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264 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/264 | Index to The Author, Vol. 05 (1895) | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=49&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Index+to+%3Cem%3EThe+Author%3C%2Fem%3E%2C+Vol.+05+%281895%29">Index to <em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 (1895)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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>; <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Index">Index</a> | 1895-The-Author-5-index | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=78&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=The+Society+of+Authors">The Society of Authors</a>; <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=78&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Horace+Cox">Horace Cox</a> | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1895">1895</a> | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=4&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=London">London</a> | | | | https://historysoa.com/files/original/4/264/1895-The-Author-5-index.pdf | publications, The Author |
265 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/265 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 01 (June 1894) | <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.+05+Issue+01+%28June+1894%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 01 (June 1894)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1894-06-01-The-Author-5-1 | | | | | 1–32 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1894-06-01">1894-06-01</a> | | | | | | | 1 | | | 18940601 | C be El u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.)<br />
CONDUCTED BY WALTER BESAN. T.<br />
VoI. V.-No. 1.]<br />
JUNE 1, 1894.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
Por the Opinions earpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as eaſpressing the<br />
collective opinions of the committee unless<br />
they are officially signed by G. Herbert<br />
Thring, Sec.<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
important communications within two days will write to him<br />
without delay. All remittances should be crossed Union<br />
Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered<br />
letter only.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on<br />
all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub-<br />
jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
WARNINGS AND ADWICE,<br />
I , T is not generally understood that the author, as<br />
the vendor, has the absolute right of drafting the<br />
agreement upon whatever terms the transaction<br />
is to be carried out. Authors are strongly advised to<br />
exercise that right. In every form of business, this among<br />
others, the right of drawing the agreement rests with him<br />
who sells, leases, or has the control of the property.<br />
2. SERIAL RIGHTS.—In selling Serial Rights remember<br />
that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that<br />
is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you<br />
object to this, insert a clause to that effect.<br />
3. STAMP YOUR AGREEMENTS. – Readers are most<br />
URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements<br />
immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected<br />
for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree-<br />
ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every<br />
case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter<br />
which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at no ea pense to themselves<br />
eacept the cost of the stamp.<br />
4. ASCERTAIN WHAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVES To<br />
BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
WOL. W.<br />
business men.<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself.<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTS.—Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom yow appoint as your<br />
agent. Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone.<br />
6. CoST OF PRODUCTION.——Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures.<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.—Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society.<br />
8. FUTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice.<br />
Io. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a MS. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work.<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration.<br />
I2. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice. -<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTS. —- Keep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<br />
I4. 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 />
Be yourself a business man.<br />
Society’s Offices :-<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
*~ * ~ *<br />
e-<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<br />
B 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 2 (#16) ###############################################<br />
<br />
2 THE AUTHOR.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
*-- ~ *-*<br />
a- - -<br />
THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE,<br />
literary or artistic work are invited to communicate with<br />
the Manager.<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 />
NOTICES.<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
1. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. With, when<br />
necessary, the assistance of the legal advisers of the Syndi-<br />
cate, it concludes agreements, collects royalties, examines<br />
and passes accounts, and generally relieves members of the<br />
trouble of managing business details.<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors' Syndicate are<br />
defrayed solely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. Notice is, however, hereby<br />
given that in all cases where there is no current account, a<br />
booking fee is charged to cover postage and porterage.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiation<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least four days’<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. 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 />
7. 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 />
8. The Syndicate undertakes arrangements for lectures<br />
by some of the leading members of the Society; that it has<br />
a “Transfer Department” for the sale and purchase of<br />
journals and periodicals; and that a “Register of Wants'<br />
and Wanted ” has been opened. Members anxious to obtain<br />
39 48.<br />
HE Editor of the Awthor 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 />
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 Awthor 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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P. 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest ? Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
as can be procured ; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 />
<br />
<br />
## p. 3 (#17) ###############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 3.<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 call it.<br />
*~ * →<br />
g- -*<br />
THE AUTHOR,<br />
N the commencement of the fifth volume<br />
of the Author, it seems desirable that we<br />
should repeat the purpose for which the<br />
paper was founded and for which it exists. The<br />
fore words in the first number contain a state-<br />
ment of that purpose, which has always been kept<br />
steadily to the front.<br />
The Author is founded to be the organ of literary<br />
men and women of all kinds—the one paper which will<br />
fully review, discuss, and ventilate all questions con-<br />
nected with the profession of literature in all its branches.<br />
It will be the medium by which the Committee of our<br />
Society will inform its members generally of their doings,<br />
and it will become a public record of transactions conducted<br />
in the interests of literature, which have hitherto been<br />
secret, lost, and hidden for the want of such an organ.<br />
The chief aim of the Society—this has been advanced<br />
again and again—is to promote the recognition of the fact,<br />
hitherto most imperfectly understood, that literary property<br />
is as real a thing as property in every other kind of busi-<br />
mess: that it should be safeguarded in the same manner,<br />
and regarded with the same jealousy.<br />
Hitherto the mere existence of literary property even in<br />
the face of such patent facts as the enrichment of publishers,<br />
has been carefully concealed and even denied. Risks of<br />
publishing, costs of publishing, have been dangled before<br />
the eyes of authors, so that they should regard the subject<br />
as one of extreme peril and pure speculation. One can<br />
never even now read a leading article about publishing<br />
without being solemnly assured that the trade is one in<br />
which frightful risks are constantly run, and that the<br />
success of any book is pure speculation. -<br />
Now, as a matter of fact, there is very little speculation<br />
indeed in publishing, and there are very, very few publishers<br />
—only the leading houses—who ever run any risks at all,<br />
either by buying books or by bringing out books at a risk.<br />
Risks are run when a house starts a magazine, or when it<br />
embarks on illustrated editions of an expensive kind, or<br />
when educational books are published. The ordinary risk<br />
run in the production of books is, as a rule, next to nothing.<br />
For, first, the author is seldom paid except by results; next,<br />
the author, when a house consents to “take the risk,” is,<br />
for the most part, one who commands a certain sale. With<br />
the smaller houses books about which there is the slightest<br />
risk are always paid for by the authors in advance, either<br />
wholly or in part. And very, very seldom indeed, do the<br />
ill-advised authors who advance their money ever see it<br />
back again. .<br />
Again, as to the actual cost of production. By carefully<br />
keeping this a profound secret, interested persons have<br />
succeeded in establishing a kind of taboo, as of some holy,<br />
sacred thing which must not be so much as touched. We<br />
have, however, thoroughly investigated the whole question,<br />
and are now in a position to throw complete light upon the<br />
cost of producing any kind of book that can be named, in<br />
any type and in any form.<br />
This is a very important step. Its importance cannot be<br />
over-estimated. It enables the awthor, for the very first<br />
time in the history of literature, to know what it is he is<br />
asked to concede to the publisher, and what it is he reserves<br />
for himself. .<br />
We have also done more : we have collected together a<br />
vast amount of information as to publishers' agreements:<br />
especially as to what, in reality, is the meaning of the<br />
clauses contained in them ; we have ascertained what it is<br />
they ask the author to surrender and for what consideration.<br />
And we have acquired a knowledge of various frauds, made<br />
possible by the terms of these agreements, in the different<br />
methods of publishing.<br />
This knowledge is so beneficial to the author that its<br />
existence ought to be widely spread and made known to<br />
every person who is engaged in the production of literature<br />
of any kind.<br />
Again, the Society is constantly engaged in answering<br />
questions connected with every branch of literature and its<br />
practice. Many of these questions are answered by letter<br />
over and over again, taking up a great deal of the Secretary’s<br />
time. They would be answered much more effectively in a<br />
journal.<br />
It follows from these clauses that we may have a good<br />
deal to say about the seamy side of the publishing trade.<br />
It must, however, be borne in mind very carefully that<br />
the Society has not, and never has had, any quarrel with<br />
honourable publishers. It has always asked for one thing<br />
only—just and homest treatment, fair and open agreements,<br />
and honourable observance of those agreements.<br />
In further illustration of this programme let it<br />
be remembered that the Society, in its very first<br />
public utterance, and ever since, has always<br />
pointed out and repeated over and over again<br />
the fact that the literary and the commercial<br />
value of a book need not necessarily bear any<br />
relation to each other ; in other words, that the<br />
literary value of a book is not to be measured by<br />
its commercial success, and that the commercial<br />
success of a book is no gauge of its literary value.<br />
This, it would seem, is a self evident proposition,<br />
and would not need to be repeated but for the<br />
misrepresentations of those who wish to attack<br />
the Society and its organ. Let us therefore<br />
repeat one or two of the passages in which this<br />
distinction was clearly and unmistakably laid<br />
down. The same thing has been repeated over<br />
and over again :<br />
I. Literature, in all times, has had two sides—the artistic<br />
and the commercial kind. The singer expects to be paid,<br />
the poet is rejoiced at solid recognition of his genius. What<br />
is more, the artistic work of the highest genius in no way<br />
suffers from a careful attention to its material interests.<br />
Does anyone in his senses pretend that the work of Byron,<br />
Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Wilkie Collins,<br />
Charles Reade, lost anything in Art because these writers were<br />
good and careful men of business P -<br />
II. Let us not confuse these two sides of the literary pro-<br />
fession. They are equally important, because unless the latter<br />
is looked after, the artist perishes. Both must be guarded<br />
jealously, the one because Literature is Art, and the other<br />
because the artist must be a free man—not the slave of the<br />
man who has the money, nor a hack, nor one who drives his<br />
pen all day long for a daily pittance, nor a man continually<br />
fretted by a sense of wrong and injustice, real or fancied.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 4 (#18) ###############################################<br />
<br />
4. THE AUTHOR.<br />
When, therefore, we insist continually upon the necessity of<br />
safe-guarding literary property, of understanding what is<br />
meant by an agreement before we sign it, we are working in<br />
the highest and best interests of literature.<br />
III. Consider again. In no other branch of Art is a voice<br />
ever raised against those who fight for its material interests.<br />
The sculptor, the actor, the singer, the musician, the painter<br />
—all alike are understood to be working honestly at their<br />
art, even though at the same time they are watching care-<br />
fully over their material interests. No one accuses Meisson-<br />
nier of bad workmanship, because every one of his pictures<br />
is worth a pyramid of gold. Yet, directly a serious attempt<br />
is made to put these interests on a proper basis as regards<br />
letters, there is raised at once an outcry about degrading<br />
Art, taking all the joy out of Art, destroying the nobility of<br />
Art, and the rest of it.<br />
We mix up these two sides of literature. It is absurd to<br />
suppose that George Eliot was thinking of her commercial<br />
value when she wrote “Romola..” Yet she thought very<br />
much of it afterwards. That is the way of it. The true<br />
artist thinks about nothing but his work while he is engaged<br />
upon it. The man who is not an artist cannot understand<br />
how he can ever think about the business side of his work<br />
at all. Yet he always can, and does, as soon as he is<br />
satisfied that there is a business side to his work.<br />
-s:crºcº-<br />
Three or four accusations are, from time to<br />
time, brought against the Society or the Author<br />
or both.<br />
I. We are charged with saying that all pub-<br />
lishers are dishonest. When this accusation was<br />
last made, in the Athenæum, the publisher who<br />
advanced it was challenged to produce his autho-<br />
rity. He found a statement in one of the<br />
pamphlets published by the Society to the effect<br />
that “fraud and corruption were widespread.”<br />
That was perfectly true; it was more true ten<br />
years ago than it is now, thanks to the action of<br />
the Society. “Widespread,” however, is very<br />
different from universal. Over and over again<br />
it has been repeated that the Society has no<br />
quarrel with honourable houses. Those, there-<br />
fore, who endeavour to distort a plain statement,<br />
proved to the hilt by our exposures, into a<br />
universal charge clearly betray themselves. One<br />
never hears a respectable solicitor trying to distort<br />
the perfectly true statement that his profession<br />
contains a great number of black sheep into a<br />
charge that all solicitors are black sheep.<br />
2. The next charge is, that we say that pub-<br />
lishers take no risks. We say no such thing.<br />
Over and over again we have said that in dealing<br />
with authors publishers take as few risks as they<br />
possibly can. In other branches of business, as<br />
when a publisher puts forth a new magazine,<br />
an encyclopædia, a dictionary of biography, a new<br />
atlas, he may incur very great risks. Since we,<br />
as authors, are not generally proprietors or<br />
venturers in this kind of property, we need not<br />
inquire into the nature of the risks thus incurred.<br />
But, in the production of books, the risk in-<br />
curred very rarely exists at all. In any case it is<br />
the difference between the cost of production and<br />
the number of copies subscribed at first, a mini-<br />
mum of which may be approximately known. If<br />
by risk the publisher means chance of great<br />
gains, then we are talking of different things.<br />
3. The third charge is that of sordidness in<br />
looking after literary property at all.<br />
This is answered by the passages already<br />
quoted.<br />
4. The fourth charge is that we measure literary<br />
value by commercial success.<br />
We have just shown how the contrary has been<br />
clearly laid down in the Author.<br />
Other charges will doubtless be invented and<br />
brought against us, but, so far, the repetition of<br />
one or other of these four is the only weapon<br />
which has been found by the gentry who object<br />
to the light of day. -<br />
Perhaps the policy of the committee during the<br />
Society’s existence may be fairly stated as this:<br />
The present conditions which belong to the<br />
acquisition and the administration of literary<br />
property are chaotic. Even with the best houses,<br />
no one, not the greatest historian, the greatest<br />
man of science, knows when he sends a MS. to a<br />
publisher on what terms he should confide to him<br />
the administration of his property. Nor does he<br />
know what terms the publisher will propose. Nor<br />
has he hitherto known what any terms mean. It<br />
is, on the other hand, highly desirable that he<br />
should know what terms may mean, and that<br />
he should know as much as possible about the<br />
reality and the extent of literary property, and<br />
particularly that of his own kind of literary<br />
property.<br />
The committee therefore have acquired and<br />
published, partly in pamphlets and partly in their<br />
organ, the Author, a tolerably complete explana-<br />
tion of these points:<br />
I. The cost of printing, binding, and advertis-<br />
ing various kinds of books.<br />
2. The meaning of the “published price ’’ to<br />
the publisher or manager of a literary<br />
property.<br />
3. Some of the various pitfalls and traps laid<br />
