half's<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 23<br />
<br />
work—two pounds an hour! Who ever dreamed<br />
of getting two pounds an hour? Why this lazy<br />
person, so indifferent to her own interest, if she<br />
worked for twelve hours a day, which her sisters<br />
have to do for a pound a week— threepence<br />
ha’penny an hour, only threepence ha’penny !<br />
—might make four and twenty pounds a day<br />
if she chose—say, seven thousand two hundred<br />
pounds a year! What a chance! We shall<br />
hear no more of women’s cheap labour. All<br />
that is over. A thousand pounds a year!<br />
Two pounds an hour! Seven thousand two<br />
hundred pounds a year! All the roads that<br />
lead to London are variegated with all the<br />
hues that feminine costume can assume; there<br />
is & movement; there is a swift and turbulent<br />
current; they pour by thousands out of the<br />
trains; they rush in the glorious might and<br />
majesty of these incalculable thousands along<br />
the streets; the offices of all the journals are<br />
blocked. Two pounds an hour! Oh! What a<br />
chance! What a chance!<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
<br />
WHY A CONGRESS?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
HE following cutting is from a paper by Mr.<br />
Andrew Lang in the ///ustrated London<br />
News:<br />
<br />
An Authors’ Congress is a dire thing to think over. What<br />
have we to go congressing about? We write, and sell our<br />
writings as well as we can, or as well as we can take<br />
trouble about selling them, or we employ an agent; and<br />
there, surely, should be an end of the matter. Are<br />
we to tell publishers’ stories as some people tell ghost<br />
stories, with extreme solemnity, at a public conference ?<br />
Story for story, one would prefer a conference of a ghostly<br />
character. Perhaps there may be such a congress—every-<br />
thing is possible.<br />
<br />
There are, it is quite certain, two classes<br />
of literary men: the one which understands<br />
the existence of literary property ; and the<br />
other which cannot believe or understand that<br />
literature is, or can be, concerned with a mate-<br />
rial side —that there exists such a thing as<br />
literary property. Any attempt to explain or to<br />
show to this class that literary property is a very<br />
real thing and a very large thing irritates them.<br />
First they profess that it does not exist; next,<br />
they pretend that no man of genius ever paid<br />
the least attention to literary property—it is, of<br />
course, in vain that you point to the names of<br />
Scott, Byron, Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton,<br />
George Eliot, Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins, and<br />
a hundred others, whose genius is as undoubted<br />
as were their ability and their-resolution. to-pro-<br />
<br />
tect their own interests. In spite of those names<br />
and examples, they hold up their hands and<br />
point to the sordidness of looking after literary<br />
property. ‘“ We sell our wares and there’s an<br />
end,” says Mr. Andrew Lang. But suppose we<br />
do not sell our wares; suppose we retain our<br />
property and either do not sell it at all but keep<br />
it, as some men keep house property, or sell it<br />
only after carefully ascertaining that we get a<br />
proper equivalent for it<br />
<br />
Of course it is useless arguing with this class.<br />
One reason of their blindness is, as has been<br />
frequently pointed out, the confusion of ideas<br />
which mixes up commercial value with literary<br />
value. If every good book was bound to become<br />
a popular book, then not to be popular would be<br />
a sure and certain sign of literary failure. If<br />
this were the case, then would Mr. Walter Pater,<br />
for example, be a dead failure beside the popular<br />
novelist of the day. But, of course, it is not the<br />
case.<br />
<br />
Then what is the good of a Literary Congress ?<br />
There are more things about literature than the<br />
selling of wares for what they will fetch. Litera-<br />
ture is not all standing hat in hand with bending<br />
knees and bowing back, entreating the generosity<br />
of the man with the bag. Too much there is of<br />
this, and always has been. It is the hope of those<br />
who work in this Society to abolish what is left.<br />
How, then, is literature itselfi—not the selling<br />
value of literature—assisted by the promotion<br />
of the independence of those who write? It<br />
is an absurd question, but one has to put it<br />
once in three months. It is, to begin with,<br />
certain that the man who is tied and bound by<br />
miserable conditions of life-——who is cheated,<br />
starved, dependent, humiliated—can never pro-<br />
duce his best work. The finest work that the<br />
world has ever seen has been produced under<br />
circumstances of physical and material wellbeing,<br />
with a reasonable amount of self-respect. All<br />
the writers mentioned above—to whom must be<br />
added such names as Southey, Wordsworth,<br />
Lamb, Keats, Tennyson, Browning—have written<br />
under conditions of comparative independence.<br />
Grub-street has turned out a little respectable<br />
work, but most of its work has been distinctly<br />
ephemeral and mediocre.<br />
<br />
A literary congress, therefore, must deal in the<br />
first instance with literary property. Such themes<br />
as copyright, domestic and international, the exist-<br />
ing conditions of law, either at home or abroad ;<br />
the relations: of authors and publishers; the<br />
various methods of publishing; ‘ syndicate”<br />
publishing. These are topics which immediately<br />
present themselves ; they are fresh because they.<br />
have never been openly discussed ;: that ‘is; while<br />
‘a great deal has ‘been’ written.:upon them, they<br />
<br />
<br />
22 THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
of distinction which best suits men of letters ; they<br />
are not confounded with the ordinary Orders, and<br />
yet they receive national honour and national rank.<br />
As a correspondent writes to me, “the Academy<br />
confers upon men of letters a status which is<br />
both honourable and envied. In this way at<br />
least it has proved most serviceable to litera-<br />
ture.” One has only to compare the position of<br />
the men of letters in this country for the last<br />
200 years with that of-the men of letters in<br />
France for the same period, in order to. under-<br />
stand what the Academy has done in this respect.<br />
That the French Academy is too limited in<br />
numbers; that its method of election is humiliat-<br />
ing to those who wish to enter its ranks; that 1t<br />
has too often passed over good men, may be<br />
admitted. Having re-stated my humble view,<br />
once more I ask, What are those trammels by<br />
which the Academy is alleged to have hampered<br />
literature ?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
In another column we reproduce, by permission<br />
of the author and of the editor, the two papers<br />
written for the Pall Mall Gazette by Sir<br />
Frederick Pollock on Publishing. They appeared<br />
on May 1 and May 4. The importance of these<br />
papers is that the problems they discuss are<br />
seriously treated by a lawyer for the first time<br />
since we began to consider our position in the<br />
offices of the Society and in the pages of our<br />
journal. Our chairman of committee does not<br />
expect that everybody will agree with him abso-<br />
lutely and in all points. But I think that most<br />
of us are with him in essentials. It must be<br />
observed that his challenge for a discussion has<br />
not been taken up. TI do not think, indeed, that<br />
it will be. One letter, signed ‘A Publisher,”<br />
was written with the view of diverting the attent-<br />
tion from the real points at issue. Otherwise there<br />
is an apparent desire to avoid discussion.<br />
<br />
Sir Frederick Pollock, among other points, lays<br />
stress upon the following (the inverted commas<br />
do not always mean Sir Frederick’s own words) :—<br />
<br />
1. “There is no such thing as an abstract fair<br />
share in profits.”<br />
<br />
That is perfectly true. But the same maxim<br />
applies to all kinds of business. All we can ask<br />
for is such an adjustment of profits as may be<br />
recognised by honourable men on all sides as<br />
reasonable.<br />
<br />
2. “There should be no mystery as to the Cost<br />
of Production.”<br />
<br />
3. The “establishment” charges.<br />
<br />
On this subject I refer to certain remarks of<br />
mine ~ printed on p. io. When, I ask, the<br />
“éstablishment charges.” have been made, what<br />
éldim has the publisher for anything else ??* What<br />
has" he: dotie?: : Let’ us ‘hear what ‘he ‘himself<br />
<br />
thinks. The book is sent to press, advertised,<br />
bound, delivered, and accounted for by the<br />
establishment. It is quite a thing of routine.<br />
What else has the publisher done ?<br />
<br />
4. ‘ Accounts, full and true, must be rendered.<br />
There must be no falsifying of accounts—no secret<br />
profits.” And all the world cried “ Hear!”<br />
<br />
5. “The sale of copyright is not advisable in a<br />
work of pure literature.” ;<br />
<br />
T do not agree with this. I think that if a fair<br />
price is paid it may be best for the author to<br />
sell. He has, at least, no further trouble. Now,a<br />
popular known author knows pretty well, or can<br />
ascertain through his agent, the extent of his<br />
popularity. Thus, if under a fair royalty his. book<br />
would produce £a a year for a term of years, or,<br />
what is more likely, a kind of descending series of<br />
arithmetical progression — say the following:<br />
a+(a—b)+(a—26)+4+... for n years, when it<br />
will vanish or nearly vanish, it may be worth the<br />
author’s while to accept a sum representing the<br />
equivalent of that series in full.<br />
<br />
6. “For advertisements only the actual cost—<br />
the money paid—must be charged.”<br />
<br />
“This does not include books published on com-<br />
mission, in which case the publisher is clearly<br />
entitled to charge for advertising in his own<br />
magazine.” Yes, but after the author has con-<br />
sented to make that an organ for advertising his<br />
book, and only to a certain defined extent.<br />
<br />
Very good. These papers embody in other<br />
words—and fresher words—the principles which<br />
we have advocated for eight years. No secret<br />
profits; no mystery of accounts; open dealing.<br />
These are the essentials.<br />
<br />
—<br />
<br />
A lady journalist, it is reported, has been<br />
informing an interviewer that she makes by her<br />
profession, and by working no more than an hour<br />
and a half every day, the very respectable income<br />
of a thousand pounds a year. This was only a<br />
week ago. A thousand pounds a year! Hark!<br />
Do you hear? It is the frow frow of a hundred<br />
thousand skirts, the rush of two hundred thousand<br />
feet, the cry of a hundred thousand tongues.<br />
Like lightnings are the flashings of their eyes—<br />
forked lightnings before which editors will sink<br />
and fall. For they, too, are crowding into the<br />
profession. A thousand a year! The accountants<br />
at fifteen shillings a week, the cashiers at twelve,<br />
the typewriters at a pound, the translators, foreign<br />
correspondence clerks, shorthand clerks, gover-<br />
nesses and teachers, writers of penny novelettes,<br />
nurses, lady guides—all are throwing up their<br />
meagre appointments, and -are rushing into the<br />
calling which gives a thousand pounds:a year,<br />
three pounds:a day, for. an: hour: and a -half's<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
work—two pounds an hour! Who ever dreamed<br />
of getting two pounds an hour? Why this lazy<br />
person, so indifferent to her own interest, if she<br />
worked for twelve hours a day, which her sisters<br />
have to do for a pound a week— threepence<br />
ha’penny an hour, only threepence ha’penuy!<br />
—might make four and twenty pounds a day<br />
if she chose—say, seven thousand two hundred<br />
pounds a year! What a chance! We shall<br />
hear no more of women’s cheap labour. All<br />
that is over. A thousand pounds a year!<br />
Two pounds an hour! Seven thousand two<br />
hundred pounds a year! All the roads that<br />
lead to London are variegated with all the<br />
hues that feminine costume can assume; there<br />
is a movement; there is a swift and turbulent<br />
current; they pour by thousands out of the<br />
trains; they rush in the glorious might and<br />
majesty of these incalculable thousands along<br />
the streets; the offices of all the journals are<br />
blocked. Two pounds an hour! Oh! What a<br />
chance! What a chance!<br />
WaLterR Besant.<br />
<br />
eS<br />
<br />
WHY A CONGRESS?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
HE following cutting is from a paper by Mr.<br />
Andrew Lang in the //lustrated London<br />
News:<br />
<br />
An Authors’ Congress is a dire thing to think over. What<br />
have we to go congressing about? We write, and sell our<br />
writings as well as we can, or as well as we can take<br />
trouble about selling them, or we employ an agent; and<br />
there, surely, should be an end of the matter. Are<br />
we to tell publishers’ stories as some people tell ghost<br />
stories, with extreme solemnity, at a public conference ?<br />
Story for story, one would prefer a conference of a ghostly<br />
character. Perhaps there may be such a congress—every-<br />
thing is possible.<br />
<br />
There are, it is quite certain, two classes<br />
of literary men: the one which understands<br />
the existence of literary property ; and the<br />
other which cannot believe or understand that<br />
literature is, or can be, concerned with a mate-<br />
rial side — that there exists such a thing as<br />
literary property. Any attempt to explain or to<br />
show to this class that literary property is a very<br />
real thing and a very large thing irritates them.<br />
First they profess that it does not exist; next,<br />
they pretend that no man of genius ever paid<br />
the least attention to literary property—it is, of<br />
course, in vain that you point to the names of<br />
Scott, Byron, Dickens, Thackeray, Bulwer Lytton,<br />
George Eliot, Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins, and<br />
a hundred others, whose -genius is as undoubted<br />
as were their ability and their resolution. to-pro-<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
23<br />
<br />
tect their own interests. In spite of those names<br />
and examples, they hold up their hands and<br />
point to the sordidness of looking after literary<br />
property. ‘We sell our wares and there’s an<br />
end,” says Mr. Andrew Lang. But suppose we<br />
do not sell our wares; suppose we retain our<br />
property and either do not sell it at all but keep<br />
it, as some men keep house property, or sell it<br />
only after carefully ascertaining that we get a-<br />
proper equivalent for it ?<br />
<br />
Of course it is useless arguing with this class.<br />
One reason of their blindness is, as has been<br />
frequently pointed out, the confusion of ideas<br />
which mixes up commercial value with literary<br />
value. If every good book was bound to become<br />
a popular book, then not to be popular would be<br />