to catch the ignorant and the unwary<br />
author. -<br />
As regards the first point, one or two publishers<br />
have alleged that our estimates were too low.<br />
They were silenced by the offer to get their print-<br />
ing done on those terms. On the second point<br />
nothing has been disputed, for the simple reason<br />
that the figures given in the Society’s papers were<br />
actually lower than the truth. As to the pitfalls<br />
and traps, experience shows that it is necessary<br />
to examine jealously every agreement offered to<br />
an author, not always, be it understood, to detect<br />
a way open to fraud, but generally to detect some<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 5 (#19) ###############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 5<br />
clause by which the author, through ignorance, is<br />
tempted to surrender rights and to give up an<br />
unfair proportion of his property. In other<br />
words, the man of business is always tempted to<br />
use his superior knowledge for his own benefit.<br />
We do our best to place the author on the same<br />
level as regards the facts of the case.<br />
To throw a flood of light upon every point con-<br />
nected with the management of literary property<br />
is, and has always been, the settled policy of the<br />
committee.<br />
The next step, that of arriving at a modus<br />
vivendi recognised as fair by both sides will be<br />
taken, it is hoped, before long, and when the<br />
ersons chiefly concerned, viz., the producers,<br />
shall have thoroughly learned the facts revealed<br />
by this light.<br />
*= a -º<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—CANADIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
HE question of Canadian Copyright has in<br />
the past few weeks again been brought<br />
into publicity, owing, in the first instance,<br />
to a rumour that the Canadians were once more<br />
pushing forward their claims. The question is<br />
naturally one of great importance to the English<br />
author on account of the great interests in-<br />
volved.<br />
As regards the present state of Canadian Copy-<br />
right, any member of the Society who is interested<br />
in the subject is referred to the November number<br />
of the Author, 1890, containing a very useful<br />
paper written by W. Oliver Hodges, honorary<br />
secretary of the Society's Copyright Committee,<br />
and to an opinion in the January number 1893,<br />
given at the request of the Society by J. Rolt,<br />
3, New-square, barrister.<br />
With regard to the steps at present being<br />
taken, it will be as well to put forward a short<br />
statement.<br />
As soon as the rumour of the Canadian move<br />
had been substantially verified, the secretary of<br />
the Society, at the request of the chairman, wrote<br />
to the Colonial Office, and in due course received<br />
a reply, which was as follows:<br />
Downing-street, May 18, 1894.<br />
SIR,-Lord Ripon desires me to acquaint you that the<br />
Society is in error in supposing that there is any new Bill on<br />
copyright in Canada now before Her Majesty's Government.<br />
His Lordship presumes your letter refers to a clause in the<br />
Tariff Bill of the Canadian Parliament which is intended to<br />
remove the duty on foreign reprints of British copyright<br />
works. -<br />
I am to enclose a copy of the clause in question, which it<br />
is understood is not intended to come into operation until the<br />
end of the next session of the Dominion Parliament. In the<br />
meantime Lord Ripon has invited the attention of the<br />
Government of Canada to the effect which the second<br />
section of the Colonial Laws Walidity Act, 1865, may have<br />
upon this clause in the Tariff Bill.<br />
I am to add that a communication on the general question<br />
of copyright in Canada has been received, and will be sent<br />
to the Society when printed for any remarks they may have<br />
to offer.—I am, sir, &c.<br />
The following is the clause referred to :<br />
Books and Papers.-British copyright works, reprints of,<br />
six cents per pound, and in addition thereto 12% per cent.<br />
ad valorem until March 27, 1895, and thereafter six cents<br />
per pound.<br />
The importance, however, of the letter lies in<br />
the last paragraph.<br />
At about the same date the Secretary of the<br />
Society received a letter from the London<br />
Chamber of Commerce stating that a meeting<br />
of the copyright interests was going to be held,<br />
and requesting that the Society would appoint<br />
delegates to attend. At once a meeting of the<br />
committee was called, and Mr. Thring, the<br />
Secretary of the Society, together with Mr. W.<br />
Oliver Hodges, Hon. Secretary of the Society's<br />
Copyright Committee, and Mr. Emery, of Messrs.<br />
Field, Roscoe, and Co., the Society's solicitors,<br />
was appointed to attend. On Wednesday,<br />
May 23, the delegates met at the London<br />
Chamber of Commerce, where various copyright<br />
interests were represented, namely, the musical<br />
publisher, the photographer, the Copyright Asso-<br />
ciation, and the Society of Authors. Mr. Daldy,<br />
the Honorary Secretary of the Copyright Associa-<br />
tion, was voted into the chair, and, after a few<br />
preliminary remarks, he read through a series of<br />
letters written by himself to the Colonial Secretary<br />
and the replies from the Colonial Office. Mr.<br />
Thring, the Secretary of the Society, then read<br />
the letter he had received from the Colonial Office,<br />
which was dated later than Mr. Daldy's last letter<br />
from the same source, and which contained infor-<br />
mation with regard to the steps the Canadian<br />
Government were taking, which was not included<br />
in Mr. Daldy's letters. Then followed a discus-<br />
sion upon what was the fittest course to take, and<br />
it was finally decided to appoint a committee to<br />
hold as it were a watching brief upon the Anglo-<br />
Canadian copyright question. The following<br />
resolutions were then agreed to, placed before the<br />
meeting, and unanimously carried :—<br />
I. Proposed by Mr. Ashdown, and seconded by<br />
Mr. Thring (Secretary of the Society of Authors) :<br />
That a special committee representing all copyright<br />
interests be appointed to watch the question of Anglo-<br />
Canadian copyright, and to take such steps to protect that<br />
property as may to them seem best.<br />
2. Proposed by Mr. Thring (Secretary of the<br />
Society of Authors), and seconded by Mr.<br />
Mendlesohn :<br />
That the said committee consist of two representatives of<br />
each of the undermentioned bodies and interests : The<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 6 (#20) ###############################################<br />
<br />
6 THE AUTHOR.<br />
Copyright Association, the Society of Authors, musical<br />
interests, fine art interests, photographic interests, dramatic<br />
publishers and authors, with power to add to their numbers<br />
from their own or other bodies as they think fit.<br />
The next step for the Society to take will be, of<br />
course, to elect delegates to attend upon the com-<br />
mittee. This committee, when formed, will care-<br />
fully go into whatever papers may be laid before<br />
them by the Secretary of State for the Colonies,<br />
and will consider the advisability of sending a<br />
deputation to the Marquis of Ripon on the<br />
matter.<br />
Further information will be conveyed to the<br />
members of the Society through the Author, as the<br />
question and the steps taken are proceeded with.<br />
II.--THE WORKING OF THE COPYRIGHT IAw.<br />
I. Mr. George Haven Putnam's thoughtful<br />
article on “Results of the Copyright Law,” in<br />
the January Forum, was an excellent summing up<br />
of the situation as developed since the passage of<br />
the Copyright Act of March 4, 1891. To my<br />
mind, his opinion that, in spite of the law’s<br />
defects, “it would be unwise at this time to make<br />
any effort to secure amendments * is the correct<br />
one. At the same time, the fact that a petition<br />
has been brought into the German Parliament<br />
calling for the abrogation of the copyright agree-<br />
ment between the United States and Germany,<br />
and that this petition has been approved by the<br />
committee having it in charge, gives a serious<br />
turn to the copyright situation. Mr. Putnam, in<br />
his article, noted that “it is almost impossible<br />
for a French or German author to arrange to<br />
issue his book in this country (either in the<br />
original or in a translation) simultaneously with<br />
the publication abroad. The re-setting in the<br />
Original language, for such limited sale as could<br />
be looked for here, would be unduly expensive,<br />
while time is required for the preparation of a<br />
satisfactory translation.” The great trouble, Mr.<br />
Putnam tells me, is that to secure copyright in a<br />
work in a foreign language, it must be re-set<br />
here in the original language. The copyright of<br />
a translation protects that translation only, and<br />
if the book is not also published in the original,<br />
anyone is at liberty to issue a new translation.<br />
This state of affairs was brought about by the<br />
eagerness of the typographical unions to grasp<br />
every advantage. The French Society of Authors<br />
made this discovery some time ago, and now that<br />
Germany threatens to take the matter up, the<br />
result of the immense amount of labour per-<br />
formed by our copyright leagues is somewhat dis-<br />
couraging. After all, I presume that our copy-<br />
right relations with Great Britain are the chief<br />
issue at stake, and these are progressing in a fairly<br />
Satisfactory manner at present. It is curious to<br />
observe how closely the success of books by new<br />
English authors is watched by the American<br />
reprinters. Of course, the successful English<br />
author's second book at once finds an authorised<br />
publisher in the United States, and is copy-<br />
righted; but the way every new English success<br />
is pirated in this country shows plainly the need<br />
of a time clause in the Copyright Act as long as<br />
the printing clause remains. -<br />
Another vexatious copyright question has been<br />
raised in a recent interview with Mr. Spofford,<br />
Librarian of Congress. I have not the slightest<br />
doubt that ninety in a hundred of those interested<br />
will be immensely surprised to learn from that<br />
interview that in the United States the name or<br />
title of a book is not protected by copyright.<br />
“The law is, said Mr. Spofford, “that the sub-<br />
stance, the literary contents, of a book or publica-<br />
tion may be protected by copyright, but not the<br />
name—not the title.” The filing of title-pages of<br />
books in this country, which is required by law, is<br />
not, then, for purposes of protection, but for<br />
identification merely. This seems to be a great<br />
injustice, and I asked Mr. Putnam if a change in<br />
this respéct were not needed when the Copyright<br />
Act is next amended. Mr. Putnam assented, and<br />
gave me some interesting information as to the<br />
present condition of English copyright law on<br />
this point, and as to certain proposed changes. In<br />
England, Mr. Putnam said, the law as to book<br />
titles goes as far in the contrary direction as does<br />
ours, in that it permits anyone to copyright all<br />
the titles he can think of with or without any real<br />
intention to use them for actual books. This<br />
copyright in a title or titles lasts for the full<br />
English term of forty-two years, or seven years<br />
after the copyrighter's death. In many cases,<br />
authors of books have had to pay such copy-<br />
righters to relinquish titles on which they<br />
unluckily had stumbled. Mr. Putnam thinks<br />
that authors should be at liberty to copyright the<br />
titles of their proposed books, but that such copy-<br />
right should be completed by the publication of<br />
the book within a reasonable period (six months or<br />
a year), and that failing of this the copyright<br />
should become void. Also he thinks that copy-<br />
right in a title should lapse if the book which it<br />
represents is out of print for a long period. The<br />
proposed new English law, introduced by Lord<br />
Monkswell in the present Parliament, and still<br />
pending, covers these points very fully. Copy-<br />
right in a title must be perfected by publication<br />
of the book within six months, and is lost in the<br />
case of books which remain out of print over two<br />
years. -<br />
II. The copyright questions touched upon in<br />
my last letter have brought me further information<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 7 (#21) ###############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. . 7<br />
as to the working of the Act of 1891. A sufficient<br />
time has now passed to enable publishers generally<br />
to understand what methods of procedure to<br />
follow in securing themselves and their authors<br />
here and abroad. Single stories, poems, and<br />
articles in English periodicals, which have not<br />
been “placed ” in the United States, are now sent<br />
over in advance to this country, put in type, and<br />
issued in pamphlet form on the day of the<br />
periodical's publication in England, thus securing<br />
copyright here for the same matter when subse-<br />
quently issued in book form. It is becoming<br />
more and more dangerous to reprint such articles<br />
from English magazines, especially if the authors<br />
are distinguished. All this has, of course, become<br />
the A B C of the trade among publishers, but it<br />
will be in the nature of information to many of<br />
the writing guild. Such copyrighted matter as<br />
that just mentioned is published here in three<br />
different ways: first, by the American branch of<br />
the English house; second, by an American pub-<br />
lishing house, which is the agent of the English<br />
firm; third, by the private agent of the English<br />
publisher. In any case protection is legally<br />
secured.<br />
So thoroughly do the English houses under-<br />
stand this question, and in so many cases have<br />
they established branch firms here for the publi-<br />
cation of their own books, that a leading Boston<br />
author was tempted to remark to the head of a<br />
large American publishing house that the chief<br />
effect of the International Copyright Act seemed<br />
to be to enable English publishing firms to<br />
establish branch houses here, manufacture dupli-<br />
cate plates, and flood the market with English<br />
books. This is only partially true, however, as<br />
most English publishers still prefer to issue their<br />
books through American houses, who manufac-<br />
ture the plates for both sides of the ocean.<br />
As to American authors, they no longer have to<br />
compete with five-cent. editions of current<br />
books by leading English authors, but issue their<br />
works in even competition with the latter. In<br />
view of the working of the Act, there may be a<br />
modicum of wisdom in requiring plates to be<br />
manufactured in this country, as otherwise we<br />
might be swamped by cheap English sheets in a<br />
way to shut off American authors and publishers<br />
from fair competition. These are the views of a<br />
protectionist, however, and I understand that<br />
those interested in copyright reform insist that<br />
protection and free trade ought not to enter into<br />
the question.<br />
International copyright is now secured between<br />
the United States and Great Britain, France,<br />
Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and<br />
Italy. The American Copyright League, so its<br />
secretary tells me, is now working for copyright<br />
WOL. W.<br />
with Greece, Norway, and Sweden, Spain, and<br />
Austria. Russia is considered hopeless on<br />
account of the press censorship. Austria, I<br />
believe, objects to the printing clause. Oddly<br />
enough, the printing clause is not considered a<br />
grave objection by the Spanish authorities, but<br />
they do object seriously to the requirement that<br />
American editions of Spanish books be registered<br />
at Washington and the fee paid before copyright<br />
can be secured. In most international copyright<br />
agreements between European countries, regis-<br />
tration in the author's country is all that is<br />
necessary for protection in other countries. Our<br />
late Minister to Spain, the Hon. E. Burd Grubb,<br />
was unable to overcome this objection on the<br />
part of the Spanish authorities. It has been<br />
suggested that a certificate of copyright from<br />
the United States Consul at Madrid, or from<br />
the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, could<br />
be made to serve at Washington by a special Act<br />
of Congress. The benefit would accrue chiefly to<br />
Spanish authors, so that Spanish hindrance seems<br />
absurd. — ARTHUR STEDMAN in the Chicago<br />
Dial.<br />
III.-FoED v. SMITH.<br />
(Before MR. JUSTICE MATHEw and a Special<br />
Jury.)<br />
This was an action (May 30) by Mr. Thomas<br />
Murray Ford, a dramatic author and journalist,<br />
against Mr. Valentine Smith, a theatrical<br />
manager and actor, arising out of the produc-<br />
tion of an English version of Adam's opera. “Si<br />
j’étais Roi.”<br />
The plaintiff's case, as stated by counsel, was<br />
that in December, 1888, he was asked by the<br />
defendant to translate and prepare an English<br />
version of “Si j’étais Roi.” No remuneration<br />
was fixed for the work, as the plaintiff said he<br />
could not tell how long it would take, but it was<br />
agreed that a reasonable price should be paid.<br />
The original libretto was by MM. Dennery and<br />
Brésil, and this was handed to the plaintiff by<br />
the defendant. Dr. Storer and Miss Harte-<br />
Potts assisted him, and, when finished, the<br />
English lyrics were written into a full score of<br />
the opera, by Dr. Storer. The work occupied<br />
two months, and was of a difficult nature, as first<br />
a translation had to be made of the French verse,<br />
and then English lyrics fitted to the music.<br />
When the words were completed they were sent<br />
to the defendant, who sent plaintiff a sum of £5<br />
some time afterwards in reply to an application<br />
for payment. Plaintiff, however, wrote back and<br />
said that such a sum was quite insufficient. He,<br />
however, heard no more for four years, when he<br />
heard that defendant was performing an opera<br />
C<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 8 (#22) ###############################################<br />
<br />
8 THE AUTHOR.<br />
entitled “King for a Day,” which he suspected<br />
was his work. He accordingly procured a book<br />
of the words, which were identical with his version,<br />
and found that the defendant had registered both<br />
the opera and the book.<br />
The defendant's case was that he had only<br />
asked defendant to “write up ’’ a music score;<br />
that the version the defendant used was written<br />
up and adapted by him and Dr. Storer from what<br />
he remembered of the American version; that he<br />
had never used anything that plaintiff had<br />
written; and that he was unaware the plaintiff<br />
had prepared any version at all.<br />
Evidence was given on both sides in support of<br />
these statements.<br />
Mr. Justice MATHEw, in summing up, said the<br />
questions for the jury were--(1) Was the plain-<br />
tiff employed to do the work? If so, he was<br />
entitled to be paid for doing it. (2) Was the<br />
manuscript sold to the defendant P If it was, he<br />
was entitled to register it. (3) Was the version<br />
the defendant used substantially the one prepared<br />
by the plaintiff P and (4) Had the plaintiff, in<br />