a sure and certain sign of literary failure. If<br />
this were the case, then would Mr. Walter Pater,<br />
for example, be a dead failure beside the popular<br />
novelist of the day. But, of course, it is not the<br />
case.<br />
<br />
Then what is the good of a Literary Congress ?<br />
There are more things about literature than the<br />
selling of wares for what they will fetch. Litera-<br />
ture is not all standing hat in hand with bending<br />
knees and bowing back, entreating the generosity<br />
of the man with the bag. Too much there is of<br />
this, and always has been. It is the hope of those<br />
who work in this Society to abolish what is left.<br />
How, then, is literature itselfi—not the selling<br />
value of literature—assisted by the promotion<br />
of the independence of those who write? It<br />
is an absurd question, but one has to put it<br />
once in three months. It is, to begin with,<br />
certain that the man who is tied and bound by<br />
miserable conditions of life-——who is cheated,<br />
starved, dependent, humiliated—can never pro-<br />
duce his best work. The finest work that the<br />
world has ever seen has been produced under<br />
circumstances of physical and material wellbeing,<br />
with a reasonable amount of self-respect. All<br />
the writers mentioned above—to whom must be<br />
added such names as Southey, Wordsworth,<br />
Lamb, Keats, Tennyson, Browning—have written<br />
under conditions of comparative independence.<br />
Grub-street has tured out a little respectable<br />
work, but most of its work has been distinctly<br />
ephemeral and mediocre.<br />
<br />
A literary congress, therefore, must deal in the<br />
first instance with literary property. Such themes<br />
as copyright, domestic and international, the exist-<br />
ing conditions of law, either at home or abroad ;<br />
the relations: of authors and publishers; the<br />
various methods of publishing; : “ syndicate”<br />
publishing. These are topics which immediately<br />
present themselves ; they are fresh because they<br />
have never been openly discussed ;: that ‘is, while<br />
‘a great. deal has ‘been’ written--upon:them, they<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
24 THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
have not in modern times often occupied the<br />
attention of men who are trained and accustomed<br />
to consider the facts and the evidence, and they are<br />
absolutely vital to all who desire to abolish the<br />
servility and dependence of Grub-street.<br />
<br />
There are, again, other questions of the greatest<br />
importance, e.g., the place of literature in educa-<br />
tion; the position and the duties of a critic; the<br />
standards of criticism; literature in the news-<br />
papers; realism in fiction; poetry, fiction, the<br />
drama of thefuture. There are also the hundred<br />
questions which have been treated in these<br />
columns during the last few years.<br />
<br />
Finally, it will be the duty of such a conference<br />
to impress upon the whole world that literature,<br />
like the law or medicine, is concerned with a vast<br />
and a rapidly growing property. There is no<br />
doubt that some of the contempt which has been<br />
freely poured upon the calling of letters, and is<br />
still poured upon it, is due to the prejudice which<br />
regards literary menas a set of needy mendicants,<br />
beggarly, helpless, whose only business, as Mr.<br />
Andrew Lang puts it, is to “sell their wares, and<br />
there’s an end.”<br />
<br />
eg<br />
<br />
CORRESPONDENCE.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I.<br />
Donations oF Booxs By AUTHORS.<br />
<br />
I should like to know what is the general feeling<br />
as to the advisability of authors giving away<br />
copies of their books to casual applicants. The<br />
following letter is, surely, of supreme interest.<br />
I suppress, of course, all that is personal.<br />
<br />
DEAR Str,—I am forming, for behoof of all who shall<br />
succeed me here, a most unique library, chiefly of works<br />
presented by their authors. Will you, sir, kindly give one<br />
of your to [the] said library, and, to make it the more<br />
valuable, write your name therein as donor? Already 122<br />
authors (some of great renown) have sent me books; and I<br />
should indeed feel most grateful if I might now add to them<br />
one of yours. I am, dear sir, yours most faithfully,<br />
<br />
X. Y. Z.<br />
<br />
For my own part, I think the conduct of the “122<br />
authors, some of great renown,” is most disloyal<br />
and mischievous. The application was quite of a<br />
private nature, and the applicant had no case at<br />
all. I should like to have the names of the 122,<br />
and to represent to them that I am myself<br />
desirous of increasing my own library, and that I<br />
am a much more deserving object of charity.<br />
Probably I should then, in every case, receive a<br />
refusal. But why, in the name of common<br />
fairness, should such a result be possible? Why<br />
refuse me, an author and a brother, whilst at the<br />
same time they unhesitatingly grant the request<br />
to a total stranger ? Watter W. Sxnat.<br />
<br />
I am now in a position to add a sequel to the<br />
above correspondence. I replied to “X. Y. Z.,”<br />
using the familiar argument that a butcher is<br />
not expected to give away a leg of mutton, nor<br />
a tailor a pair of trousers. This elicited the<br />
following reply :<br />
<br />
Dear Srr,—I am delighted with your letter indeed—it<br />
ischarming! No doubt there issomething in what you say,<br />
but not much! On the other hand, I can scarcely under-<br />
stand why an author gives his brain-creations away for<br />
nought if he is hard up for cash; but, if he isn’t, I cannot<br />
for the life of me see why he should hesitate to do a kind-<br />
ness to a long succession of poor (probably poor, unless they<br />
have private means) parsons! Of course, if a heap of<br />
fellows started the formation of libraries at the expense,<br />
and by the kindness and generosity, of authors good, bad<br />
and indifferent—as you say (I did not say this)—there<br />
would be mighty little chance of said authors earning their<br />
bread and cheese—to say nothing of legs of mutton and the<br />
regulation pants—but a heap of fellows (not my expression !)<br />
is not likely to do so; and more, if they did, they wouldn’t<br />
succeed! I’m the first in the field, and I’ve had some most<br />
amusing letters in consequence, nearly always, though,<br />
accompanied by the book I ask for! The number of authors<br />
(who have given me books) is now 126, and to-morrow it is<br />
bound to be 130. If you willsend me a jolly book, I'll send<br />
you their names. Is ita bargain? My bishop comes here<br />
on Trinity Sunday, and I want to show hima big library<br />
containing big books by big men; and of big men you are<br />
one. Thanking you for your laughter-producing letter, I<br />
am, dear Sir, yours most faithfully, KoVoms<br />
<br />
Why my letter produced laughter I cannot say.<br />
It only shows that my correspondent still finds it<br />
impossible to treat as serious, any form of remon-<br />
strance. I confess that his success only seems to<br />
me to emphasise the degrading estimation in<br />
which authors are held. It is considered fair to<br />
cajole them or bully them, but absurd to treat<br />
them with common justice. Will anyone support<br />
me in refusing these insulting demands? As to<br />
“xX. Y. Z.” being “the first in the field,” it is<br />
false. It is a very old mancuvre.<br />
<br />
Watter W. SKEAT.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
II.<br />
<br />
ANONYMOUS OR SIGNED REVIEWS.<br />
An Experience.<br />
<br />
That a certain proportion of reviews must be<br />
unfavourable, and some more or less severely<br />
so, is, of course, a mere truism. But does not<br />
this fact in itself afford the strongest argu-<br />
ment against anonymous reviewing, and show<br />
it to be a barbarism without parallel in our<br />
social. life? Stabbing a man in the dark,<br />
whether the stab is deserved or not, is essen<br />
tially repugnant to all the best instincts of the<br />
ordinary Englishman. Thus, if for this reason<br />
only, it may fairly be assumed that both re-<br />
viewers and editors would be glad to see such a<br />
custom fall into disuse. That the more general<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
1:<br />
|<br />
;<br />
12<br />
*<br />
Pt<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 25<br />
<br />
substitution of signed for unsigned reviews<br />
would necessarily tend to place the work of the<br />
reviewer upon an altogether higher literary level,<br />
seems to me unquestionable. At the same time,<br />
it seems equally certain that it would do more<br />
than anything else to lessen the, at least occa-<br />
sional grievance under which reviewers are said<br />
to suffer, viz., that having regard to the current<br />
rates of payment, they cannot afford time to<br />
“ putin” what would satisfy themselves as really<br />
responsible work. Thus it seems to me that the<br />
interests of authors, of editors, and of reviewers,<br />
no less than those of the reading public, would<br />
all be served by a change in the present system<br />
of anonymity.<br />
<br />
The Author presses its readers to illustrate any<br />
point under debate by the facts of their own<br />
experience. My experience in the case of a<br />
book published some three years ago (** Historic<br />
Relation of the Gospels”) is as follows :—With<br />
one exception, the unsigned reviews have been<br />
marked by the following characteristics: (a) They<br />
have been very short. (6) They have all been<br />
more or less decidedly unfavourable, whilst two<br />
may be said to have been supremely con-<br />
temptuous. (c) They have given a verdict either<br />
wholly unsupported by evidence, or supported<br />
only by flippant sarcasm or irrelevant common-<br />
place.<br />
<br />
The signed reviews have been less numerous<br />
(five as compared with some fifteen). On the<br />
other hand, any one of four of them would about<br />
equal in length the whole of the unsigned ones<br />
put together. In this case, also, with one excep-<br />
tion (Professor Sanday—see article quoted in<br />
advertisement), the characteristics have been of a<br />
diametrically opposite type. Thus: (a) They<br />
have been exceptionally lengthy. (6) They have<br />
been highly eulogistic. (c) They have supported<br />
their verdict by the amplest evidence.<br />
<br />
Doubtless this experience will make my advo-<br />
cacy of signed reviews appear prejudiced. Still,<br />
treating the Author's invitation as a command, I<br />
give it for what it is worth.<br />
<br />
In connection with this subject might not<br />
some such idea as the following be worked out’<br />
<br />
Readily available arbitration would be at once<br />
a safeguard and a safety valve.<br />
<br />
Why should not a right of appeal lie against<br />
a review to the Authors’ Society, and why should<br />
not the Society decide whether it was or was not<br />
a case in which both reviewed and reviewer<br />
- should consent to leave the matter to a referee ?<br />
<br />
The reviewer refusing such a challenge would,<br />
on judgment going by default, be for all prac-<br />
tical purposes sufficiently condemned.<br />
<br />
The'édsts of. such arbitration might be in the<br />
nature of a fine following the judgment in the<br />
<br />
case, and going, let us say, to the funds of the<br />
Authors’ Society.<br />
<br />
By way of illustration: I should claim arbitra-<br />
tion'as between myself and Professor Sanday.<br />
<br />
{In the appeal to the Society I should set forth :<br />
1. That the four documents about which we dis-<br />
agree are as much and as manifestly one as the<br />
body of a violin and the strings affixed to it. 2.<br />
That from a critical and scientific point of view,<br />
to separate these documents wholly destroys<br />
what the ancients termed “ the evangelical instru-<br />
ment.” 3. That the separation of the documents<br />
excludes all classification of the internal evidences<br />
of the subject, and in fact where it does, not<br />
wholly obliterate such evidences renders them<br />
absolutely unintelligible. 4. That as by so sepa-<br />
rating the documents Professor Sanday has<br />
ipso facto debarred himself from all study of the<br />
most elementary facts of our subject, his views<br />
upon it must necessarily stand in much the same<br />
relation to scientific criticism as the noise made<br />
by a cat running over the keyboard of a piano<br />
stands to music.<br />
<br />
Professor Sanday, on the other hand, would<br />
formulate his own contention with reference to<br />
any of the multitudinous and conflicting Synoptic<br />
or three-document theories between which he<br />
oscillates.<br />
<br />
Between opinions so widely divergent, and<br />
both professing to rest exclusively upon evidence<br />
the referee could hardly fail to give a fairly satis-<br />
factory and conclusive verdict.<br />
<br />
‘As matters stand at present, I have addressed<br />
a perfectly courteous remonstrance both to Pro-<br />
fessor Sanday and to the editor of the Expositor.<br />
But from neither have I succeeded in extracting a<br />
single word on the subject, much less any pro-<br />
mise to give reasons for their summary condemna-<br />
tion of a work which, whether right or wrong in<br />
its conclusions, cost some fourteen years of almost<br />
uninterrupted labour.<br />
<br />
Tf these things are done in the green tree, what<br />
will be done in the dry? If this is the example<br />
set and for more than two years deliberately<br />
persevered in by an Oxford divinity professor<br />
and the editor of one of the first critical journals<br />
in the kingdom, can we wonder if such an<br />
example is sometimes bettered by less responsible<br />
writers and editors ?<br />
<br />
There are a good many reasons, or, I should<br />
say, many good reasons, for belonging to the<br />
Authors’ Society. But let me assure any who<br />
doubt it that it is well worth the small subscrip-<br />
<br />
tion, if only to secure on occasion a legitimate<br />
<br />
outlet for a downright hearty growl.<br />
<br />
J. J. HALCOMBE.<br />
<br />
<br />
III.<br />
Frenco Law.<br />
<br />
Would any member kindly give me the name<br />
of a French book giving the outlines of French<br />
law ina popular form? Such a book does exist,<br />
but name and author cannot be recalled.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
ey<br />
<br />
“AT THE SIGN OF THE AUTHOR'S HEAD.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
upon a novel for the “Gentlewomen’s<br />
<br />
Library,” which is to appear under the<br />
poetic title of “Claud and Maude.”” This volume<br />
will be followed by a book upon “ Dress” by<br />
Mrs. Douglas, who has showed by her articles in<br />
various periodicals that frocks and fashions are<br />
capable of literary treatment. Her forthcoming<br />
book deals with the subject of feminine costume<br />
from the poetic as well as the historic aspect, and<br />
contains an interesting chapter entitled “ Dress<br />
and the Affections.”<br />
<br />
Mr. Richard Marsh, whose novel, “ The Devil’s<br />
Diamond,” attracted some attention a little<br />
while ago, has written a new novel dealing with<br />
mystery. and magic, called- “The Mahatma’s<br />
Pupil.” os<br />
<br />