fact, accepted the £5 in full payment or was he<br />
entitled to anything more ? The learned Judge<br />
then proceeded to review and criticise the evi-<br />
dence in detail.<br />
The jury immediately found a verdict for the<br />
plaintiff, damages 3850.<br />
ON ROYALTIES.<br />
INCE a great many of our members have<br />
S joined during the last four years—in 1890<br />
the number of members was 4oo, at the<br />
present moment, May, 1894, it is nearly 1300–<br />
the facts and figures published in the early<br />
numbers of the Author are practically inaccessible<br />
to the younger members. But some of these are<br />
of the highest importance. Also, some of them<br />
require revision in consequence of slight changes.<br />
We purpose, therefore, to reproduce them. Per-<br />
haps the most important of all are those which<br />
relate to royalties. Nothing is more chaotic than<br />
the royalty system; but, since it is, for many<br />
reasons, the plan generally preferred by both<br />
authors and publishers, it is one that must be<br />
thoroughly understood. The figures given in the<br />
Author (Vol. I., p. 39, and Vol. III., p. 7) have<br />
been carefully revised.<br />
I. Cost of Production:<br />
As before, an ordinary six-shilling book is taken<br />
as an example. It may be a book of essays, a<br />
biography, a novel. Since a large circulation is<br />
contemplated, the figures will, in general, be found<br />
more useful for the novelist than for the essayist.<br />
But the latter will do well to consider the results<br />
on a single edition only.<br />
We take a very common form : it is one used<br />
for the greater number of six-shilling novels. The<br />
type is called Small Pica : there are twenty-nine<br />
lines in the page, and there are about 250 or 26o<br />
words to the page ; there are seventeen sheets,<br />
or 272 pages. The following is tendered as an<br />
approximate cost; that is to say, we could our-<br />
selves get the work done at these figures.<br />
It must be understood that a book of greater<br />
length will cost more; if, for instance, there are<br />
twenty-four sheets instead of seventeen, the cost<br />
of production would be increased, and the figures<br />
modified throughout. Illustrations would also<br />
increase the cost.<br />
<br />
I. A first edition of IOOO copies costs<br />
about £92<br />
2. A first edition of 3000 copies costs<br />
g - about £180<br />
3. A second edition of IOOO copies costs<br />
about £52<br />
4. A second edition of 3000 copies costs<br />
about £135<br />
In other words, in a first edition of S. d.<br />
... IOOO copies, each copy costs about... I Io;<br />
3OOO 25 5 x 2 3 » . . . I 2;<br />
, In a second edition of s. d.<br />
IOOO copies, each copy costs about... I o<br />
3OOO 5 y 55 35 32 - - O<br />
The above is approximately the cost of produc-<br />
tion. The publisher now has IOOO copies in his<br />
hands—what does he get for them P. We reckoned<br />
in our last published figures 3s.6d. for an average<br />
price. We have since learned, on closer inquiry,<br />
that this is too low an average.<br />
There are slight variations with different firms,<br />
and sometimes special terms may be made. Thus,<br />
there are four or five firms who “subscribe’” their<br />
six-shilling books, i.e., issue them to the trade, on a<br />
first subscription at 4s., counting 13 as 12, and with<br />
5 per cent. discount at the quarterly settlement.<br />
This is just over 3s. 6d. But a first subscrip-<br />
tion generally means a very small proportion of<br />
the whole afterwards taken in the case of a suc-<br />
cessful book.<br />
Other firms subscribe their 6s. books at 4s. 2d.;<br />
25 as 24; or 13 as I 2 ; and 5 per cent. On the<br />
quarterly settlement.<br />
Thus we have, at 25 as 24, the price at<br />
3s. 9%d., say 3s. 9%d.<br />
nd at 13 as 12 the price at 3s. 7+}d., or very<br />
nearly 3s. 8d.<br />
There are other variations.<br />
Some firms give a large discount for an order<br />
of so much. - -<br />
Stated generally, the average price to the trade<br />
4.<br />
IO;<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 9 (#23) ###############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. - 9<br />
of a 6s. book is 3s. 8d., and in all calculations as<br />
regards royalties this price may be taken as the<br />
basis of calculation. g -<br />
Thus with an edition of -<br />
IOOO copies the difference between<br />
return and cost is ... ... ... ...<br />
3OOO copies the difference between<br />
return and cost is ... ... 2 5<br />
Thus with a second edition of<br />
IOOO copies the difference between<br />
return and cost is ... ... ... ... 2 8<br />
3OOO copies the difference between<br />
return and cost is ... ... ... ... 2 9%<br />
We can thus get an idea of what the royalty<br />
system means when an edition is completely<br />
exhausted.<br />
I. On the sale of an edition of IOOO only :<br />
- . Per cent.<br />
On a royalty of......... IO I5 2O 25<br />
s. d.<br />
I 9<br />
#<br />
#<br />
* smºs<br />
Publisher ........................ 360 ... 345 ... 330 ... 31.5<br />
Author ........................... 383O ... 3845 ... 36O ... 3875<br />
2. On the sale of a first edition of 30OO :<br />
Per cent.<br />
IO I5 2O 25 3O<br />
Publisher...... £280 ... 3240 ... 3190 ... 31.45 ... 38 IOO<br />
Author......... £90 ... 3135 ... 3180 ... 3225 ... 3270<br />
3. On the sale of a second edition of IOOO :<br />
Per cent.<br />
IO I5 2O 25 3O<br />
Publisher............ £IOO ... 385 ... 370 ... 355 ... 3840<br />
Author............... 483O ... 345 ... 386O ... 375 ... 3890<br />
4. On the sale of a second edition of 3000:<br />
Per cent.<br />
IO I5 2O 25 30<br />
Publisher...... £325 ... 3280 ... 3235 ... 3190 ... 31.45<br />
Author......... £90 ... 3135 ... 3180 ... 3225 ... 3270<br />
These figures show that for a half-profit<br />
system, supposing a book to be successful, a<br />
royalty of about 22% per cent. on such a work, of<br />
such a length, without illustrations, means half<br />
profits to author and to publisher.<br />
But it may be objected, very few books<br />
indeed attain to such a circulation as is here<br />
presented. As a matter of fact, many more books<br />
attain to wide circulation than we suspect. We<br />
are too much accustomed to think of novels alone<br />
as successful books. There are, however, educa-<br />
tional, religious, scientific, historical, biographical<br />
books which obtain very great success. We do<br />
not hear much about them ; of the novel we hear a<br />
great deal. Let us next, then, reserving this<br />
important fact, speak of books which cannot<br />
expect a large circulation. A philosophical<br />
treatise, for instance; a book of essays by a<br />
writer who is not popular; a book of poems by<br />
a poet not yet popular; can hardly expect a large<br />
WOL. W.<br />
sale. Indeed, in some cases, the writer is fortunate<br />
in getting published at all; and there are many<br />
cases in which a publisher has produced a book<br />
by which he cannot hope to do more than recoup<br />
his expenditure.<br />
Let us return to a book, of which a single<br />
edition of IOOO copies represents the whole. If it<br />
is a volume of essays it is generally longer than<br />
the example quoted. Suppose it contains twenty<br />
sheets. The cost of production, not counting<br />
moulding, would be about £1oo. This cost is<br />
covered with a sale of 550. If, however, it is<br />
saddled with a royalty of 15 per cent. to the<br />
author, the book is not covered until a sale of<br />
723 copies. Now, the publisher may see his way<br />
to dispose of something like this number, but<br />
not of many more. Where, then, is his own share<br />
in the return ? It is manifestly impossible, with<br />
a sale so limited, to give so large a royalty. This<br />
consideration seems to introduce the deferred<br />
royalty; and, indeed, if the accounts are honestly<br />
presented, on an agreed understanding as to the<br />
proportion or share, a deferred royalty would<br />
seem the fairest. Thus with our figures a royalty<br />
would begin after 550 copies were sold. What<br />
should be the amount of the royalty P Clearly,<br />
the sale of every copy in the edition of Iooo,<br />
except the presentation copies, after 550 are gone,<br />
is so much profit. Therefore a royalty of 50 per<br />
cent. is only the old-fashioned half profit plan<br />
honestly carried out.<br />
Unfortunately the deferred royalty has been<br />
—and is—the easiest and the most common way<br />
of conveying the whole of the property into the<br />
publisher's hands. For instance, a case occurred<br />
some time ago in which such a book as we are<br />
considering was to be charged with a royalty<br />
of a shilling a copy after I 600 copies had been<br />
sold. Now, the book was of such a nature that<br />
its sale would probably never reach, or only<br />
just reach, I 600 copies. Suppose, however, an<br />
edition of 2000 copies were produced and all<br />
were sold. The cost of the book would be about<br />
3130; the returns, at 3s. 8d. a copy, would be<br />
about £350. The author would receive Is. On<br />
4OO copies, i.e., 32O ; the publisher would receive<br />
over £2OO. The figures are only approximate,<br />
but they are not far wrong. How does such<br />
an agreement as this strike the reader for<br />
equity ? Again, a very distinguished writer<br />
sought the advice of the Society sofme time ago<br />
on the following proposal. He was to give a<br />
certain firm a book—a little book which would<br />
cost a trifling sum to produce, and would be<br />
absolutely certain of success from the name<br />
alone of the writer. The firm proposed that a<br />
royalty of one-sixth should be given to the writer,<br />
to begin after 2000 copies had been sold / There<br />
• C 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 10 (#24) ##############################################<br />
<br />
IO THE AUTHOR.<br />
is no need of figures in this case in order to show<br />
the beauty of the arrangement.<br />
A third case. It was concerning a three-<br />
volume novel. The author accepted terms which<br />
promised large returns after the sale of 350<br />
copies. He never got anything. He found out<br />
afterwards that the publisher, guessing that there<br />
would be no demand for the book over and above<br />
350 copies, had not only named that number as<br />
the starting point for the royalty, but had also<br />
printed that number and no more, and had then<br />
distributed the type. He gave away about twenty<br />
copies and the libraries took the rest, and he<br />
made the little profit of £150 or so on the trans-<br />
action. How does this strike the reader for<br />
loyalty and honour?<br />
Under these circumstances a proposal of a<br />
deferred royalty must be regarded with great<br />
suspicion. This paper does not advance any<br />
opinion as to the royalty which should be regarded<br />
as fair. It gives the facts, approximately, as<br />
regards cost of production and returns. Readers<br />
must remember that, though it is always neces-<br />
sary to consider the case of a great success, it<br />
does not by any means follow that their own<br />
books are going to be greatly successful. They<br />
must also remember that to recoup the cost of<br />
production alone is not exactly satisfactory to<br />
the publisher. These considerations belong to<br />
the application of the figures given above.<br />
*— — —”<br />
P- - -e<br />
TWO AFTER DINNER SPEECHES,<br />
N responding to the toast of the “Trade,”<br />
proposed by the Lord Mayor at the book-<br />
sellers' trade dinner, held on April 14, Mr.<br />
John Murray said:<br />
“As regards that section of the trade with<br />
which I am personally connected, I will say<br />
that we publishers get a great deal of abuse,<br />
but up to the present we have not perished<br />
under that abuse. I believe there are certain<br />
people writing against us frequently. I believe<br />
there is a periodical devoted more or less to our<br />
shortcomings. But you know an author would<br />
not be an author if he were not a man of brilliant<br />
imagination. Well, gentlemen, when I think of<br />
what has passed, I am reminded ºf a little inci-<br />
dent which may have come within your know-<br />
ledge. There was an American gentleman—one<br />
of those whose tendencies lead them to come to<br />
other nations and teach other people their busi-<br />
ness—who came to Scotland and addressed some<br />
tenants against the landlord, and, feeling he had<br />
the sympathies of his audience, he asked if any-<br />
one would like to ask him a question. An old<br />
farmer arose and said, ‘Well, Mr. George, I<br />
think you are an owner of land yourself?’<br />
‘No,' was the reply. “Never interested in one?’<br />
said the farmer. “No ; I am neither agent or<br />
landlord, I have never had anything to do with<br />
land or landlords.” “No ; I thought so,” said the<br />
farmer and sat down. Now this is the way to<br />
treat our critics, and I offer them a hint not<br />
offered before. There were plans which in the<br />
long run would require the sanction of the<br />
courts to be enforced. I make a better sugges-<br />
tion: I say find me a man to write down in legal<br />
phrase, ‘Good feeling, mutual confidence, and<br />
friendship.' I say find me a man prepared in a<br />
right minded spirit to enter into an agreement<br />
honourably conceived, and I will show you the<br />
man who will draw up an agreement which will<br />
not require the courts to enforce it. That is the<br />
basis on which such a business should be<br />
made.” -<br />
It is fair to suppose that Mr. Murray directed<br />
these remarks against this paper—in fact, lest the<br />
audience should think that some other paper was<br />
intended, Mr. Macmillan afterwards explained<br />
that it was the Author. If so, one has to point<br />
out that the Author has never, at any time, or<br />
in any place, abused publishers. The Society of<br />
which it is the organ has pointed out most clearly<br />
and distinctly that it has not the slightest quarrel<br />
with honourable publishers. The Society has<br />
investigated and has exposed, partly in this<br />
paper, certain practices which make publishing<br />
in certain hands a mean and a dishonest trade.<br />
If Mr. Murray “has found certain persons<br />
writing against us,” I think he may fairly be<br />
called upon to explain more clearly what he<br />
TT168,1].S. -<br />
Next he relates a parable, by which he seems to<br />
imply that the Author tries to teach publishers<br />
their business. The Author does nothing of the<br />
kind; it does, however, try to teach authors their<br />
business. With this object in view it publishes the<br />
facts as to the actual cost of production, the trade<br />
allowances, the methods of advertising, the<br />
extent of copyright, the law of copyright, the<br />
meaning of royalties—all the points, in short,<br />
necessary to teach the author what the various<br />
clauses of an agreement may mean. Does Mr.<br />
Murray object to this kind of light? Finally,<br />
Mr. Murray offers to do the very thing which the<br />
Society most ardently desires and has always in<br />
view. I know not whether he was present at a<br />
meeting held in December, 1892, at which the<br />
chairman, Sir Frederick Pollock, stated plainly<br />
that it was incredible that honourable men could<br />
not meet and recognise some method or methods<br />
of publishing as fair and acceptable to both sides.<br />
That statement still stands unanswered—what is<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 11 (#25) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. I I<br />
In the way ? Frankly, the chief obstacles are the<br />
men who, being the leaders of the publishing<br />
trade, assume, at such meetings as the Book-<br />
sellers' dinner, that exposures—exposures which<br />
must be made—of over-reaching or sharping by<br />
the baser sort—are meant as attacks upon them-<br />
selves. If Mr. Murray will turn to page 9 of<br />
this number he will find there, as illustration,<br />
three agreements, not fraudulent, but sharp,<br />
recently offered to authors. One would ask him<br />
if they are such agreements as he approves. One<br />
would further ask him if he does not approve of<br />
the exposure and explanation of such agree-<br />
ments. I will show Mr. Murray, if he cares to<br />
See them, one or two other curious little agree-<br />
ments and accounts. And I will tell him, if<br />
he wishes, in confidence, the names of the firms<br />
concerned.<br />
The Committee, one is quite sure, will gladly<br />
consider any agreement which Mr. Murray may<br />
communicate in the very spirit which he desires.<br />
But, one would ask, how can there be any agree-<br />
ment which can be outside, and independent of,<br />
the law P Are publishers unique among mankind<br />
in being, as a body and individually, beyond<br />
reproach P Does Mr. Murray really believe<br />
this P<br />
For myself, I have always thought it a great<br />
misfortune for literature that such a publisher as<br />
Mr. John Murray does not welcome the Society<br />
with open arms. I have often said this privately.<br />
I now say it publicly. For—consider—if we tell<br />
a solicitor of standing that there are many black<br />
sheep in his profession; if we expose the tricks<br />
and sharpings of these black sheep, does that<br />
Solicitor get up in public and complain that<br />
certain people are always abusing “us?” Our<br />
experience of the methods of publishing is wide,<br />
and, in fact, unique. It is nothing less than a<br />
knowledge of the methods pursued by every pub-<br />
lishing house in London. And of certain houses<br />
—I must not say in this place which they are or<br />
how many they are—I declare that I cannot<br />
Conceive it possible that a single sentence in the<br />
Author (not counting correspondence) should be<br />
able to offend or irritate any member of any one<br />
of these firms.<br />
At the same dinner, Mr. Frederick Macmillan<br />
also spoke at greater length about the Author. He<br />
is reported to have said: “The relations between<br />
publishers and authors have always been satisfac-<br />
tory, and I believe the contrary opinion is chiefly<br />
due to the Author, which I believe has hitherto<br />
been thoroughly misunderstood. When this<br />
periodical first made its appearance before the<br />
world, and put before us preposterous statements<br />
based on elaborately collected information, varied<br />
by vague but offensive charges of dishonesty, there<br />
were many respectable persons who had passed<br />
their whole lives producing books who were much<br />
surprised, and some went so far as to be annoyed.<br />
I gave it some consideration, and tried to find<br />
what this periodical was. . In fact, if<br />
it is once established that the Author is a<br />
comic periodical, no doubt its circulation will<br />
very much increase. This is a digression merely<br />
suggested by Mr. Murray's reference to the<br />
Author.”<br />
I cannot agree that the relations of author<br />
and publisher are, or ever have been, satisfactory,<br />
for the simple reason that they are absolutely<br />
undefined, and that an author has to go and ask<br />
a publisher what terms he proposes. This is<br />
simple fact, and not an opinion at all. It is a<br />
fact in no way due to the Author, but is known<br />
and lamented among all authors whose work has<br />
any commercial value. As for the “preposterous<br />
statements,” one would like to know in detail, and<br />
with reference to page and volume, what these<br />
are. “Vague, but offensive charges of dis-<br />
honesty.” What are these ? Our charges of<br />
dishonesty are not vague, but perfectly clear and<br />
precise. For instance, he who makes a false<br />
return of accounts to his partner—how should he<br />