Mr. Arthur Innes has collected the pleasant<br />
little series of papers on the modern poets, which<br />
he has recently contributed to the Monthly<br />
Packet into book form under the title of ‘ Seers<br />
and Singers.” The essays are a comparative<br />
study of characteristic poems by the Brownings,<br />
Tennyson, Matthew Arnold, and Wordsworth.<br />
<br />
Miss Dorothea Gerard has written a new novel<br />
called “ Lot 18,” the first instalment of which<br />
will appear in the July number of the Monthly<br />
Packet.<br />
<br />
“Memorable Paris Houses” is the title of a<br />
new book by Mr. Wilmot Harrison, the author of<br />
a similar volume dealing with famous London<br />
houses. Some interesting illustrations of historic<br />
houses and portraits of the celebrities who<br />
inhabited them will accompany the letterpress.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Molesworth, the popular writer of<br />
children’s books, has an instructive and thought-<br />
ful paper in the current number of Atalanta on<br />
the writing of story books for children. She<br />
does not believe that success in other branches of<br />
literary work necessarily qualifies a writer to<br />
become a happy story teller for children. She<br />
regards the power as a distinct gift and one to be<br />
very reverently regarded. Mrs. Molesworth dis-<br />
approves of much modern literature intended for<br />
<br />
\ l ISS JEAN MIDDLEMASS is engaged<br />
<br />
THE. AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
children, which is concerned with analyses of<br />
children’s characters, and their relations with<br />
their parents. She thinks books for little<br />
children should contain nothing that is not<br />
beautiful and designed to make them happier.<br />
<br />
A thin little volume of verse, containing some<br />
sweet singing, is Maud Egerton King’s “ My<br />
Book of Songs and Sonnets.” Mrs. King, who is<br />
the daughter of Mr. Hine, the well-known artist,<br />
published some time ago a little book called<br />
“ Poems of a Child,” which attracted favourable<br />
attention. She is at her best when she is least<br />
under the influence of some of the great modern<br />
poets and gives play to her own powers of delicate<br />
poetic expression. ‘Young Tree in Spring” is<br />
a graceful and tender little piece.<br />
<br />
Miss Annie Mathieson, the author of “ The<br />
Religion of Humanity”? and other poems, is<br />
engaged upon a volume of lyrics, which will shortl<br />
be published by Sampson Low, under the title of<br />
“Tove’s Music.” One of the most pathetic of<br />
the poems deals with the contrast between the<br />
wreath-laden coffin of a prince and the newly-<br />
made grave of a pauper on which a single snow-<br />
drop had been dropped.<br />
<br />
A little volume of sermons called “ Faith ” has<br />
been written by Mr. Beeching, one of the authors<br />
of “Love in Idleness” and ‘“ Love’s Looking<br />
Glass.’ The sermons, which are written with<br />
grace and simplicity, show much of the catholicity<br />
and humanity which seem to distinguish the<br />
younger clergymen—especially the Balliol men—<br />
who came under the influence of Arnold Toynbee.<br />
Mr. Beeching is the rector of Yattendon, the<br />
village where Robert Bridges lives and works.<br />
<br />
Mr. J. Ll. W. Page, author of the books called<br />
“ Dartmoor’’ and ‘‘ Exmoor,’ has in the press a<br />
work called “Rivers of Devon.” It will be<br />
published by Messrs. Seeley and Co., with illus-<br />
trations by Mr. Alexander Ansted. There will<br />
bea large paper edition of 250 copies only at<br />
12s. 6d., and an ordinary edition at 7s. 6d.<br />
<br />
Mr. L. T. Hobhouse has written a volume for<br />
the Reformers’ Book Shelf series, which will<br />
shortly be published by Mr. Fisher Unwin. It<br />
deals with “The Labour Movement,” and has a<br />
preface from the pen of Mr. Haldane, M.P.<br />
<br />
Mr. Joseph Mills has written a biography of<br />
the late John Bright, which will be published in<br />
the Friends’ Shilling Biographical Series. Mr.<br />
<br />
Mills was a personal friend of the great states-<br />
man, and the book will be a more intimate<br />
record than any that has yet appeared.<br />
<br />
Miss Prentiss, the American writer, has written<br />
a little volume of poems<br />
Thoughts.”<br />
<br />
called “ Fleeting<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE. AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
-Mr. Andrew Chalmers in his “Red Cross<br />
Romance” has made a praiseworthy effort to<br />
write a historical poem. One cannot help, how-<br />
ever, feeling some surprise that such common-<br />
place and hackneyed lines as<br />
<br />
Great Lord of life! what length of days<br />
<br />
- Hast though assigned to me ;<br />
<br />
How far along life’s pleasant ways<br />
<br />
Shall I be led by Thee ?<br />
<br />
with the remaining verses at the same level,<br />
“should have fonnd their way far and wide,”<br />
and “bodied forth a clearer life ideal to many<br />
unknown people.”<br />
<br />
There is an absence of effort and a scholarly<br />
grace and tenderness about Mr. Robert Bingley’s<br />
unpretentious little paper-covered book of verse<br />
called “Border Lands,’ which make it pleasing<br />
reading. “Under the Cross”? which gives a<br />
picture of the great city soon after dawn, con-<br />
tains some touching and moving lines with ever<br />
and again a true note of poetry. The last lines<br />
addressed to a child flower-seller asleep on the<br />
steps of St. Paul’s are<br />
<br />
Wake, then, ere the roses die; and the angel who bade thee<br />
<br />
sleep,<br />
<br />
In ies cea of acareless city, little wandering footsteps<br />
<br />
keep.<br />
<br />
Under the title of “St. Paul’s Cathedral<br />
Library,” Dr. Sparrow: Simpson, librarian of St.<br />
Paul’s, has published a catalogue of the contents<br />
of -certain sections of the collection. The<br />
library contains altogether 21,176 volumes; a<br />
complete catalogue of it would therefore be a<br />
work of considerable magnitude. Instead of<br />
attempting such a task, Dr. Simpson has very<br />
wisely elected to confine himself to a few depart-<br />
ments—and those the most generally interesting<br />
—of his charge. He has accordingly set forth<br />
here a description of the Bibles, liturgical books,<br />
books about St. Paul’s, books about London,<br />
maps and views of London and St. Paul’s, and<br />
various miscellanea, concluding with a list of the<br />
preachers at St. Paul’s in connection with the<br />
three great religious societies.<br />
<br />
The “Philosophy of the Beautiful” is not<br />
exactly a novel theme, but Prof. Knight, who<br />
has just written a volume for the University<br />
Extension series, manages to say something fresh<br />
about it. Poetry, Painting, and Dancing are all<br />
discussed in a way that is at once popular and<br />
scholarly.<br />
<br />
“A Fellowship of Song” is the title of a<br />
volume of poems by three poets—Messrs. Hayes,<br />
Norman Gale, and he Gallienne. It is~ to<br />
<br />
be issued from the “ Rugby Press,” and will be<br />
presented to subscribers in a novel and elegant<br />
Each contributor will have a separate<br />
<br />
form.<br />
<br />
to write.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
27<br />
<br />
title-page to himself printed in a special colour,<br />
with a pretty silk book-marker to match. Mr.<br />
Hayes sings “From Midland Meadows,” Mr.<br />
Gale «A Verdant Country,” whilst Mr. Le<br />
Gallienne’s share is prettily described as “ Night-<br />
<br />
ingales.”’<br />
<br />
M. Paul Ginesty has, says a Daily News<br />
correspondent, got Ibsen to write a preface for<br />