be described P. In general terms, what would the<br />
world call such a man? This is not vague. Will<br />
Mr. Macmillan explain how such a charge is<br />
Offensive P Or, since we cannot assume that he<br />
could be offended by such a charge as this, what<br />
and where are the “offensive ’’ charges? There<br />
are other practices which have also been quite<br />
clearly defined, and will be so again.<br />
As for the facts published, they chiefly consist<br />
of the facts as to the cost of production. Does<br />
Mr. Macmillan refer to these ? Does he object<br />
to this kind of light? One cannot assume that<br />
it is possible. In that case, what are the offend-<br />
ing statements P<br />
The part of Mr. Macmillan's speech which was<br />
directed personally against myself, I have taken<br />
out ; it does not concern our readers. He con-<br />
cludes with the soothing reflection that the<br />
Author is a comic paper. It is astonishing how<br />
much consolation has been obtained by persons<br />
who, for this or that reason, are angry with a<br />
paper by the consideration that, after all, it is only<br />
a comic paper. Since that is so, let us laugh and<br />
go on our way. There are many more little jokes<br />
coming along which will, we hope, preserve the<br />
comicality of our columns. Meanwhile, I repeat,<br />
what are those preposterous statements which have<br />
made Mr. Frederick Macmillan so very angry<br />
with the Author?<br />
EDITOR.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 12 (#26) ##############################################<br />
<br />
I 2 THE AUTHOIR.<br />
BOOK TALK,<br />
HE report in the newspaper London, of<br />
April 19, dealing with the metropolitan<br />
and suburban free libraries has received<br />
much attention from those interested in the free<br />
library movement, because statistics are there<br />
given which tend to show that the working of<br />
the Free Libraries Acts is not as successful as<br />
had been expected. To begin with, there are<br />
some parishes which will not adopt the Acts at<br />
all, and, whatever may have been their original<br />
reasons, it would be short-sighted and impolitic<br />
not to ask whether these statistics supplied in<br />
the article “What Londoners Read,” furnish<br />
these parishes with any new arguments for con-<br />
tinuing in the same course.<br />
The article states that the “free library move-<br />
ment in London seems to have come to a dead<br />
stop. It was late in starting, and only made<br />
satisfactory progress for a short period. Recently<br />
there have been discouraging defeats. It looks<br />
as if all the energy and enthusiasm thrown into the<br />
movement in 1887 and 1889 had been exhausted.<br />
. . .” Only half the people have yet the<br />
benefit of these valuable educational institutions.<br />
What is read in these libraries P Turning to<br />
the statistics themselves, there is only one thing<br />
to be said—readers of fiction are the class who<br />
have been able to find their wants most easily<br />
satisfied. Fiction in all the libraries has always<br />
the highest percentage. The writer of the article,<br />
who seems to think that people ought not to read<br />
novels, adds a special warning to show that the<br />
“conclusion that the public libraries are mainly<br />
used for the dissemination of fiction is erroneous,”<br />
for, and these are the three chief reasons: (1)<br />
Libraries possess more novels than other works<br />
quite as much because they are cheap as that<br />
they are often asked for. (2) Novels take a much<br />
shorter time to read than serious works. (3)<br />
Many novels borrowed and recorded in the per-<br />
centages are not read at all. And then follow<br />
three other minor reasons. The writer then goes<br />
on to make a comparison between the free library<br />
novel reader and the subscriber to Mudie, Smith,<br />
and the Grosvenor. Nothing, however, can be<br />
gained for the free library movement by such a<br />
course. If the free library readers have their<br />
weaknesses, they are not excused because the<br />
patrons of Mudie and Smith have theirs. In the<br />
next column the writer shows us what he considers<br />
the special weakness of the free library, for he gives<br />
us the names of the six most popular novelists.<br />
By a process of exhaustion it seems as though<br />
we could always find one of these libraries<br />
in which one or more of the novelists, popular<br />
elsewhere, received but little attention ; but we<br />
ning through them all.<br />
should find one name—Mrs. Henry Wood—run-<br />
If we proceed in the<br />
same way with particular novels, there is but<br />
one novel which seems to be read everywhere—<br />
Chelsea, Holborn, Bermondsey, Clerkenwell—they<br />
must have “East Lynne.” Saint Martin’s-in-the-<br />
Fields requires eight copies. “It is the demand<br />
for ‘East Lynne' which gives Mrs. Wood the first<br />
position. “East Lynne’ being the favourite, it is<br />
perhaps, after all, a fair comparison to say that the<br />
free library is to one class of people what Mudie<br />
and Smith are to another. How very unwise then<br />
it is to pit the masses against the classes in this<br />
matter of reading, when really their tastes overlap.<br />
The outcome of this clearly is that, judged as<br />
an educational institution, the education furnished<br />
by the free library is chiefly conveyed through<br />
the modern novel; a form of text-book which<br />
teaches history, manners, customs, religion,<br />
morals, taste, and a great many things besides.<br />
It must, of course, be very trying to the autho-<br />
rities of public libraries to see so many works,<br />
which would well deserve a place on their shelves,<br />
published at prices far beyond the reach of the<br />
free library resources. We have before us a<br />
small volume, “The Life of Fra Paolo Sarpi,” by<br />
the Rev. Alexander Robertson, which is enjoying<br />
a large sale, and which seems to us to be suitable<br />
in every way for our free libraries. It is the<br />
history of a very great man which is here brought<br />
into a small compass without losing sight of<br />
either the material facts of his life, or, what is<br />
the essence of biography the spirit with which<br />
he went about his own and his country’s affairs.<br />
It is not usual to find a manual of history and<br />
biography which can be recommended as a guide<br />
and a stimulus to our own people in their<br />
attempt to be perfectly clear minded on the two<br />
most difficult political ideas of our time—pro-<br />
gress and patriotism. It is just possible that<br />
those who have hitherto been content to take<br />
their knowledge of Fra Paolo Sarpi from Miss<br />
Campbell’s life will be disappointed with Mr.<br />
Robertson's monograph, because, except in the<br />
last chapter, he does not appear to give any<br />
very fresh information. The chief reason for<br />
recommending the book just Inow is that it brings<br />
out most clearly how English sympathies have<br />
hitherto been entirely on the side of true freedom,<br />
both in action and in thought, whenever the sup-<br />
port of England has been sought by States<br />
struggling against religious tyranny. If there<br />
are any who are inclined to question the support<br />
given by England to the formation of the Italian<br />
kingdom—a united Italy, catholic, patriotic, and<br />
anti-papal, will not fail to note how easily the<br />
struggle could be misrepresented by the misuse of<br />
our current political terms or Tories and Liberals.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 13 (#27) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. I 3<br />
It is almost impossible not to consider this<br />
volume as a political manual intended to show<br />
the triumph of the Liberals (using the word in a<br />
foreign sense) or constitutional party over the<br />
clerical party, the upholders of the absolute<br />
authority of the ruler of the then existing Papal<br />
States. Such an opposition of parties may seem<br />
strange to us who are, perhaps, accustomed to<br />
consider constitutionalism more as the property of<br />
Tories, or, let us say, Conservatives, than Liberals.<br />
Nevertheless, there is one reflection to be made, if<br />
we in England have not hitherto had a clerical<br />
party there are good reasons for believing that<br />
such a party may spring up and declare itself in<br />
the near future; and it will be interesting to see<br />
how the name Liberal, as we now use it, will have<br />
to be extended to include many who at the<br />
present time would style themselves Conserva-<br />
tives. It is from this consideration — the<br />
possibility of a clerical party arising in England<br />
—that Mr. Robertson's book will derive another<br />
element of popularity. He leaves us in no doubt<br />
whatever as to the vitality of the struggle.<br />
When we consider the varied literary and scien-<br />
tific achievements of our day, there is always a<br />
danger of overlooking the importance of pro-<br />
portion in time, especially in things political.<br />
For instance, we have here a conflict between<br />
liberty and tyranny which has been waged since<br />
the time of Dante. If we are considering the<br />
history of Man from Abraham to Darwin that is<br />
not a very long time, but if we are thinking only,<br />
as is here the case, of the development of con-<br />
stitutionalism, it is impossible not to contrast the<br />
quick growth of our free political institutions in<br />
England, after we had substituted the Sovereign<br />
for the Pope, with their growth in those countries<br />
which had still to reckon with the papal claims.<br />
To recognise that a constitution is a growth and<br />
not the creation of a minister—even a Sarpi–is<br />
the political lesson of this biography. It is<br />
shown that to be free to develop is the simple<br />
requirement of a constitutional commonwealth<br />
like the Venetian, or a constitutional monarchy<br />
like the kingdom of Italy.<br />
Mr. Robertson has written a most interesting<br />
book. As it is not our duty here to do more than<br />
find reasons for recommending its purchase to<br />
private buyers, and justifying the same by public<br />
ones, we may draw attention to the heads of the<br />
chapters showing the method adopted. We have<br />
three chapters dealing with Sarpi, as scholar,<br />
professor, and then provincial of the Servite<br />
Order of Friars. Chapter 4 describes him as<br />
scientist and philosopher, in which his position<br />
with regard to the discovery of the circulation of<br />
the blood and the amount of Harvey’s indebted-<br />
mess to him are noted. We observe that Mr.<br />
Robertson appears to take a somewhat different<br />
view of that question than Miss Campbell does.<br />
Up to this point Sarpi is shown rather as making<br />
preparation for the duties which afterwards<br />
devolved upon him; while the three following<br />
chapters are devoted to the noble and successful<br />
struggle of his political life. He is described as<br />
theological counsellor, as martyr, and as states-<br />
man-author. The last chapter, “In tomb and on<br />
pedestal,” tells how Sarpi's enemies tried to<br />
revenge themselves even on his remains, and gives<br />
their attempts—which were very successful—to<br />
prevent the statue decreed by the Senate and Doge<br />
On Feb. 7, 1623, being set up. This was not dome<br />
till 1892. Mr. Robertson writes: “In recognition<br />
of the fact that Fra Paolo embodied the spirit not<br />
only of the old republic of Venice, but also of the<br />
new kingdom of Italy, the day chosen for the<br />
unveiling of the statue was the auspicious one,<br />
Sept. 20.” The volume has a photograph from a<br />
picture of Sarpi, and another of the statue; there<br />
is also a fac-simile letter in Sarpi’s handwriting.<br />
* * *<br />
a- - -º<br />
CALIFORNIAN NOTES.<br />
HE following notes on two or three Cali-<br />
fornian writers, furnished by a Californian,<br />
may serve to infroduce them to the readers<br />
of the Author. The first is on Mrs. Margaret Collier<br />
Graham, whose stories in the Atlantic Monthly<br />
and in the Century magazine have attracted<br />
some attention during the past eighteen months.<br />
She is a California woman, having her home at<br />
Pasadena, in Southern California. Mrs. Graham<br />
first made her appearance in literature twelve<br />
years ago with a story which appeared in the<br />
California Magazine, a publication which after-<br />
wards became merged in the new series of the<br />
Overland. This story, “Jamie,” attracted much<br />
attention at the time, and was followed only by<br />
one or two fugitive efforts, after which the writer<br />
dropped into obscurity. The real cause for this<br />
suspension of literary effort was the prolonged<br />
illness of her husband, who died three years ago.<br />
The twelve years that intervened between Mrs.<br />
Graham's earlier and later work were filled with<br />
work and sorrow and love. But meanwhile the<br />
writer was unconsciously preparing for strong and<br />
purposeful effort in letters. This is why she<br />
seems to have sprung full fledged into literature.<br />
Her stories show the subtle discernment of cha-<br />
racter, and the happy sense of humour peculiar<br />
to Miss Mary E. Wilkins, whom she resembles<br />
without imitation. As Miss Wilkins belongs to<br />
the east, so Mrs. Graham belongs to the west.<br />
Where Miss Wilkins introduces us to the New<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 14 (#28) ##############################################<br />
<br />
I4. THE AUTHOR.<br />
England sewing circle, Mrs. Graham tells us of<br />
the outdoor life of the Far West. While Miss<br />
Wilkins shows us the homely furrows ploughed<br />
on the stony hillsides of the Granite Hills, Mrs.<br />
Graham pictures the freshly upturned virgin<br />
soil, full of latent possibilities, bathed in<br />
sunshine. The pathos of life is in her tales, yet<br />
what most captivates us is their humour. She<br />
has a fine touch, and the little she has published<br />
has been talked about, thought about, and dis-<br />
cussed, like the work of few writers during these<br />
last two years. Yet one who knows her well,<br />
ventures the prediction that these exquisite<br />
pictures of western life that she has given the<br />
reading public, will seem but child's play when<br />
compared to the strong and serious work of which<br />
she is capable, and which she will yet accomplish.<br />
Another writer, as yet not popular with English<br />
readers, is Mr. Cromwell Galpin, a newspaper man<br />
of Los Angeles.<br />
chiefly by his contributions to the child-literature<br />
of the day. He has now nearly completed a<br />
novel whose scenes deal with the ancient life of<br />
the Pueblo Indians, of which he has made a<br />
special study. The subject is a unique one, and<br />
the novel is certain to have a literary and<br />
historical value.<br />
Mr. Galpin is the writer who conceived the<br />
very original undertaking of publishing a folk-<br />
lore tale of several thousand words, which should<br />
Tead pleasantly and with euphony, without the<br />
employment of a single word that was not of<br />
pure Saxon origin. This feat he accomplished<br />
successfully, and the result was published in<br />
Wideawake two years ago.<br />
The Overland Monthly, California's best<br />
known literary publication, and from which Bret<br />
Harte sprang from obscurity to fame, has lately<br />
changed hands, becoming the property of Mr.<br />
Rounseville Wildman, a consular representative<br />
and writer of some repute, who takes the editorial<br />
chair. It is understood that Mr. W. W. Foote, a<br />
San Francisco criminal lawyer of repute, will have<br />
a voice in the management, and will become a<br />
regular contributor to the magazine.<br />
*— - —”<br />
TO A DISCOURTEOUS BEAUTY.<br />
(From CoRNEILLE.)<br />
Although my features, fair marquise,<br />
A trifle weatherworn have grown,<br />
The day will come, remember please,<br />
When you’ll find furrows on your own<br />
Naught upon earth, however bright,<br />
Can brave the scathing touch of Time;<br />
My wreath, now wan with winter's blight,<br />
Had once, like yours, its April prime !<br />
He has hitherto been known<br />
The same just stars in yonder blue,<br />
Life's course for both of us decree ;<br />
My past I gaze upon in you,<br />
Your future you behold in me !<br />
Yet charms I own which, sooth to speak,<br />
When yours have perished, shall endure,<br />
Against the worst that Time can wreak,<br />
Proudly, impregnably secure :<br />
Tricked in mere beauty’s transient gloss,<br />
My charms in chill disdain you hold;<br />
Yet, when all yours are worthless dross<br />
Mine still shall gleam intrinsic gold !<br />
They could preserve those lustrous eyes,<br />
Or bid their light extinguised be ;<br />
They could award you Helen's guise,<br />
Or hand you down as Hecate |<br />
Ay, with posterity, who'll lend<br />
Some slight regard to what I’ve writ,<br />
Your boasted beauty will depend<br />
On just what I may say of it !<br />
Lay this to heart, then, fair marquise—<br />
When next with “hauteur’ superfine<br />
You’d fain some hapless oldster freeze,<br />
Choose one whose pen's less sharp than mine !<br />
WILLIAM TOYNBEE.<br />
*-- ~ 2–?<br />
r—- * ~s<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
HE Report of the Dinner of the 31st ult.<br />
will appear in the July number.<br />
“Les éditeurs catholiques Letouzey et Ané com-<br />
paraissent aujourd'hui devant la cour d’assises<br />
de la Seine, présidee par M. Potier, sous l'accusa-<br />
tion de faux en écritures de commerce au préjudice<br />
de M. Léo Taxil.<br />
L'expertise aurait 6tabli que M. Léo Taxil avait<br />
été frustré, de la part de ses éditeurs, a propos du<br />
tirage de ses publications, d'une somme dépassant<br />
38,000 fr.<br />
M* Pouillet et Georges Maillard assistent MM,<br />
Letouzey et Ané.<br />
M. l'avocat-général Van Cassel soutient l’accu-<br />
sation. - - -<br />
L'affaire a 6té renvoyée.”—Siècle, May 30.<br />
We are called upon to thank certain Americans<br />
for a graceful act. They have quite privately and<br />
secretly collected a sum of money. With this they<br />
have caused to be made a marble bust of Keats,<br />
which is to be placed in Hampstead church. Mr.<br />
Gosse was informed of the plan as soon as the bust<br />
was completed, and was permitted to communicate<br />
it to the Times of May 25. The bust has<br />
arrived. It was brought over by Mr. Day, the<br />
projector of the gift. I suppose we ought, long<br />
ago, to have put up such a monument to the<br />
poet; certainly no poet lives more surely and<br />
more lovingly in our hearts than Keats; yet, on<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 15 (#29) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. I5<br />
the whole, it seems a good thing that we have<br />
left this offering to the Americans. We read in<br />
it a claim, or, if you please, an acknowledgment,<br />
that everything good and great written in our<br />
common language belongs to all who speak that<br />
language. We recognised this truth when we<br />
put up the monuments to Lowell and to Long-<br />
fellow in Westminster Abbey. I wish we could<br />
do more. We might present a statue of Haw-<br />
thorne to the pretty little town of Concord. We<br />
might put up a bust of Washington Irving in the<br />
City Hall of New York. We might give a statue<br />
of Oliver Wendell Holmes to the great hall of<br />
Harvard. Let us consider the subject. Mean-<br />
time we must welcome our American friends.<br />
The Weekly Sun has discovered a poet in a<br />
coal mine. That is to say, he has been in a coal<br />
mine, but ill-health keeps him in the light of day.<br />
He is quite young, about twenty-two years of<br />
age; his education has been slender; he is very<br />
poor. The Weekly Sun has published one of his<br />
poems, called “Life at Play.” The following<br />
stanzas, which seem to me graceful, simple, and<br />
promising, are taken from this poem :—<br />
The field-flowers rise from out their beds<br />
Of undulating green,<br />
And shyly lift their pretty heads<br />
To look upon the scene.<br />
All things are gay !<br />
For earth has doffed her garb uncouth,<br />
And beauty crowns and kisses youth,<br />
And Life's at play.<br />
The breeze blows gaily o'er the land,<br />
And whispers in the trees,<br />
And tosses with a playful hand<br />
The corn to tumbling seas.<br />
All things are gay !<br />
A thousand waves in concert run,<br />
And glare and glitter in the sun,<br />
While Life’s at play.<br />
The world looks young, as golden gleams<br />
Of sunshine wreathe her brow ;<br />
And Nature’s wealth of fruitage teems,<br />
And Age seems younger now.<br />
All things are gay !<br />
The living rules the dead again,<br />
The dreams of youth pulsate the brain,<br />
While Life’s at play.<br />
An attempt is being made to raise a small fund<br />
for this young poet. It is to cultivate his know-<br />
ledge. The editor of the Weekly Sun, Tudor-<br />
street, E.C., is willing to receive contributions.<br />
Will the readers of this paper, who should, above<br />
all others, love poetry and poets, respond to the<br />
appeal? The man may be another Burns—<br />
another Keats.<br />
I read in the Westminster Gazette that there<br />
will shortly be issued a History of the Riving-<br />
tons from the year 1711. There have been<br />
VOI,. W.<br />
published from time to time several books on the<br />
history of publishers and booksellers, but never,<br />
so far as I know, any complete history of any one<br />
house. We want in such a record, not only an<br />
account of the books published, and the general<br />
success, enterprise, and glorification of the firm,<br />
but also a history of its relations with authors.<br />
In the year 1711, for instance, and for a hundred<br />
years afterwards, the men who lived by literature<br />
were a miserably poor and, for the most part, a<br />
despised race; they were called Grub-street poets,<br />
publishers’ hacks, starveling authors, and other<br />
agreeable names; the luckless tribe were game for<br />
everybody, and especially for their more successful<br />
brethren. Will the historian of the Rivington<br />
House tell us something of the actual conditions<br />
under which literature was then produced ?<br />
What, for instance, was the extent of the market<br />
for English books? Was there any export to<br />
America P. Were the poor scribes paid for their<br />
work in anything like a fair proportion to its<br />
marketable value P When Oliver Goldsmith got<br />
2960 for the “Vicar of Wakefield,” what did the<br />
purchaser make out of it? When Pope received<br />
the sum of £9000 for his translation of Homer,<br />
what did his publishers make P When was the<br />
practice of buying a work outright changed to<br />
that of a profit sharing agreement P When and<br />
by whom was a royalty system introduced?<br />
What losses show the existence of the risks that<br />
were certainly encountered in the last century? I<br />
have in my possession a bundle of accounts<br />
showing how publishers associated for the pro-<br />
duction of one book, each taking a proportion of<br />
the expense of production. I believe that, until<br />
quite recently, the practice was common. Then<br />
one would like printers’ accounts of the last<br />
century; others of fifty years ago, and others<br />
of to-day, showing the changes in that respect.<br />
And there should be an account of dealings with<br />
the country bookseller. In this way the history<br />
of the Publishing House of Rivington might<br />
become a most important contribution to the<br />
history of the commercial side of literature.<br />
The proposals for a collected edition of Steven-<br />
son's works are before me. They have been<br />
issued by several publishers in varying forms, and<br />
it has hitherto been rather difficult to put together<br />
a complete collection. Arrangements have<br />
been made with all his publishers, and the result<br />
has been a general consent to the issue of a<br />
uniform edition. Mr. Sidney Colvin will super-<br />
intend the edition; Mr. W. Hole, R.S.A., will<br />
provide an etched portrait ; Messrs. Constable,<br />
of Edinburgh, will print the work—their name is<br />
a guarantee that the printing will be the best<br />
D<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 16 (#30) ##############################################<br />
<br />
I6 THE AUTHOR.<br />
possible.; and Messrs. Chatto and Windus will<br />
distribute the books when they are ready. The<br />
edition is limited to 1035 copies, of which thirty-<br />
five will be reserved for presentation copies; the<br />
remainder will be offered to the public in twenty<br />
volumes, at 12s. 6d. each. Of the thousand, 300<br />
have been subscribed for America and the colo-<br />
nies. It is evident that the desire of the editors<br />
is to produce an edition which will become scarce<br />
and costly from the very commencement. Any<br />
bookseller will receive an order. I shall be very<br />
much surprised if there are any left within a week<br />
of this date.<br />
The Ossianic problem is to be reopened. It is<br />
like the “Man with the Iron Mask,” or the<br />
“Letters of Junius,” always waiting to be re-<br />
opened and discussed over again. The world<br />
should be thankful to Mr. Macpherson for pro-<br />
viding one more subject for the discussion of<br />
every successive generation. This time it is<br />
Mr. Bailey Saunders who revives the dispute, with<br />
a life of Macpherson in which to set it.<br />
“An Oxford Graduate” sends his literary<br />
experience. He says that he has for many years<br />
attempted to obtain entrance into the magazines,<br />
but with very discouraging results. The best<br />
magazines always return his MSS. ; he some-<br />
times succeeds in the second-rate papers. But<br />
he says: “However bad my work may be, it is at<br />
least as good as one-half of the average articles<br />
published even in first-class magazines. There<br />
is the sting ; this the bitterness one cannot get<br />
over.” Here lies, as the Oxford Graduate puts it,<br />
the true bitterness of failure, that the writer who<br />
cannot get in is unable to discern in what respects<br />
his work is worse than that accepted. It is not<br />
enough to say that MSS. offered by unknown<br />
writers are returned unread. A vast number of<br />
writers, from Boz downwards, have begun by<br />
offering their unknown work. Nor is it enough to<br />
say that editors do not read what is offered them.<br />
Editors may sometimes make mistakes; they may<br />
not always have the time to read all the MSS.<br />
sent to them; but it is a certain fact that editors,<br />
as a rule, do read contributions sent in to them,<br />
and do try to get good work. Otherwise they<br />
would not be editors, but mechanical clerks.<br />
There seems no reply possible to the “Oxford<br />
Graduate,” except the suggestion that long-con-<br />
tinued and almost unbroken failure must mean<br />
something—it may be in the form or the style—<br />
which militates against his success. §<br />
A correspondent asks the following question:<br />
“Could the Society give any indication to young<br />
writers as to the character of publishing houses,<br />
so as to avoid the great waste of time in sending<br />
work & priori unlikely to suit them P’’<br />
The Society cannot possibly do this. It can<br />
advise, and daily does advise, authors in all<br />
branches of literature what houses are likely to<br />
consider their work, and what houses are likely<br />
to treat them fairly if they are inclined to accept<br />
their work. So that, if the writer confines himself<br />
to these houses, and is careful not to sign agree-<br />
ments without advice, he is at all events kept out<br />
of harm. But our correspondent means more<br />
than this. He is of opinion that publishers have<br />
certain leanings in this direction or that. This is<br />
not generally the case. Those publishers who<br />
publish novels will publish novels of any kind,<br />
provided they are not contra bonos mores and are<br />
likely to be in demand. And the same may be<br />
stated of every kind of book, except technical<br />
works, e.g., a general publisher should not be<br />
asked to produce new books on Arabic Philology,<br />
or on Medicine, or on Law, or on Cuneiform<br />
Inscriptions. But history, poetry, fiction, voyages,<br />
travels, and belles lettres generally of all kinds<br />
fall into the work undertaken by any publisher.<br />
The Society has to deplore the death of Mr.<br />
Edmund Yates. He had been a member of our<br />
council since the formation of the Society. He<br />
always took a deep interest in the welfare of the<br />
Society. At the outset, when our future was<br />
uncertain and extremely dark, the adhesion of every<br />
single man or woman of letters was important,<br />
and especially of such a man as Edmund Yates,<br />
novelist, journalist, and editor. His literary<br />
career, which practically ended with- the success<br />
of the World, was wide and varied. He was editor,<br />
One after another, of half a dozen magazines; he<br />
wrote many admirable novels, some of which<br />
still keep their place, and will continue to live a<br />
great deal longer than the space generally allotted<br />
even to successful novels. And he was a man of<br />
most kindly heart. With him has gone one of the<br />
few links remaining to connect the men of the<br />
Nineties with the men of the Fifties. Edmund<br />
Yates was from his birth associated with literary<br />
and dramatic folk. He was a personal friend of<br />
men much older than himself—Dickens, Albert<br />
Smith, Frank Smedley, Anthony Trollope. He<br />
began to write very early, and some of his novels<br />
still retain their hold upon the public. To the<br />
younger generation he is known chiefly as the<br />
editor of the World, which he himself founded in<br />
1874. When one considers that the World is<br />
always regarded as a “personal ‘’ paper; that he<br />
was almost considered as the sole writer of it,<br />
though his staff was large, and included many<br />
writers of the very first order, it is wonderful<br />
that he made so few enemies. There are papers,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 17 (#31) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 17<br />
for instance, whose editors make more enemies in<br />
a single year than Yates made in twenty years.<br />
The crowd of mourners—representing all kinds of<br />
people — which filled the Savoy Chapel at his<br />
funeral, and the grief that was marked on every<br />
face, proclaimed the loss that his death has caused.<br />
It was perhaps in kindness of heart that he once<br />
opened the pages of the World to a couple of men<br />
who were trying an experiment in collaboration.<br />
That was in 1876, and the turning point in that<br />
experiment proved to be that appearance in the<br />
World. I have always regarded this event in my<br />
little literary history not so much a stroke of good<br />
fortune as a personal favour bestowed, out of<br />
sheer kindness, upon my collaborateur, whom he<br />
knew slightly, and upon myself, whom he did not<br />
then know at all. —<br />
Another loss to letters is the death of Henry<br />
Morley. No two men could be more opposite<br />
than Edmund Yates and Henry Morley. The<br />
former an artist of the true artistic temperament;<br />
the latter a worker, always at work—learning,<br />
writing, teaching, transcribing, editing, inditing,<br />
histories of literature. We want such men as<br />
Henry Morley; they are most useful in their<br />
generation. Literature is like an army always<br />
on review. First and foremost are the fighting<br />
men; they are represented by the authors them-<br />
selves, the poets, dramatists, novelists, essayists,<br />
historians; then there are the critics, who repre-<br />
sent the bystanders and lookers on ; then the<br />
commissariat, represented by the publishers —<br />
some of the soldiers complain that the uniform of<br />
the commissariat is much finer than their own,<br />
and that their mess is much superior to the<br />
regimental mess; then there are the men like<br />
Henry Morley, who are represented by the clerks<br />
and keepers of the regimental records. Henry<br />
Morley was not one of the regiment, a fighting<br />
man, an original writer; nor was he a critic ; his<br />
work was to keep the records of the regiment,<br />
and he kept them very well. As a professor, and<br />
as the Warden of University Hall, he was widely<br />
and deservedly popular.<br />
Yet a third. Dr. Richard Morris is dead.<br />
With the single exception of Professor Skeat, no<br />
man living or dead has ever done so much for<br />
the study of our own old literature. It was<br />
fortunate for us, as well as the Early English<br />
Text Society, that his services were available,<br />
as well as those of Professor Skeat, during the<br />
early years of its existence. Very few societies<br />
have been able to command the work—gratuitous<br />
work, I believe—of such eminent scholars and<br />
patient workers as those two contributors, who<br />
simply created the success of the Society.<br />
The book of the month is Mr. Conway's Hima-<br />
layan Exploration. There has been universal<br />
agreement in all the papers on that point. One<br />
thing, at least, may be said concerning critics.<br />
When they all agree that a book is good the<br />
verdict may be accepted without a question.<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
*—— — —”<br />
-*.<br />
FEUILLETON,<br />
A PIOUS FRAUD. -<br />
Y the railway system irreverently known as<br />
the “Flying Watkin,” two gentlemen,<br />
with whom we are about to become<br />
acquainted, were travelling down into Kent.<br />
One was a man in the prime of life; a well-made<br />
fellow, with a pleasantly obtrusive waistcoat, and<br />
an evidence of comfortable prosperity about him.<br />
He had a merry eye, with attachments of white<br />
crow's-feet, as though he had been for a long time<br />
past smiling and laughing in a strong sunlight.<br />
And yet in spite of all this lurking mirth there<br />
was something hard about his face. His mouth<br />
was scornful, and there was something of the<br />
cynic apparent in spite of his look of bonhomie.<br />
His companion—or rather his fellow traveller, for<br />
they were not acquainted—was a much younger<br />
man, not more than twenty-five; rather above the<br />
middle height, and with a fine pair of intelligent<br />
eyes in his head. He was not good looking, but<br />
yet he was undeniably attractive. How, it would<br />
be perhaps impossible to explain. Grim determi-<br />
nation was his chief characteristic, tempered with<br />
a quiet air of disgust and weariness. These two<br />
travellers had the compartment to themselves,<br />
for it was a midday train, and almost empty.<br />
The younger traveller had exhausted his paper<br />
before they had travelled many miles, and then,<br />
with a muttered curse at the line in general, he<br />
rose, put his hat in the rack, and taking down<br />
down from that altitude something rolled in<br />
brown paper, began to undo the string. “I<br />
wonder what is wrong now,” he said under his<br />
breath, as he opened a small note inclosed in the<br />
parcel. He read the note and laughed, while<br />
his vis-à-vis looked at him in some amazement.<br />
It was not a pleasant laugh by any means, and it<br />
was not good to hear. Next he unrolled the<br />
document contained in the brown paper roll, and,<br />
as the elder traveller saw at a glance, it was a<br />
type-written play. He turned over certain leaves,<br />
removing certain marks as he did so, and laughing<br />
each time—if possible more unpleasantly than<br />
before. He soon, however, resumed his accus-<br />
tomed looked of weariness, and, leaning back in<br />
his corner, proceeded to read again. But by this<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 18 (#32) ##############################################<br />
<br />
18 THE<br />
AUTHOR.<br />
time he had excited the interest of the elder man,<br />
who, putting on his glasses, read the name of the<br />
play on the cover. He became uneasy, and rather<br />
excited—why he did not quite know. At length<br />
he could contain himself no longer.<br />
“Allow me, sir, to congratulate you on the<br />
name of your play.”<br />
The younger man looked up curiously and<br />
suddenly. The elder continued,<br />
“Hope you don't think me rude, but I’ve been<br />
watching you ever since you undid your roll. I<br />
watched your disgust, I heard your laugh. I am<br />
well acquainted with that sort of thing. I’m a<br />
playwright myself. My card.”<br />
The young man took the pasteboard smilingly.<br />
Looked at it. His face immediately became<br />
serious. He was so astonished that he was momen-<br />
tarily incapable of any other remark than “Oh.”<br />
For he read “Herod Wingiffle,” and knew then<br />
that he was sitting opposite to perhaps the<br />
leading playwright of the day<br />
“It’s rather a formidable name I’ll allow,” said<br />
Wingiffle apologetically.<br />
“It is, indeed,” said the young man, “I<br />
haven’t a card with me, but my name is Herbert<br />
Grant.”<br />
“Thank you,” said the other simply. “Yes, it is<br />
rather startling, but I didn’t christen myself or<br />
I’d have managed differently.”<br />
“Oh, I wasn’t meaning that way,” said Grant,<br />
laughing; “I was rather surprised at finding a man<br />
in such a position as yours”—Wingiffle inclined<br />
his head—“taking any notice of a new hand.”<br />
“Inoticed the title of your play, and whether<br />
it is a good name for that play or not of course I<br />
can’t say, but it's an attractive title anyway.”<br />
“You are very good.”<br />
“Not at all. I suppose you have had it<br />
returned P’’<br />
“Yes—that’s it.”<br />
“They don’t like it?”<br />
“So they say here,” putting hand on note,<br />
“but I used certain marks which have not been<br />
disturbed at all !”<br />
“You mean ?” queried Wingiffle.<br />
“That it can’t have been read at all.<br />
have changed the wrappers, and that is all<br />
“Ah, there are a lot of funny little ways con-<br />
nected with theatrical management. Er—How<br />
old are you, and when did you begin to write for<br />
the stage?” He asked these two questions very<br />
abruptly.<br />
“I’m twenty-five, and I began to scribble when<br />
I was nineteen.”<br />
“Oh,” said Wingiffle, rather heartlessly, as<br />
Grant thought. Wingiffle continued musingly,<br />
“I began at seventeen, and my first produc-<br />
tion happened when I was thirty-five.”<br />
They<br />
122<br />
It was Grant's turn to say “Oh,” and he said.<br />
it with considerable fervour.<br />
“I don't want to discourage you,” Wingiffle<br />
was going on when Grant laughed—that hard<br />
hopeless laugh of his.<br />
“Ah! I see,” said the sympathetic playwright,<br />
“you have had a good deal of it; perhaps I had<br />
better say no more.”<br />
“Oh, please do,” said Grant, stopping his<br />
laugh suddenly. “I have had a good deal of<br />
discouragement, and I have been robbed, but you<br />
are the first playwright I have ever met, and—<br />
and—please go on.”<br />
Wingiffle smiled at the ingenuous young man.<br />
“Robbed, eh?” he queried.<br />
“Aye, robbed. I sent a play—not this one—<br />
up to a certain manager, say in the late spring.<br />
I got it back in August with an intimation that<br />
it was unsuitable, as “women did not do such<br />
things.’”<br />