his work on the literature of the nineteenth<br />
century. The Norwegian author’s text is “‘ Hope,”<br />
and he tells of the difficulties which he had to<br />
face in youth, to encourage others to struggle as<br />
he did. Authorship at the beginning brought<br />
him neither honour nor profit. One of his early<br />
experiences. was having to carry an unsold edition<br />
of one of his works to a grocer’s to dispose of it<br />
as waste-paper. He had to give lessons, to do<br />
clerk’s work, and otherwise earn money enough<br />
to get a university degree. The revolutionary<br />
wave of 1848-49 first moved him to come forward<br />
as a poet. He wrote an inflated ode to King<br />
Uscar I. calling on him to place himself at_the<br />
head of the weak and ill-used classes. This<br />
missed the effect Ibsen aimed at, the king<br />
he thus addressed having no wish to play<br />
the part of a second Charles XII. One of the<br />
circumstances which first drew attention to Tbsen<br />
at Grunstadt, where he was a. student, was his<br />
having in his thesis for his degree stood up<br />
for Catalina against Sallust and Cicero. The<br />
examiners not liking this departure froma tradi-<br />
tional opinion, and showing their -displeasure,<br />
Ibsen sat up the following night to set forth his<br />
views in a drama, which it took him fifteen hours<br />
It was this work — published with<br />
money subscribed by fellow-students — that he<br />
sold as old paper. He kept one copy, which he<br />
has still. It is crude and uncouth, but he finds<br />
in it himself inexperienced and undeveloped,<br />
<br />
Capt. Trotter’s biography of Lord Auckland.<br />
for. the “Rulers of India” series will be issued<br />
by the Clarendon Press in the course of: next<br />
month. The book deals not only with Lord<br />
Auckland’s Indian Administration, it also gives a<br />
sketch of his immediate predecessor, Sir C.<br />
Metcalfe, and it carries on the story of the first<br />
Afghan war through the first year of Lord<br />
Ellenborough down to the triumphant return of<br />
Pollock and Nott from Kabul to Firozpur in the<br />
autumn of 1842.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Sarah Grand the writer of the “ Heavenly<br />
Twins,” will open a discussion at the Pioneer<br />
<br />
Club, on the 8th inst., on “Is the novel with a<br />
<br />
purpose legitimate or not?”<br />
<br />
That well-known antiquary Sir George Duckett<br />
is editing the “ Visitations and Chapters-General<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
28<br />
<br />
of the Order of Cluni, in respect of Alsace,<br />
Lorraine, Transjurane Burgundy, and other<br />
Parts of the Province of Germany, from 1269-<br />
1529.” In his researches Sir George has come<br />
upon an amusing story referring to the prior,<br />
whom the Cluniacs seem always to have thought<br />
indispensable to a nunnery—perhaps to keep the<br />
ladies in order. The prior in question took it<br />
into his head to get up a kind of concert, and<br />
for this purpose gathered together a lot of sing-<br />
ing “seculares” and strolling players. These<br />
gentry made such a din in the convent that they<br />
disturbed the neighbourhood, and the people,<br />
accustomed to consider the place a model of piety<br />
and repose, were scandalised, and commenced to<br />
break all the windows. The prior sallied forth<br />
and nearly killed two of them, of whom one<br />
remained still in bed at that time “ semivivus.”’<br />
<br />
Mrs. Henry Norman, better known as Miss<br />
Menie Muriel Dowie, has edited and written an<br />
introduction to a new volume of the Adventure<br />
Series. The book contains the lives of Hannah<br />
Snell, Mary Ann Talbot, and other celebrated<br />
female adventurers, and is capital reading. Mrs.<br />
Norman points out in her bright little preface<br />
that “there was ever a man at the root of this<br />
female ardour,” which she rejoices at as linking<br />
these ladies of the sabre with the “dazzling,<br />
gaudy poetry of an earlier age.”<br />
<br />
The curious controversy which is raging hotly<br />
in one of the American papers as to whether<br />
“authors ought to write with an eye to fame”<br />
seems to have arisen, in part at any rate,<br />
from a confusion as to the real and distinctive<br />
meanings of fame and popularity. No one has<br />
more adequately or more admirably put the case<br />
than Hazlitt, who seems to be out of fashion with<br />
young American litterateurs, for not a single con-<br />
troversialist has quoted the words in which he<br />
says, “ For fame is not popularity, the shout of<br />
the multitude, the idle buzz of fashion, the venal<br />
puff, the soothing flattery of favour or of friend-<br />
ship ; but it is the spirit of a man surviving him-<br />
self in the minds and thoughts of other men, un-<br />
dying and imperishable. The love of<br />
fame differs from mere vanity in this, that the<br />
one is immediate and personal, the other ideal<br />
and abstracted. Do you suppose that Titian,<br />
when he painted a landscape, was pluming him-<br />
self on being thought the finest colourist in the<br />
world, or making himself so by looking at nature?”<br />
It is curious that in this discussion, in which<br />
almost every modern writer comes under review<br />
for condemnation or praise, there is not a single<br />
mention of the writer who, under the name of<br />
Mark Rutherford, has written three of the most<br />
impressive books of recent years. Perhaps, as<br />
they have not been much the subject of newspaper<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
puffs, they have not found their way to America ;<br />
but whether or no one is justified in believing<br />
they will live, it is at least certain that posterity<br />
will pay a tribute to the exquisite prose in which<br />
they are written.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Waugh has translated from the German<br />
a story called “ The Two Countesses,”” which will<br />
shortly appear in the Pseudonym Library.<br />
<br />
Mr. Robert Horton’s Yale Lectures, which<br />
attracted huge audiences in America, have been<br />
published under the title of “ Verbum Dei.”<br />
Mr. Horton is the well-known Congregational<br />
minister of Lyndhurst-road Chapel, Hampstead.<br />
<br />
Miss Sophia Beale is engaged upon a book<br />
dealing with the “Churches of Paris.” The<br />
letterpress will be accompanied by numerous<br />
illustrations made upon the spot by the writer,<br />
who, as is well known, is also an able artist.<br />
<br />
Mr. Gilbert Parker is responsiblefor the Lippin-<br />
cott complete novel this year. The title of the<br />
story is the attractive one of ‘‘ The Translation of<br />
a Savage.” The same writer is engaged upon a<br />
serial for the English Illustrated Magazine, and<br />
has just finished a story for the Cosmopolitan,<br />
under the title of “ The Pilot of Belle Amour.”<br />
<br />
Mrs. Rundle Charles, the author of the<br />
historic “Schonberg Cotta Family,” is writing a<br />
book called “Tria Juncta in Uno.” It will givea<br />
realistic picture of early Christian missions in<br />
Treland, Scotland, and England.<br />
<br />
A delightful edition of some of the classics is<br />
being published by Messrs. Griffith and Farran.<br />
The binding is scarlet cloth, with white and gold<br />
back, and each volume is profusely illustrated<br />
with exquisite sketches of figures and scenery.<br />
“The Lady of the Lake,” illustrated by Mr.<br />
Gleeson, an American artist, has several sketches<br />
of Highland scenery and historic places, notably<br />
“ Holyrood” and “Gray Stirling,” which<br />
were made on the spot. The other volumes<br />
already published include “allah Rookh,”<br />
“ Faust,” and the “ Last Days of Pompeii.”<br />
<br />
Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, an old friend of<br />
Tennyson, has written an introduction, in the<br />
delicate graceful style that she has made her own,<br />
to a volume called “Lord Tennyson and his<br />
Friends,” which: will be shortly published as an<br />
edition de luve by Mr. Fisher Unwin. Special<br />
portraits, including those of Carlyle, Sir Henry<br />
Taylor, and Russell Lowell, have been taken by<br />
Mrs. Cameron, whose portrait of Tennyson, by<br />
the way, was always declared by the poet to be<br />
the most like him.<br />
<br />
The Authors’ Club held its monthly. guest-<br />
<br />
night on Monday, when the interesting feature of<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 29<br />
<br />
<<Uneut Leaves” was revived. Mr. T. Zangwill<br />
<br />
recited a clever skit on- the limited editions of<br />
latter-day poets, which will appear in The Pall<br />
Mall Magazine. Mr. Jerome K. Jerome read<br />
the third act of a drama dealing with social ques-<br />
tions in a very outspoken way, which he has<br />
adapted from the German (“ Die Ehre”), under<br />
the provisional title, “ Birth and Breeding,’ and<br />
which, under tl at or some other title, will before<br />
long appear on the London stage.<br />
<br />
A complete story by Mr. Walter Besant,<br />
entitled ‘To the Third and Fourth Generation,”<br />
was read by Canon Bell, of Cheltenham, in the<br />
absence of the author. Lastly, Mr. Norman Gale<br />
recited a poem, ‘“ Pigeons at Cannon-street.”<br />
Amceng the audience were Mr. Thomas Hardy,<br />
Mr. Bruce Joy, Mr. Henry Irving, jun., and<br />
other well-known representatives of. literature,<br />
art, and the drama. ;<br />
<br />
A Baedeker’s “ United States”’ is about to be<br />
published by Ser-bner and Co. —<br />
<br />
Lehman’s “ Prize Novels” have been repub-<br />
lished in America (U.S. Book Company).<br />
<br />
Mr. Mackenzie Bell is about to publish a<br />
volume of verse entitled “Spring, Immortality,<br />
and other Poems.” It will include “ The Lame<br />
Boy,” which first appeared in this paper. It is<br />
dedicated to the author’s friend, Mr. Edmund<br />
Clarence Stedman.<br />
<br />
Captain Harding's new story, “ The Capture of<br />
the Estrella,” will be published before long by<br />
Messrs. Cassell and Co.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Edith E. Cuthell will follow up her<br />
children’s story of last Christmas, “ Only a<br />
Guard-room Dog,” with another “ doggie” story,<br />
next autumn, about that uncommon and intelli-<br />
gent little creature, the Chinese pug, to be called<br />
“Two Little Children and Ching.’ The pub-<br />
lishers are Messrs. Methuen.<br />
<br />
A new novel by Mr. Andrew Dean, author of<br />
« A Splendid Cousin” and ‘“ Isaac Eller’s Money,”<br />
will be published shortly. It is called “ Mrs.<br />
Finch-Brassey.” The publishers are Bentl-y and<br />
Son.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Stevenson, author of “ Juliet,’ ‘ Mrs.<br />
Sevem,” &c., will produce immediately a new<br />
novel (Messrs. Bentley and Son). The title is<br />
“Mrs. Elphinstone of Drum.” It opens in a<br />
well-known hunting town in the Midlands.<br />
<br />
The first woman who has been made a member<br />
of the New Zealand Institute of Journalists is<br />
Mrs. James Suisted, of Westport, New Zealand.<br />
The same lady has been elected a corresponding<br />
member of the Royal Geographical Society of<br />
<br />
Australasia, Melbourne branch, in recognition of<br />
her papers on Antarctic Exploration.<br />
<br />
Mr. Francis Henry Clyffe has ready for the<br />
press a translation of Leopardi’s Poems. It<br />
will be published by Messrs. Eden, Remington,<br />
and Co.<br />
<br />
A cheap edition of Mrs. Spender’s novel called<br />
“Mrs. Hazleton’s Confession” has been issued<br />
by Messrs. Sonnenschein and Co. at. 2s.<br />
<br />
A cheap edition of the same writer’s novel, “ A<br />
Waking,” has been issued by Messrs. Hutchinson,<br />
at 2s. 6d.<br />
<br />
William Westall is writing a romance of adven-<br />
ture for Lloyd’s Weekly. He has also agreed to<br />
write a novel for Messrs. Tillotson and. Son.<br />
Ward and Downey will publish in the autumn a<br />
three-volume novel by the same author, as well<br />
as a one-volume story, adapted from the Russian<br />
by Messrs. Stepniak and Westall in collaboration.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
POS<br />
<br />
NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Theology.<br />
<br />
Benson, Rev. R. M. The Final Passover, Meditations<br />
upon the Passion, vol. 3, the Divine Exodus. Part II.<br />
Longmans. 58.<br />
<br />
BLAIKIE, W. G., D.D. The Book of Joshua. Vol. of the<br />
Expositor’s Bible. Hodder and Stoughton. 7s. 6d.<br />
<br />
CamBRIDGE TEACHER'S BrBLE, THE, and the CAMBRIDGE<br />
CoMPANION TO THE BIBLE. Bound together, or the<br />
latter separate. C.J. Clay and Sons.<br />
<br />
Hammonp, JosprH. English Nonconformity and Christ’s<br />
Christianity. Wells, Gardner, and Darton.<br />
<br />
Hetps TO THE STUDY OF THE BIBLE, enlarged and<br />
illustrated edition. Oxford at the University Press.<br />
London, Henry Frowde, 4s. 6d.<br />
<br />
Horton, R. F. Sermons delivered in Lyndhurst-road<br />
Church, Hampstead. James Clark, Fleet-street.<br />
38. 6d.<br />
<br />
Lercu, M. ©. E. Our Dayspring, a short course of<br />
Lessons for Bible classes. S.P.C.K. Is.<br />
<br />
Max Miuuer, F. Theosophy or Psychological Religion.<br />
The Gifford Lectures delivered before the University<br />
of Glasgow in 1892. 10s. 6d,<br />
<br />
Mayo Gunn, E. H. School Hymns with Tunes, Edited<br />
by. The harmonies revised by H. Elliot Button.<br />
James Clarke, Fleet-street. Is. ‘<br />
<br />
Norris, Ven. T. P. A Key to the Epistles of St. Paul, a<br />
course of addresses. S.P.C.K. 28.<br />
<br />
OxENDEN, AsHTON, D.D. Plain Sermons : With a memoir<br />
and portrait of the author. Longmans. 58-<br />
<br />
Oxrorp Brsuz ror TEACHERS, THE, enlarged and illustra-<br />
ted edition, with sixty-four full-page facsimiles of<br />
ancient manuscripts, Egyptian and Assyrian, Baby-<br />
lonian and Phoenician monuments. &c. Oxford, the<br />
University Press. London, Henry Frowde.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
30<br />
<br />
Prerson, A.T.,D.D. The Heights of the Gospel, a series<br />
of sermons delivered at the Metropolitan Tabernacle,<br />
1892-93. Passmore and Alabaster. 2s. 6d.<br />
<br />
Srrete, THomas. The “ Higher Criticism” and the<br />
Inspiration of the Bible. A paper for the general reader<br />
Sutton and Co., Ludgate-hill. Paper covers, 6d.<br />
<br />
Woop, CHARLES JAMES. Survivals in Christianity, Studies<br />
in the Theology of Divine Immanence, special lectures<br />
delivered before the Episcopal Theological School at<br />
Cambridge, Mass., in 1892. Macmillan. 6s.<br />
<br />
History and Biography.<br />
<br />
Apams, Henry. History of the United States of America.<br />
Vols. 7, 8, and 9 (the Second Administration of James<br />
Madison). G.P.Putnam. 9s. each.<br />
<br />
Bonar, James, LL.D. Philosophy and Political Economy<br />
in some of their Historical Relations.<br />
<br />
BusHELL, Rev. W. Done. Early Charters. Translated<br />
into English. With explanatory notes. Harrow Octo-<br />
centenary Tracts. I. Macmillan and Bowes, Cam-<br />
bridge. Paper covers, Is.<br />
<br />
Carng, Rev. Casar. The Martial Annals of the City of<br />
York. Published with the approval of the major-<br />
general commanding the N.E. military district. With<br />
illustrations. (C. J. Clark, Lincoln’s-inn-fields.<br />
<br />
Cannan, Epwin. A History of the Theories of Production<br />
and Distribution from 1776 to 1848. Percival. 16s.<br />