“You had made use of the eternal woman<br />
question?” asked Wingiffle.<br />
“I had and I hadn’t. I had used woman—<br />
oh, well then—as she never was yet used. But<br />
that wasn’t to say that she won’t be so used<br />
Some day. Can you, can any man, get up and<br />
declare that there is anything a woman will<br />
not do P” -<br />
“You mustn't put me on my oath,” said<br />
Wingiffle, laughing.<br />
“Anyhow,” continued Grant, smiling in spite<br />
of his indignation. “Anyhow I got my play<br />
back in August. In the following January was<br />
produced—at this very theatre—a play by a<br />
crack author—Ishan’t mention names—dealing<br />
broadly with my subject, with the difference that<br />
it placed women in an absolutely impossible<br />
light. And I know for a fact that this play was<br />
not commenced until the late autumn after the<br />
return of my MS.”<br />
“Possible,” said Wingiffle. “It isn't always<br />
the playwright's fault. Managers, you see, are un-<br />
doubtedly inundated with MSS.; those belonging<br />
to unknown authors are perhaps scamped through.<br />
There are details, say, in a play by a new hand<br />
that are not liked while the main idea is approved.<br />
Then, instead of writing to the luckless author,<br />
saying, “I like your play, will you make certain<br />
alterations, and so forth,’ the fellow calmly returns<br />
your screed while he gives out an order to a<br />
dramatist, whose work he knows is generally<br />
approved, for a play to be written round an idea<br />
and some scenes. Your idea and your scenes.<br />
It is the greatest fluke for a novice to gain a<br />
footing. Be his work ever so good, someone<br />
is sure to object to something. His dialogue,<br />
his characterisation, his dramatic action, his<br />
Scenes, his curtains—all can be attacked. If he’s<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 19 (#33) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. I9<br />
right in one, A. says he's wrong in another, while<br />
B. reverses A.’s verdict. I candidly tell you that<br />
I got my first footing by fluke; the story is too<br />
long to tell now. I’ve been snubbed just as you<br />
have been ; but I beat you in one particular ”—<br />
and he laughed heartily—“I have actually been<br />
criticised before production—the production was<br />
delayed at the last moment, but the criticism<br />
came out ; and so did the recompense—out of the<br />
rascal's pocket.” Here both passengers laughed<br />
in concert until Wingiffle spoke again, for Grant<br />
was altogether too fascinated to utter a syllable.<br />
Wingiffle continued, -<br />
“But all this talk of myself isn’t touching you<br />
much. I don’t know how you’ll take it—you<br />
may be suspicious, I couldn't express surprise at<br />
it—but if you like, as a practical, accepted play-<br />
Wright, I’ll read your play and see if I can give<br />
you any hints that might be useful.”<br />
Grant thanked his new-found friend very much<br />
for his kindness.<br />
Wingiffle took no notice at all of this except by<br />
a bow. He said, “Written much P”<br />
“A good deal,” Grant replied, “but it all<br />
comes back to me; but I know—(here he looked<br />
dreamily out of the window)—I shall get a hear-<br />
ing some day.”<br />
His companion gazed at him critically ; he<br />
seemed interested in the young man.<br />
“I believe you will,” he said rather impres-<br />
sively. “I couldn't tell you why I say so or why<br />
I believe it, but—I believe you will.”<br />
“Really, this is very encouraging,” said Grant,<br />
brightening up, “and I think I shall try again,<br />
after all.”<br />
“Of course you'll try again—you weren't going<br />
to give up P”<br />
“For a time I was. You see, I do a little hack<br />
work for a paper or two, and I was going to<br />
devote myself more to that. I manage to scrape<br />
together enough to live upon down in the village,<br />
but I want to be doing something better. Still,<br />
I must go back to it for a time.”<br />
“Give me your play,” said Wingiffle.<br />
Grant rolled it up and handed it over. It gave<br />
him a little pang to see his cherished play coldly<br />
set aside with newspapers and gloves, but<br />
Wºme chatted so kindly that he soon forgot<br />
that.<br />
Even a railway journey by the S.E.R. must<br />
come to an end at some time or other, and in<br />
due course Grant got down at his station.<br />
Wingiffle had to go some seven miles further,<br />
where he had taken a cottage for the summer.<br />
“Then I'll write you and let you know all<br />
about your play. Mind, I shall criticise it, I<br />
promise you, just as it seems to me, a practical<br />
dramatist. Good-bye, good-bye ’’ and the<br />
cheery fellow drew in his head after waving<br />
adieu to his late companion, on whom his ex-<br />
hilaration and heartiness had acted like cham-<br />
pagne.<br />
You may be quite sure that Grant passed a<br />
very pleasant evening with the remembrance of<br />
Wingiffle's comforting words for company. Of<br />
course he couldn’t sleep when at last he went to<br />
bed, thinking it a wonderful thing that he should<br />
have awakened sympathy in a man at the top of<br />
his profession ; and equally of course, when he<br />
awoke next morning he was disposed to take a<br />
rather gloomy view of his prospects, just by way<br />
of reaction.<br />
At eleven in the morning Mr. Wingiffle sur-<br />
prised him by a visit. -<br />
“Mr. Grant,” he said, “I was distinctly patro-<br />
nising to you last night.”<br />
This was a bold statement which could bear<br />
more than one interpretation, so Grant looked<br />
uncomfortable and said nothing.<br />
“Yes, I was,” said Wingiffle as though Grant<br />
had denied it, “and I have come to apologise for<br />
it.”<br />
“I assure you there is nothing to apologise<br />
for.”<br />
“My dear young fellow,” said the dramatist<br />
rising, “allow me to shake hands again.” Grant<br />
rose. “I patronise you ! Ha!, ha. It's laugh-<br />
able. Your play is a masterpiece.”<br />
“Good heavens,” ejaculated Grant, pale as a<br />
ghost.<br />
“Yes, a masterpiece. It's well conceived,<br />
interesting, absolutely novel in treatment and<br />
design, and—in short, my dear fellow, allow me to<br />
congratulate you on a most striking performance.<br />
I—well—I can't tell you much now, I’m feeling<br />
almost excited but—are you doing anything parti-<br />
cular to-day ?” Grant said he was not.<br />
“Then it will be a real pleasure to my wife and<br />
self if you will drive back with me to lunch<br />
—you'll come won't you?” -<br />
“I’ll come with pleasure,” then he laughed,<br />
this time pleasantly. “You must excuse me,” he<br />
added, “if I seem at all wandering in my replies,<br />
but I—this is rather a shock. It would be mock<br />
modesty on my part to pretend that I didn’t<br />
think it a real good play. I know it is. . But I<br />
didn’t know it was a masterpiece.”<br />
“You go and change your clothes,” said Win-<br />
giffle, “at once, and come along.”<br />
Away went the young man. He trod on no<br />
floor—he encountered no stairs. It was all<br />
cloudland to him, and as for his bedroom that<br />
was fairyland, and his change of clothes wishing-<br />
garments. He wasn't long you may be sure, and<br />
soon he was seated beside Wingiffle bowling along<br />
towards the latter's cottage.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 20 (#34) ##############################################<br />
<br />
2O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
“And now then,” said Wingiffle, after lunch,<br />
as they sat out under the trees, “will you put<br />
yourself further into my power? Ha, ha!”<br />
he exclaimed, in melodramatic fashion, “but I<br />
must dissemble or I shall frighten my prey,” and<br />
the odd creature took two or three long strides of<br />
the sort favoured by stage conspirators, while his<br />
wife and his visitor laughed at his antics.<br />
“Seriously now,” and he sat down again, “this<br />
is what I want. Will you let me have that play<br />
run out again in type ; will you put a new title<br />
to it, and will you let my name appear as the<br />
author of it?” -<br />
“If it's any use—-” Grant was beginning.<br />
“Any use ! Look here. Only my name, it is<br />
still your play, but my name appears. I will<br />
take it again to Magnus Maximus. He hasn’t<br />
seen anything but the title, and probably not<br />
that. I know it is just the play for him, and I<br />
know it will be the play of the year. I can make<br />
a better bargain, too, with him than you could ;<br />
and, upon the whole, I think we shall make<br />
Magnus Maximus look rather insignificant.”<br />
“I don’t know what to say to you, or how to<br />
thank you -<br />
“Don’t try it then—don't try it. Wait until<br />
it is launched, and then we’ll see what we shall<br />
see. You will place yourself unreservedly in my<br />
hands P” -<br />
“I will.”<br />
“T'is well; ha, ha!”<br />
About a month later Wingriffle looked in upon<br />
Grant again. He was in a great state of excite-<br />
ment. -<br />
“Taken P” cried Grant.<br />
“Taken; I should just think so,” almost<br />
shouted the other. -<br />
And then Grant, forgetful of all dignity, began<br />
to perform one of the wildest dances ever seen<br />
upon this globe. His landlady, looking out of<br />
window on hearing the turmoil, withdrew shud-<br />
dering at the prospect of having a madman for a<br />
lodger.<br />
“In with you,” cried Grant. “Now tell us all<br />
about it.”<br />
“Well, you know,” said his hardly less excited<br />
friend, “I dressed the part so to speak—culti-<br />
wated a haggard look—and then rushed him with<br />
blood-shot eyes—as though I had been up all<br />
night superintending something stupendous.”<br />
“Good heavens, my dear chap,” said old<br />
Maximus, “here sit down here, sit down—here<br />
drink this,” and so on. “Oh, I played well,<br />
Herbert’” (by this time, of course, they were on<br />
front-name terms). “I laid my hand on the<br />
play. Read that. I said, read that ; if it doesn’t<br />
stagger you—if it doesn't bring you a fortune—<br />
never produce another play that I bring you.<br />
With that I walked straight out, leaving him<br />
staring after me in amazement.”.<br />
Grant laughed heartily at his<br />
description.<br />
“It won't hurt him,” continued Wingiffle, “and<br />
it's only a pious fraud. Maximus is not a bad<br />
fellow in his way, but he—well, he should attend<br />
to business better.”<br />
“But after all this?” queried Grant.<br />
“Why, he sends round to me same afternoon,<br />
is coming to supper with me that night. Never<br />
had anything like it, and so on. Well, the long<br />
and the short of it is that the play is accepted,<br />
that I have stipulated that it shall be produced<br />
friend’s<br />
within three months, and that I’ve made such terms<br />
that I can only whisper them. Now, no thanks—<br />
you're to wait, you remember that. Wait until<br />
the production Maximus likes the name—he<br />
likes his part—though I’m glad you haven’t put<br />
all the fat into one part—and he likes himself<br />
generally, for he knows, and I know, that he is<br />
going to produce a success.” -<br />
# # *: #: $:<br />
The long-expected night arrived at last. A<br />
typical first-night house had gathered to witness<br />
Herod Wingiffle's latest masterpiece. Herod<br />
himself was there in front (everyone said how<br />
calm and cool he looked, and how unusual, &c.,<br />
and everyone was very much surprised), with his<br />
wife and a young friend, Mr. Herbert Grant, who<br />
for some reason was looking rather wild-eyed<br />
and pale. - *<br />
“Your friend unwell ?” whispered a critic to<br />
Herod. -<br />
“No, oh no!” Herod whispered back, “sympa-<br />
thetic, intensely sympathetic.”<br />
The critic replied by raising his eyebrows to<br />
express his surprise, and just then the curtain<br />
went up. -<br />
“Keep cool,” said Herod to his young friend,<br />
and Mrs. Wingiffle added a few soothing phrases.<br />
It soon became apparent that it was a singularly<br />
interesting play. At the end of the first act<br />
people turned to congratulate Herod, but he had<br />
mysteriously disappeared, though he returned to<br />
his seat as the curtain rose on Act II. The same<br />
thing occurred at the end of each act, and at the<br />
close there was a perfect hurricane of applause.<br />
After obeying the laws of precedent governing<br />
similar proceedings, the manager stepped before<br />
the curtain, when the author was called, with a<br />
puzzled look on his face, and a slip of paper in<br />
his hand. As soon as he could speak he said:<br />
“Ladies and gentlemen.—I have just received<br />
this note from Mr. Herod Wingiffle.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 21 (#35) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOI?. 2 I<br />
“‘Dear Maximus, I have imposed upon you<br />
piously, and with the consent of the real author<br />
of this play. I did not write it. You haven’t<br />
hurt yourself, and you have done an act of justice.<br />
I may say that the author is in front.—Yours,<br />
FIEROD.’<br />
“Does anyone know what this means ?” asked<br />
the manager of the astonished house. “Is the<br />
author in the house P” he added. And then<br />
there was a short pause. Everyone looking at<br />
everyone else.<br />
“Get up and speak,” whispered Mrs. Wingiffle,<br />
and Herbert rose. They were seated rather to<br />
the right in the last row but one of the stalls.<br />
“I am the author,” he said, and his voice, though<br />
he did not speak loudly, rang through the house.<br />
A thousand eyes were instantly bent upon him.<br />
He continued rather mercilessly, “I sent this<br />
play up to Mr. Maximus myself more than six<br />
months ago. It was returned to me by him<br />
as being unsuited to his theatre. How he knew<br />
that then it is not for me to say, for certain marks<br />
I had placed between the leaves were undis-<br />
turbed when the play was returned to me. It<br />
had not been read at all. Only the title of the<br />
play has been altered since. Luckily I met Mr.<br />
Wingiffle. He offered to read my play. He said<br />
that he liked it and would play a pious fraud<br />
upon Mr. Maximus (some people laughed here,<br />
but seeing the sternness on the young man's face<br />
they looked grave again). He took it for me to<br />
him as his own piece, and that very day it was<br />
accepted. I have only to apologise to you all<br />
for making you so long a speech.” And he<br />
bowed to the house and sat down, while cheer<br />
after cheer rose to the roof. The manager had<br />
disappeared. R. S.<br />
*-* -º<br />
ar- ~~<br />
S0-SO-SOCIOLOGY.<br />
167. ISEASE is a medium between weaken-<br />
|) ing cause and wasting effect.<br />
- I68. When mystery becomes a<br />
luxury, misery seems a necessity.<br />
I69. It is far easier to love the unlikely than<br />
to like the unlovely.<br />
170. Ignorance of ignorance is bad; indiffer-<br />
ence, worse; insolence, worst.<br />
I71. Civilisation is a concord of cohesion, co-<br />
operation, and culture.<br />
172. Were the human always the humane,<br />
Man would have no despairs. -<br />
173. The present is more miraculous than<br />
the past, but less mysterious.<br />
I74. The blend or the breed is of more avail<br />
than the brand: - -<br />
175. Education gives Man a greater chance:<br />
evolution, a higher choice.<br />
176. From the common conflict of options<br />
emerges the consensus of opinions. -<br />
177. The value of machinery depends on<br />
whether it ministers or masters.<br />
I78. Gratitude is an education as well as an<br />
expediency expedience. -<br />
179. Discipline ceases to be a duty when it<br />
becomes a tyranny. *<br />
18O. Love will always out, but few can always<br />
recognise it. *<br />
181. Only the wisest can ever find the best in<br />
the worst.<br />
182. Love and contempt, though ever least<br />
akin, seem often most alike. º,<br />
183. Spite is one of the commonest simulators<br />
of sincerity.<br />
184. Folly is the favourite child of ignorance<br />
and of Vanity.<br />
185. Gift without grace is like knowledge<br />
without wisdom. --<br />
186. Truth is oftener a talent than an accom-<br />
plishment.<br />
187. Lies complicate existence: love simpli-<br />
fies life.<br />
188. Man makes myths, myths make mysteries,<br />
mysteries make miseries. -<br />
189. Energy may sink with the sun, but fancy<br />
rises with the moon. .<br />
I90. The least sound too often makes the<br />
most sound.<br />
191. Not all the godliest die young; not all<br />
the best miss fortune.<br />
I92. It is easier to convert taste than to con-<br />
trol tendency. - -<br />
193. We wish more than we can, but will more<br />
than we may.<br />
I94. Love's shams appeal to self; its spirit<br />
to soul.<br />
I95. Men may know their own minds more<br />
than their own motives. -<br />
I96. Capacity far oftener fails than oppor-<br />
tunity.<br />
I97. Misfortunes have consolations<br />
than compensations.<br />
I98. Self-love has no scientific frontiers.<br />
199. Man, of both sexes, is God’s best and<br />
Worst practical providence to Man.<br />
2OO. History is the great-grandmother of<br />
prophecy.<br />
oftener<br />
PHINLAY GLENELG.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 22 (#36) ##############################################<br />
<br />
a. - THE AUTHOR.<br />
“LIFE IN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE."<br />
“TT is the office and function of the imagina-<br />
tion to renew life in lights and sounds and<br />
(motions that are outworn and familiar. It<br />
calls the soul back once more under the dead ribs of<br />
nature, and makes the meanest bush burn again,<br />
as it did to Moses, with the visible presence of<br />
God. And it works the same miracle for<br />
language. The word it has touched retains the<br />
warmth of life for ever. We talk about the age<br />
of superstition and fable as if they were passed<br />
away, as if no ghost could walk in the pure white<br />
light of science, yet the microscope that can dis-<br />
tinguish between the disks that float in the blood<br />
of man and ox is helpless, a mere dead eyeball,<br />
before this mystery of Being, this wonder of Life,<br />
the sympathy which puts us in relation with all<br />
nature, before that mighty circulation of Deity in<br />
which stars and systems are but as the blood-<br />
disks in our own veins. And so long as wonder<br />
lasts, so long will imagination find thread for her<br />
loom, and sit like the Lady of Shalott weaving<br />
that magical web in which ‘the shows of things<br />
are accommodated to the desires of the mind.” It<br />
is precisely before this phenomenon of life in<br />
literature and language that criticism is forced to<br />
stop short. That it is there we know, but what it<br />
is we cannot precisely tell. It flits before us like<br />
the bird in the old story. When we think to<br />
grasp it, we already hear it singing just beyond<br />
It is the imagination which enables the poet to<br />
give away his own consciousness in dramatic<br />
poetry to his characters, in narrative to his<br />
language, so that they react upon us with the<br />
same original force as if they had life in them-<br />
selves.”—Low ELL in the Century.<br />
*- as as-º<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—A STRANGE CorncIDENCE.<br />
^{ONTRIBUTORS to the Author sometimes<br />
point out strange coincidences in relation to<br />
subjects treated by several persons. The<br />
French proverb, Les esprits forts se rencontrent,<br />
sums up the matter with French precision. Here<br />
is another curious instance. . .<br />
In the year 1891 I was travelling rather out of<br />
the beaten track upon the eastern frontier of<br />
Germany, and I heard of a curious religious pro-<br />
cession. Never before had I seen anything of<br />