<br />
Cuatmers, Ropert. A History of Currency in the British<br />
Colonies. Eyre and Spottiswoode. 10s.<br />
<br />
DuckworTH, Russet, B.A. Memoir of the Rev. James<br />
Lonsdale, late Fellow and Tutor of Balliol College,<br />
Oxford. With an introduction by the Hon. G C.<br />
Brodrick, Warden of Merton, and a portrait. Long-<br />
mans. 6s.<br />
<br />
Durt, Romesh CHuNDER, C.I.E. Ancient India, 2000<br />
B.c.—800 A.D., with maps. Longmans. 2s. 6d.<br />
<br />
Gasquet, F. Arpan, D.D. Henry VIII. and the English<br />
Monasteries. Vol.I. Fifth edition.<br />
<br />
Gasquet F. Arpan, D.D. Henry VIII. and the English<br />
Monasteries. New edition, with illustrations. Part<br />
XIII. John Hodges, Agar-street, Charing - cross.<br />
Paper covers, Is. net.<br />
<br />
Hearn, Ricwarp. The English Peasant, Studies:<br />
Historical, Local, and Biographic. Fisher Unwin.<br />
38. Od.<br />
<br />
Hopper, Epwin. The History of South Australia, from<br />
its foundation to the year of its jubilee, with a chrono-<br />
logical summary of all the principal events of interest<br />
up to date. With two maps. 2 vols. Sampson Low.<br />
<br />
Houper, ©. F. Louis Agassiz, his Life and Work.<br />
“Leaders in Science” Series. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 55.<br />
<br />
Law, ERNEST. Cardinal Wolsey at Hampton Court;<br />
being an abridgment of a few chapters of the author’s<br />
“History of Hampton Court Palace.” - Illustrated.<br />
C. Smith and Son. Paper covers, Is.<br />
<br />
Lawrence, Rev. Joun T. A Dictionary of Musical<br />
<br />
< Biography. Simpkin, Marshall. 3s.<br />
<br />
Marr, Ronert A. Musical History, as shown in the<br />
International Exhibition of Music and the Drama,<br />
Vienna, 1892. William Reeves.<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Martin, A. Patcuerr. Life and Letters of the Right<br />
Hon. Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke, with a<br />
memoir of Sir John Coape Sherbrooke. In 2 vols., with<br />
portraits. Longmans. 368.<br />
<br />
Morris, W. O’Connor, Napoleon, Warrior and Ruler, and<br />
the Military Supremacy of Revolutionary France.<br />
“Heroes of the Nations” Series. G. P. Putnam’s<br />
Sons. 58.<br />
<br />
Nyx, G.H.F. A Popular Story of the Church in Wales.<br />
New edition. Thirtieth thousand. Griffith, Farran.<br />
Paper covers. 6d.<br />
<br />
Parker, T. Jerrery. William Kitchen Parker, F.R.S.,<br />
sometime Hunterian Professor of Anatomy and Physio-<br />
logy in the Royal College of Surgeons of England: a<br />
biographical sketch. Macmillan. 4s. net.<br />
<br />
Patron, James. British History and Papal Claims from<br />
the Norman Conquest to the present day. 2 vols.<br />
Hodder and Stoughton.<br />
<br />
Prepprz, ALEXANDER, Recollections of Dr. John Brown,<br />
author of “ Rab and His Friends,” &c., with a Selection<br />
from his Correspondence. Percival. 6s.<br />
<br />
PeLuam, H. F. Outlines of Roman History, with maps.<br />
Percival and Co.. 6s.<br />
<br />
PENDEREL, Ricuarp. Wilfred Waide, Barrister and<br />
Novelist. Sampson Low.<br />
<br />
Pisrce, Epwarp L. Memoir and _ Letters of Charles<br />
Sumner. Vol. 1, 1845-60; Vol. 2, 1860 to death.<br />
Sampson Low.<br />
<br />
Pripgavx, 8. T. An Historical Sketch of Bookbinding.<br />
With a chapter on early stamped bindings. By E.<br />
Gordon Duff. Lawrence and Bullen. 6s.<br />
<br />
Rowsotuam, J. F. The History of Music. A new<br />
edition. Bentley.<br />
<br />
Swinton, Hon. Mrs. J. R. A Sketch of the Life of<br />
Georgiana, Lady de Ros, with some reminiscences of<br />
her family and friends, including the Duke of Welling-<br />
ton. With portraits and illustrations. John Murray.<br />
7s. 6d.<br />
<br />
Symonps, Joun AppINGTON. Walt Whitman: a Study.<br />
With portrait and four illustrations. J. C. Nimmo.<br />
<br />
Verrcu, Joun, LL.D. History and Poetry of the Scottish<br />
Border, their main feature and relations. New and<br />
enlarged edition. 2 vols. Blackwood.<br />
<br />
WALLACE, WILFRID, DD. Life of St. Edmund of Canter-<br />
bury, from original sources. Priest of the Order of<br />
St. Benedict of the Beuron Congregation. Kegan<br />
Paul. 15s.<br />
<br />
Warp, Very Rev. Bernarp. History of St. Edmund's<br />
College, Old Hall. With numerous illustrations. Kegan<br />
Paul. 10s 6d.<br />
<br />
WorpswortH, CHARLES, DD. Annals of my Life, 1847-<br />
1856. Edited by W. Earl Hodgson. Longman’s.<br />
Ios. 6d.<br />
<br />
General Literature.<br />
<br />
Barpexer, K. Italy: Handbook for travellers. Second<br />
part, Central Italy and Rome. 11th revised edition.<br />
Dulau and Co., Soho-square.<br />
<br />
Barun, Mrs. Apa S. Health and. Beauty in Dress, from<br />
infancy to old age. Illustrated. Office of Baby: the<br />
<br />
"_ Mother's Magazine, High Holborn. New and popular<br />
edition, 1. Se : i<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
ey<br />
<br />
RAE ILA<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CoPpNER, JAMES.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 3!<br />
<br />
| Bentuny, E. L. The Settler's Guide to New Zealand.<br />
<br />
Compiled for the New Zealand Shipping Company<br />
Limited. Waterlow and Sons, London-wall. 6d.<br />
<br />
BickERSTETH, M. Japan as we saw it. With a preface<br />
by the Bishop of Exeter. Illustrated. Sampson Low.<br />
<br />
Bryrpen H. ANDERSON. Gun and Camera in Southern<br />
Africa—a year of wanderings in Bechuanaland, the<br />
Kalahari Desert, and the Lake River country, Ngami-<br />
land, with notes on colonisation, natives, natural history,<br />
and sport. With illustrations and maps. Stanford.<br />
158.<br />
<br />
CARLYLE, THomas. Essays on the Greatest German Poets<br />
and Writers, with an introduction by Ernest Rhys, the<br />
Scott Library. Walter Scott. 1s. 6d.<br />
<br />
Crouston, W. A. Book of Wise Sayings. Selected largely<br />
from Eastern sources. Hutchinson. 2s.<br />
<br />
Crowes, W. Larrp. The Great Peril, and how it was<br />
Averted. Reprinted from Black and White, and pub-<br />
lished at the office of that paper.<br />
<br />
Memorandum Mnemonica: A help to<br />
the remembrance of numbers, historical events, and<br />
subjects generally. Williams and Norgate.<br />
<br />
Country GENTLEMAN'S CaTALoauE of Appliances for<br />
the house, field, farm, stable, garden, kennel, &c., the,<br />
with a directory specially compiled for the use of<br />
country gentlemen. Eden, Fisher, Lombard-street,<br />
E.C. Paper covers, 1s. 6d.; cloth, 2s. 6d.<br />
<br />
CROCKFORD’s CLERICAL DIRECTORY FOR 1893.<br />
Cox, Bream’s-buildings, H.C.<br />
<br />
Kings of Cricket: reminiscences and<br />
With introduction<br />
Arrowsmith.<br />
<br />
Horace<br />
<br />
15s.<br />
<br />
Dart, RIcHARD.<br />
anecdotes, with hints on the game.<br />
by Andrew Lang, and many portraits.<br />
<br />
Davies, JosEpH. Railway Rates, Charges, and Regula-<br />
lations of the United Kingdom: a summary of the<br />
Railway Rates and Charges (Order Confirmation) Acts,<br />
1891 and 1892, and the Acts passed from 1854 to 1888<br />
for the general regulation of railways. McCorquodale<br />
and Co. 4s.<br />
<br />
Drxon, CHARLES. The Nests and Eggs of British Birds,<br />
when and where to find them, being a handbook to the<br />
oology of the British Islands. Chapman and Hall.<br />
<br />
EPILEPTIC AND CRIPPLED, THE. Child and Adult: A<br />
Report on the Present Condition of these Classes of<br />
Afflicted Persons, with suggestions for their better<br />
education and employment. ‘Charity Organisation”<br />
Series. Swan Sonnenschein.<br />
<br />
Gitmovur, James. More about the Mongols. Selected and<br />
arranged from the diaries and papers of James Gilmour,<br />
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