the kind, and only the local guide mentioned it.<br />
Naturally it struck me that it would make a good<br />
subject for an illustrated magazine article. So<br />
when I returned I set to work. Early in 1892<br />
my MS. and drawing trotted about in the usual<br />
manner, and I received the usual polite letters<br />
from the editors of many first-class magazines—<br />
I never trouble the second and third-class folk.<br />
Then I threw the MS. into a drawer, where it<br />
rested for some nine months. I Ought to say<br />
that I first made a wash drawing, from which to<br />
make another in pen and ink, to accompany the<br />
MS. in its walks about town; strictly speaking,<br />
I ought to say in its globe-trottings, for it<br />
crossed the ocean, and likewise the so-called<br />
silver streak. * .<br />
In the spring of ’93 I brought out my MS.<br />
again, and towards the anniversary of the fête<br />
day described therein, I sent it on its way once<br />
more, when alas! after many days and many<br />
voyages, the MS. returned without the drawing,<br />
which is quite “lost in the post,” although my<br />
name and address were written upon the back—<br />
showing the carelessness of the returned letter<br />
department of the Post-office. Oris a drawing not<br />
of sufficient value to be worth returning P Possibly,<br />
in the eyes of officials. Well, this year I made<br />
another pen and ink drawing from my original<br />
wash one, with the same result—refusal. Only<br />
here is the gist of the business; not only was my<br />
matter stale instead of new, as I thought, but in<br />
the words of the editor : “So far from the matter<br />
being ‘untouchei you will find it all described<br />
and illustrated in of May, 1893. More-<br />
over, the sketch you send me is actually copied<br />
from the illustration we then published l’” This<br />
was rather strong ! * .<br />
I represented to the editor that my work had<br />
been done in 1891-2, and that I did not relish<br />
being accused of purloining other people's work.<br />
Here is the half-hearted apology: “I had not the<br />
least idea of making any accusation against you”<br />
(observe above “actually copied,” and the “!” at<br />
end of sentence), “what at Once occurred to me was<br />
that your sketch was made from the same photo-<br />
graph which we reproduced—a photograph which<br />
I suppose is sold in the shops l’ But note, that<br />
beyond the two illustrations representing a pro-<br />
cession, a crowd, and the same street, they differ<br />
much in detail. However, that is not the ques-<br />
tion. Why I relate this little history is simply<br />
to show that les esprits forts se rencontrent, even<br />
in matters which have lain dormant for many<br />
years, and even with a short interval between the<br />
results of les esprits. In my case, my fortunate<br />
rival forestalled me (in print) a year after my<br />
work was completed; which shows that the<br />
spirit which wafted me to in 1891, and<br />
whispered to me to write an article thereon, like-<br />
wise spoke to another scribe in 1893 after the same<br />
manner. Mean little spirit, why not have let<br />
me earn the reward of my labours ? M. S. A.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 23 (#37) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 23<br />
II.-ConsoDATORY.<br />
Will you allow me to say a few words in answer<br />
to “Experto Crede?”<br />
I have a very large experience of penny papers,<br />
and I have met from their editors and proprietors<br />
the greatest kindness, consideration, and courtesy<br />
coupled with fair prices and prompt payments.<br />
We cannot all be famous, and if long prices for<br />
a single story do not fall to our lot, modest<br />
cheques are not to be despised.<br />
I have for many years earned a very comfort-<br />
able income by my pen solely from penny papers.<br />
I never expect to be famous, or even to see my<br />
name on a three-volume novel, but I sell my tales<br />
as fast as I can write them. Unlike the more<br />
distinguished folks who publish on the royalty<br />
system, I know exactly what they will bring in,<br />
I have no anxiety and no suspense, and I do not<br />
possess a single rejected manuscript, so that I<br />
have no cause to grumble. I fancy the con-<br />
tributors who write to you and complain of failure,<br />
either expect to succeed in too great a hurry, or<br />
else write their stories and then expect them<br />
taken by the first paper they think of, instead of<br />
deciding on the paper first and adapting the story<br />
to its style. Their plan is a kind of putting the<br />
cart before the horse arrangement, which must<br />
ail. -<br />
f Girls tell me their tales are much better than<br />
many they see in print, but they can’t get on<br />
because they have “no introductions.” I don’t<br />
like to reply they are not impartial critics, but I<br />
can and do assure them that introductions are<br />
useless.<br />
My testimony is just that of an average<br />
woman worker, for I have had no advantages to<br />
help me on, I never had an introduction to<br />
editor or publisher, and I don’t even (after years<br />
of literary work), possess a single “famous.”<br />
acquaintance. - C. O.<br />
III.-GRAMMATICAL.<br />
Which is correct after not and no, or or nor 2<br />
In some extra good writers, whom one might be<br />
tempted to consider authorities, you find nor; in<br />
others as good, or. .<br />
It did not rain nor blow. It did not blow or<br />
pain. There was no rain nor wind. There was<br />
mo wind or rain. Which are correct of the above<br />
ex, mples? Neither Murray nor Mason answers<br />
the question.<br />
I used to put or until I began to think about<br />
the matter. Then it occurred to me that, as it is<br />
right to put nor after neither (an abbreviation of<br />
not either), upon the same principle it must be<br />
right to put nor after no and not (either being<br />
implied). But the other day a more knowing<br />
person than myself, when criticising a careful<br />
writer's work, said: “He makes just the mistake<br />
that so many authors—including even so fine a<br />
writer as Marion Crawford—make; he invariably<br />
puts nor after not and no, which, whether or not<br />
absolutely incorrect, is hideous,”—or something<br />
to this effect.<br />
I agree with him that or sounds better, but if<br />
nor is incorrect after not, it must have been<br />
created simply to suit the convenience of neither,<br />
and as a means of breaking the rule against two<br />
negatives, where they would naturally destroy one<br />
another.<br />
Nor sounds better than or after neither, but<br />
why should it be more correct after neither than<br />
after not either ? . .<br />
However, apart from right and wrong, eupho-<br />
nious, or non-euphonious effects, there are so many<br />
uses for the word or, that a person who does not<br />
understand the English language might be<br />
puzzled by the use of it in lieu of nor. For<br />
instance, “He is not pious, or pleasant,” might be<br />
taken to signify “He is not pious, by which I<br />
mean pleasant.” Still, of course, the thing could<br />
be differently expressed without the use of nor;<br />
and I do not feel at all sure that the word nor<br />
ought to exist. -<br />
A MEMBER OF THE SocIETY OF AUTHORs.<br />
IV.-REMAINDERs.<br />
I am obliged for your note in response to<br />
Iſl11162.<br />
You did not say whether you considered that<br />
at the present time authors were satisfied with the<br />
ordinary way of disposing of their remainders. I<br />
wrote under the assumption that they were not,<br />
and would perhaps have discussed the matter<br />
under the auspices of your Society.<br />
At present a large number of provincial book-<br />
sellers have no inducement whatever to purchase<br />
the works of numerous authors. The publisher<br />
takes little or no risk, and wants little or no<br />
trouble. If a bookseller buys from a publisher<br />
any but those books in most demand there is no<br />
possible means of getting a profit, and every<br />
chance of making a loss. If publishers will not<br />
come to the rescue, why not the authors them-<br />
selves through their business agency the Authors’<br />
Society P<br />
It ought to be to the author's interests to see<br />
that every bookseller is put into a fair way of<br />
making a profit if he cares to push the sale of the<br />
book. But as no attempt has been made in this<br />
direction, I assume that that is impossible, and<br />
that when a book does not go under ordinary<br />
circumstances at once that it must be sold as a<br />
remainder.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 24 (#38) ##############################################<br />
<br />
24<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Then could not the loss be lessened on re-<br />
mainders ? Why could not you or your repre-<br />
sentatives create a central agency, invite book-<br />
sellers to take up authors’ works on sale or return<br />
terms, and issue a general catalogue P E. B.<br />
W.—ExPERIENCES OF A LITERARY BEGINNER.<br />
I have had many painful experiences of the<br />
MS. that goes a begging ; yet, strange to say,<br />
they do not belong to the period when I was a<br />
beginner with the pen. The very first article<br />
which I submitted to a strange editor was<br />
accepted and printed, and the same success<br />
attended my second venture, and so on till in<br />
the course of time I had contributed quite a<br />
respectable series.<br />
But I am speaking now of nearly a quarter of<br />
a century ago, when journalistic lotteries were<br />
unknown, when the prize-giving periodical was<br />
quite in its infancy, and when the sole end and<br />
aim of an editor was not to sell the paper by the<br />
tens of thousands, so as to put money into the<br />
purse of the proprietor. And I am also speak-<br />
ing of a time when there existed one of the most<br />
generous, discriminating, impartial, and pains-<br />
taking of editors who ever lived, and one,<br />
moreover, who was always ready to encourage<br />
young authors, and help them to success if he<br />
found any good in their youthful essays.<br />
The name of that editor was Charles Dickens,<br />
and the journal which I had the honour of con-<br />
tributing to was then called All the Year Round.<br />
After Dickens' regrettable death I continued to<br />
contribute to his popular periodical, and to a few<br />
others which, like his, did not refuse a manuscript<br />
simply because they were overstocked with litera-<br />
ture of all kinds, or because the article offered<br />
happened to be too long, too discursive, or too<br />
something else. But, unfortunately for myself,<br />
some of those journals came to grief, or were<br />
unable to pay the same fees as before, owing,<br />
perhaps, to the increased competition which the<br />
“new journalism,” as it is called, gave rise to.<br />
Then my troubles as an outside contributor<br />
began in earnest, for I was tempted to try my<br />
“luck” with the new papers which now com-<br />
pletely flooded the market, and in doing so I<br />
learnt what it was to send an MS. “the round.”<br />
Out often or a dozen articles which I “submitted<br />
to the consideration” of various editors only one<br />
was accepted and used, and that one had cost me<br />
so much trouble in reconstructing, or re-writing<br />
to suit the requirements of the different journals<br />
to which it was sent on approval, that the fee<br />
eventually received scarcely repaid me for the<br />
time and labour bestowed upon it, to say nothing<br />
of the time and labour bestowed upon the other<br />
nine or eleven articles which I had written and<br />
submitted before this last one was accepted.<br />
So, as I am wholly dependent upon my work<br />
for the bread and cheese of existence, I have<br />
been reluctantly obliged to abandon my literary<br />
labours, which began under such promising<br />
auspices, and to turn my attention to something<br />
far less congenial, but rather more profitable.<br />
ExPERTO CREDE.<br />
WI.-MoRE ExPERIENCEs.<br />
My first work was on the past, present, and<br />
future of a cause in which circumstances caused<br />
me to be deeply interested. I submitted the MS.<br />
to the committee of a society to which I purposed<br />
to give the profits, if any, of publication. Reply<br />
from chairman (lord-lieutenant of his county):<br />
“Committee feel honoured by being associated<br />
with such a production, and propose to be respon-<br />
sible for the cost.” This I declined. A large<br />
edition was sold, and a useful amount was paid to<br />
the society in about twelve months.<br />
This success led to my writing a larger work.<br />
It was published on the “mutual profit” system.<br />
Whole edition disposed of ; but small profit to<br />
the author, notwithstanding most flattering<br />
notices of the book. One popular author wrote<br />
to me, “I hope your inkstand will never be dry.”<br />
Then a magazine, edited by a well-known<br />
Cambridge man, came under my notice. I wrote<br />
a short tale with a purpose, which, being appre-<br />
ciated, was followed by a series, and when the<br />
editor retired, he thanked me warmly for what<br />
he was pleased to call my “valuable aid.”<br />
I next proposed to write a series of articles on<br />
various subjects, to a then popular shilling maga-<br />
zine. Reply was: “Being already acquainted with<br />
your former works (reviewed in our magazine),<br />
any contributions from your pen will be valued.”<br />
A small work on religious subjects was brought<br />
out by one of the oldest leading publishers in<br />
London, on his responsibility, and is still recom-<br />
mended in a leading journal to inquirers.<br />
My next venture was a one-volume novel (pub-<br />
lished on the “mutual profit” system). Well re-<br />
viewed in first-class journals; but financially a<br />
failure.<br />
I then competed with several authors, whos<br />
names were known to the public, for leading<br />
serial in a magazine, established over a quarter<br />
of a century. I was successful, and, of course,<br />
received the usual remuneration.<br />
I may mention, en passant, that I have received<br />
32 for quite a short article. I continued to write<br />
for the above magazine, and my articles were<br />
favourably noticed.<br />
Meanwhile I wrote a pamphlet on a subject of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 25 (#39) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 25<br />
public interest and importance ; took the opinion<br />
of an eminent man; sent the MS. to a publisher,<br />
who was manifestly anxious to secure the publi-<br />
cation; and it was issued quickly. The price, at<br />
the publisher's suggestion, was fixed at one<br />
shilling. In an incredibly short time, a friend<br />
said to me that he wanted a copy, and could<br />
not get one as they were all sold. I at once<br />
wrote to the publisher. He replied that he<br />
wished my information was correct. That,<br />
expecting a large sale, he had kept the type set<br />
for five weeks, and had then broken it up, as the<br />
pamphlet was not selling. I called upon him<br />
when I went to London, but could get no<br />
intelligible statement from him. I had paid him<br />
a fixed amount for publishing and advertising.<br />
Yet he intimated that if I had the unsold copies<br />
he must charge extra for advertising. So he<br />
kept all but two dozen, which I had, and the<br />
matter ended. I ought to have taken advice,<br />
but being afraid of law proceedings, I weakly, as<br />
I now think, gave up the whole affair. Some<br />
years after I showed the pamphlet to a man in<br />
London, who has some knowledge of the ways of<br />
the world as well as of letters. He read it,<br />
approved and praised it, and gave his verdict in<br />
few words, “That pamphlet was suppressed;<br />
there is too much truth in it.” w<br />
Since then I have been a constant writer for a<br />
leading journal, and my articles have been criti-<br />
cised at home and abroad.<br />
Of one recent work 2000 copies were disposed;<br />
and now my last work, which I venture to think<br />
is not inferior to what I have previously written,<br />
and which has been so highly praised, is in one<br />
sense a failure. By no means so complete a<br />
failure as the suppressed pamphlet was—and in<br />
this case no suspicion can attach to the publisher<br />
—yet I cannot understand why this novel should<br />
fail to be a complete success. I wrote it with a<br />
definite purpose, and some reviewers consider<br />
that I have fully accomplished that purpose.<br />
One ends his critique with “ Unlike most novels,<br />
this is a book to be re-read—in fact, it ought<br />
to have an index, there is so much for reference,<br />
as well as of so much besides.”<br />
Another critic says: “We have looked in vain<br />
for a single sentence that could justify these<br />
discussions being printed.”<br />
Since that was written a New York publisher<br />
has written about taking 250 or 500 copies if a<br />
cheap edition is published, as he says that they<br />
(the firm) consider it “a remarkable and inte-<br />
resting book,” and that the purpose of it is of as<br />
much value in America as in England. M. M.<br />
“AT THE SIGN OF THE AUTHOR'S HEAD."<br />
R. C. H. COOK (John Bickerdyke) has<br />
published (Constable and Co.) a small<br />
volume called “Thames Rights and<br />
Thames Wrongs, a Disclosure; with Notes<br />
Explanatory and Critical on the Thames Bill of<br />
I894.” He says, by way of preface, that he is<br />
not writing as a lawyer for lawyers, but for the<br />
merry crowd who take their pleasure<br />
On the river, and his desire is that the facts dis-<br />
closed will startle the public out of its apathy, and<br />
bring about that legislation which is urgently<br />
needed.<br />
“The Plays of Sir Richard Steele” forms the<br />
new volume in the Mermaid Series (Fisher<br />
Unwin). It is edited, with a critical introduction<br />
and notes, by Mr. G. A. Aitken, who in 1889<br />
published a life of Steele.<br />
“Doctor Quodlibet, a Study in Ethics"<br />
(Leadenhall Press), is a new story by the author<br />
of the “Chronicles of Westerley.” In a note<br />
the author reminds his readers that “Bishop<br />
Quodlibet’’ was a subordinate character in<br />
the above-named novel, and that now he<br />
has ventured to give him a small book all to<br />
himself. -<br />
“The Ghosts of the Guardroom,” a story by<br />
Annabel Grey, forms the first volume of the<br />
Annabel Grey Library (G, Stoneham). According<br />
to the author's preface, “the story deals with<br />
military life, of the struggles and trials of an<br />
English lad, a young recruit; it is, moreover,<br />
true.”<br />
Miss Mary Colborne-Weel has published a<br />
volume of verse entitled “The Fairest of the<br />
Angels” (Horace Cox). As the title implies,<br />
some of the poems are religious, of which there<br />
are one or two—“Jael,” for instance—which<br />
seem to us to be more successful than the one the<br />
author has chosen as a title.<br />
“The Local Government Act, 1894,” has just<br />
appeared, with introduction, notes, and index,<br />
by J. M. Lely and W. F. Craies, Barristers-at-<br />
law. The publishers are Sweet and Maxwell,<br />
3, Chancery-lane; Stevens and Sons, I 19, Chan-<br />
cery-lane. Is. 6d.<br />
Also “The Sale of Goods Act, 1893,” with<br />
introduction, notes, and index. By the same<br />
authors, and the same publishers. -<br />
The “Goethe-Jahrbuch" for 1894 will contain<br />
an account, by Dr. Suphan, of “Napoleon's<br />
Unterhaltungen mit Goethe und Wieland und F.<br />
von Müller's Memoire darüber für Talleyrand.”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 26 (#40) ##############################################<br />
<br />
26<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons announce “In<br />
Varying Moods,” by Miss Beatrice Harraden;<br />
“Red Cap and Blue Jacket,” a tale of the French<br />
Revolution,” by Mr. Robert Dunn ; and an<br />
“Autonym * series of stories by well-known<br />
writers.<br />
Mr. J. J. Haldane Burgess, M.A., the author of<br />
“Rasmie's Büddie”—a second edition of which<br />
was lately issued by Mr. Gardner, Paisley and<br />
London, and to which the Scotsman alluded<br />
as “a book which is likely to make a name for its<br />
author”—has just finished a romance of the<br />
Norse time, dealing with the Viking occupation<br />
of the Shetlands in the days of Harold Fair-<br />
Hair.<br />
A new novel, in 2 vols., by Mrs. Deith-Adams<br />
(Mrs. R. S. De Courcy Laffan) will shortly be<br />
published by Messrs. Jarrold and Sons. It is<br />
entitled “Colour-Sergeant, No. 1 Company,” and<br />
the scene is laid in the South of Ireland.<br />
The story of Soho-square and its associations<br />
has been taken in hand by Mr. George Clinch.<br />
This old aristocratic quarter is full of interesting<br />
associations with celebrities of the past. Collec-<br />
tions have been made of drawings, prints,<br />
pamphlets, and books bearing upon the quarter.<br />
Many of these, including the collection of the late<br />
Dr. Rimbault, have been placed in the hands of the<br />
author, who wishes us to state that he will grate-<br />
fully receive and acknowledge any information or<br />
suggestions from residents in the district or<br />
others. The work will be a volume of small<br />
quarto, and will be limited to a small number of<br />
copies.<br />
The fifth edition of “Marcella " (in three<br />
volumes) is announced. The cheap edition of<br />
“David Grieve" is also ready.<br />
Mrs. Steel's new novel “The Potter's Thumb,”<br />
3 vols., is now ready. The publishers are Heine-<br />
mann and Co.<br />
The same publishers have the three novels of<br />
“Sarah Grand.”<br />
A new work by Ruskin, called “Verona and<br />
other Lectures,” will be issued early in June.<br />
The publisher, of course, is Mr. George Allen.<br />
The book will contain five lectures, delivered<br />
between the years 1870 and 1883. It will<br />
be illustrated by a frontispiece and eleven<br />
photogravure plates from drawings by the<br />
author.<br />
The Athenæum (May 26) notes the formation<br />
of a “Transatlantic Publishing Company,” which<br />
will publish a magazine intended principally for<br />
the purpose of copyrighting in America short<br />
stories written by our people.<br />
We shall be glad<br />
to hear more about this company. Without doubt<br />
there is great need of such a medium. Fuller<br />
inquiries shall be made at once into the proposed<br />
Company and the magazine.<br />
A new and cheaper edition of “The Way of<br />
Transgressors,” by E. Rentoul Esler, will be<br />
issued shortly. (Sampson Low and Co.) Baron<br />
Tauchnitz has secured the Continental rights of<br />
this author's Willage Idylls, “The Way they<br />
Loved at Grimpat.”<br />
After three editions of “A Superfluous<br />
Woman,” in three volume form, the publishers,<br />
Messrs. Heinemann and Co., have produced<br />
the book in a cheap Colonial series, and it<br />
will be shortly produced in England in a cheap<br />
form also.<br />
The New York Critic announces the formation<br />
of a Walt Whitman Society, which is about to<br />
be incorporated. Its aims are threefold: The<br />
consolidation within a single organisation of all<br />
persons who are interested in the life and work of<br />
Walt Whitman; the establishment of centres in<br />
different parts of the world, which shall bring<br />
together the lovers and admirers of Whitman,<br />
and which, by the maintenance of correspond-<br />
ence and the exchange of views, shall tend<br />
to close fraternal relations among the members<br />
of the society; and the publication, from time<br />
to time, of Whitman literature and of such<br />
essays and other papers as may be deemed<br />
valuable in elucidation of Whitman’s philosophy<br />
of life, or in exposition of his poetry and<br />
principles.<br />
The following announcements are also made by<br />
the same paper:—<br />
“The Phantoms of the Footbridge" is the<br />
title of a volume of short stories by Charles<br />
Egbert Craddock, to be published by the<br />
Harpers.<br />
Messrs. D. C. Heath and Co. are publish-<br />
ing a “History of the United States,” by Mr.<br />
Allen C. Thomas, Professor of History in<br />
Haverford College. The aim of this work is to<br />
give the main facts of the history of the United<br />
States clearly, accurately, and impartially. In<br />
the belief that the importance of the events<br />
which have occurred since the adoption of the<br />
Constitution is becoming more and more recog-<br />
Inised, much the greater part of the book is<br />
devoted to the era beginning with 1789. The<br />
earlier period, however, is treated with sufficient<br />
fulness to show clearly the origins of the people<br />
and their institutions. Throughout special atten-<br />
tion is given to the political, social, and economic<br />
development of the nation.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 27 (#41) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 27<br />
Messrs. Longmans, Green, and Co. have<br />
become the owners of Colonel T. W. Higginson’s<br />
histories and miscellaneous works, by purchase<br />
from Messrs. Lee and Shepard.<br />
Mr. John Jacob Astor is about to make his<br />
first venture in literature with a story of the<br />
year 2000, entitled “A Journey in Other Worlds:<br />
a Romance of the Future.”<br />
* - - -º<br />
sº- * -<br />
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY,<br />
I. —LITERARY STANDARDs.<br />
4 & S there such a quality in a literary pro-<br />
duction as absolute merit P” inquires<br />
W. J. L. “If so, is there a man or woman<br />
in the country of the capacity to judge it by that<br />
standard P I am moved to ask these questions by<br />
my own experience and lºy the history of literary<br />
productions which have wandered through a veri-<br />
table wilderness of editorial hands before reaching<br />
the promised land of publication. It is hardly<br />
necessary to recount the early trials of these martyrs<br />
since made glorious. As to my own work, which<br />
is journalistic rather than purely literary, I<br />
have had such queer experiences that I am<br />
beginning to lose faith in what has been called<br />
literary judgment. I have repeatedly had editors<br />
refuse my matter, only at a later date to reprint<br />
it from other papers; I have had articles refused<br />
once and accepted later; I have had one magazine<br />
refuse an article and one of higher class accept<br />
it at double the price; I have known editors<br />
correct the metre or rhyme of famous poems I<br />
may have had occasion to quote or to parody in<br />
places; I have known a newspaper of recognised<br />
literary standing refuse a poem at 5 dollars which<br />
a periodical accepted at 15 dollars; I have had<br />
good things rejected with promptness and<br />
despatch, and those of less merit accepted. And<br />
so on through a complexity of moods and<br />
measures. I don’t understand it, do you ? Is it<br />
due to the fact that publishers of literature—is it<br />
literature if not published?—are governed, not<br />
by the genuine merit of the article, but by the<br />
tastes and demands of their readers, or by a<br />
consideration of the interests of the business<br />
office P If you can throw a little light on this<br />
subject you will benefit a good many people<br />
who do not hesitate to damn the literary judg-<br />
ment of publishers with whom they have had<br />
experience.” - -<br />
The simple answer to the foregoing would be<br />
that no one is infallible. An editor is just as<br />
likely to make mistakes as any other man. Don’t<br />
you hear people say every day that, if they had<br />
only known, they would have bought certain land<br />
which had been offered to them for a few dollars<br />
and is now worth thousands P. The wise man is<br />
he who has foresight. The editor who can<br />
discover a Kipling in the callow efforts of a<br />
novice is such a one as is not often met. You<br />
oftener meet the man with foresight in matters of<br />
real estate transactions for a very simple reason:<br />
taste is never a factor in the sale of building lots.<br />
What is one editor's meat is another's poison.<br />
The editor of this magazine may have a weakness<br />
for dialect stories, while the editor of that maga-<br />
zine despises them. He may print those of a<br />
certain author because he has discovered that<br />
they have a market value, but he never would<br />
think of accepting them on their merits. Editors,<br />
I fancy, are governed by a great many things.<br />
The “genuine merit of an article” is an impor-<br />
tant factor in its favour, and “the tastes and<br />
demands of their readers” is another. How the<br />
“promulgation of the interests of the business<br />
office ’’ can be made to enter into the question at<br />
all I do not sce, beyond the matter of making a<br />
periodical that will sell. An editor who made a<br />
magazine that no one would buy would certainly<br />
be a very strange man, and one unfitted for his<br />
position. No journal can be published at a loss<br />
unless it is published by philanthropists, and<br />
even they would soon tire of the fun, for there is<br />
nothing that can swallow up umoney like an<br />
unsuccessful periodical. w<br />
As for literary judgment, who shall be the<br />
judge? A novel of which the Athenæum said<br />
that it was one of the best of 1893, the Critic<br />
declared not to have been worth publishing. The<br />
reviewers of the book were both unquestionably<br />
persons of intelligence, and yet what one pro-<br />
nounced a work of unusual merit the other<br />
pronounced unmitigated trash. The question is<br />
largely one of taste, and with posterity alone<br />
remains the decision as to what has come to<br />
stay.—New York Critic.<br />
II.-MR. TRAILL ON LITERATURE AND<br />
- Journ ALISM.<br />
Mr. H. D. Traill delivered, on Saturday after-<br />
noon, his second and concluding Royal Institution<br />
lecture on the relations between literature and<br />
journalism. The critics of journalism, he said,<br />
were prone to exaggerate its influence in respect<br />
of the undoubted over production in these<br />
days of literary matter. Of the existence of<br />
such over production there could, unfortunately,<br />
be no doubt. There never were so many people<br />
anxious to rush into print; never was the<br />
literary craft so invaded by amateurs. One<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 28 (#42) ##############################################<br />
<br />
28 THE AUTHOR.<br />
reason, perhaps, was the excessive cheapness of<br />
the material. Pen, ink, and paper were never<br />
dear commodities, and compared with the canvas,<br />
paint, marble, and studio of the artist were infini-<br />
tesimal items. Moreover, failure or incapacity<br />
was not so glaring with the literary amateur as<br />
in the case of painting, sculpture, or music.<br />
Popular education had more, however, to do with<br />
this tendency than any other cause. The State<br />
had renounced Dogberry’s maxim that to<br />
read and write come by nature and might be<br />
charged with going too far in the other direction<br />
—that people can be taught to write what others<br />
will care to read. A day might come on which<br />
we should all be so busy writing as to have no<br />
time for reading at all, and we might be reduced<br />
to the condition of the islanders who tried to get<br />
a living by taking in each other's washing.<br />
Exaggerated, however, as is the share attributed<br />
to journalism in this result, it had to be admitted<br />
that the flood of novels poured forth day by day<br />
was partly due to the daily journals. But the<br />
circulating libraries were more to blame than the<br />
newspapers, and any or no quality was good<br />
enough to find a place in the periodical box of<br />
books. The journalist, however, did perform a<br />
useful function in guiding the taste of the public,<br />
and he could not be accused of neglecting his<br />
duty in this respect. On the whole it may be<br />
said that this duty is performed honestly and<br />
capably. The verdict of the reviewer in the daily<br />
press was usually conscientious and generally<br />
correct. As to the merits of signed and unsigned<br />
articles much might be said on both sides. But<br />
anonymity was too firmly established in this<br />
country to be disturbed, and, in his opinion, pos-<br />
sessed the balance of advantage. If the journalist<br />
on the whole encouraged good literary work, it was<br />
to be feared that he did not do enough to<br />
discourage the bad. The publishers knew their<br />
public, and that it is a book's fortune to be talked<br />
about on account of its eccentricity or glaring<br />
impropriety or suggestiveness. The best remedy<br />
would be to leave bad books alone. This might<br />
be done if we were living in Utopia, but was<br />
hardly possible in the world in which we live. In<br />
Utopia the publisher would approach the critic as<br />
a petitioner approaches a judge, and the book<br />
would be noticed or disregarded in strict accor-<br />
dance with its merits. But, as things are, news-<br />
papers are not carried on merely from the love of<br />
letters or a desire to increase knowledge. They were,<br />
above all things, commercial enterprises, and the<br />
proprietors could not afford to disregard the<br />
advertisements of the publisher. Thus a kind of<br />
professional morality was established on the basis<br />
of the relative value of the notice to the publisher<br />
and of the advertisement to the owner of the<br />
newspaper. Another charge brought against the<br />
daily journals was that they were corruptors of<br />
the English language. The term “newspaper<br />
English" had become a byword. Thus jour-<br />
malists were promoted to a kind of sinister<br />
dignity as the debasers of their mother<br />
tongue—they became sinners on an heroic<br />
scale. Was this charge true P To a limited<br />
extent undoubtedly a verdict of “Guilty” must<br />
be recorded. The daily papers were not wells of<br />
English pure and undefiled. There was apt to be<br />
a lack of simplicity and directness, a tendency to<br />
circumlocution and verbosity, a wrong use of<br />
words and phrases. But it was easy to over-<br />
estimate the extent of the wrong done. The<br />
number of phrases so misemployed was after all<br />
not great; “transpire’ for “happen’; the mis-<br />
application of such terms as Frankenstein,<br />
“ comity of nations,” “benefit of clergy,”<br />
“Caudine Forks,” “ horns of a dilemma,” “cui<br />
bono,” and a few others would exhaust the list of<br />
habitual offences. Nor was the charge of corrup-<br />
tion of style based on a much larger foundation.<br />
It should be remembered that the daily paper was<br />
written against time, with no leisure for revision.<br />
The leisurely critic after breakfast, with his feet<br />
on the fender, complained of “newspaper slip-<br />
shods.” It would be more fair to use the term<br />
“in slippers” than slipshod. In any case, the<br />
style of the newspaper was a good deal better<br />
than that of the great majority of its readers.<br />
Another question is whether journalism ever<br />
makes real contributions to literature. Are its<br />
leading articles, its reviews, and its essays ever<br />
themselves really literature ?' It is not true to<br />
say that what is really good literature is always<br />
written slowly and at leisure, and it is equally<br />
wide of the mark to suppose that all the work of<br />
a newspaper is hastily performed. A substantial<br />
part of what appears in the daily prints is done<br />
under most favourable conditions. Days may be<br />
occupied over the review of a book, though it<br />
too often consists of little more than a summary<br />
of the contents. At other times so much time is<br />
taken up in the composition of the critique that<br />
none is left for the perusal of the book. The<br />
newspaper essay or article bears considerable<br />
resemblance to the sermon, though the one is<br />
composed five or six times as often as the other.<br />
Sermons, as we know, form a real part, some-<br />
times excellent, of literature. Then it was an<br />
open secret that the obituary notice is often<br />
composed at leisure, with many opportu-<br />
nities of revision. Indeed, it was a jour-<br />
nalistic superstition that the composition of a<br />
biography and the recovery of an illustrious<br />
patient were frequently connected as cause and<br />
effect. Even the political leader might now and<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 29 (#43) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
29<br />
º<br />
again rise to the dignity of literature, notwith-<br />
standing the disparaging observations of Carlyle.<br />
Speed is not always the enemy of excellence. It<br />
may tend to animation, and animation may pro-<br />
duce eloquence. Unfortunately, the form of the<br />
newspaper was against it. The column seems<br />
interminable, and the writer may be haunted with<br />
the consciousness that his leaders during a short<br />
period might reach from Charing-cross to<br />
Ludgate-hill. The fate, too, of the newspaper<br />
was more rapid and humiliating than that of the<br />
printed book, however vapid the latter might be.<br />
The virtuoso with the hand-barrow at the back<br />
door came all too soon for the ephemeral pro-<br />
ductions of the journalist. To-day is—to-morrow<br />
is for the dust-heap. Journalism unquestionably<br />
might be useful to literature—it might waken the<br />
interest and hold the attention of the reader and<br />
direct him to what is more abiding than itself.<br />
The journalist might have a good deal to say in<br />
defence against all the charges that are brought<br />
against him. He might say that he regarded<br />
literature as his instructress, his playmate, his<br />
guide, his venerated mother; but he might also<br />
complain that she did not discharge all the duties<br />
of a mother, but disclaimed all responsibility for<br />
his maintenance, and failed to supply him with<br />
the material necessities of existence, and that in<br />
his hour of need it was journalism which took<br />
him in and became his foster-mother, and that<br />
therefore, whilst holding literature in respect and<br />
affection, he could not disregard the charity<br />
which had taken compassion on him in his<br />
destitution.—Times, April 30.<br />
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<br />
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3O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Fiction.<br />
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THE AUTHOR. 3 I<br />
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PHIN, JOHN. Common Sense Currency. New York: The<br />
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SELL’s DIRECTORY OF REGISTERED TELEGRAPHIC AD-<br />
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WALTER, RICHARD.<br />
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<br />
<br />
## p. 32 (#46) ##############################################<br />
<br />
32 THE AUTHOR.<br />
Poetry and the Drama.<br />
AITREN, G. A. The Aldine Edition of the British Poets:<br />
Thomas Parnell. Edited, with memoir and notes.<br />
George Bell and Sons. -<br />
AITKEN, G. A. The Best Plays of the Old Dramatists:<br />
Richard Steele. Edited, with an introduction and<br />
notes by. T. F. Unwin.<br />
CLARK, K. M*COSH. Persephone and Other<br />
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- Garrett. T. F. Unwin. Ios. 6d.<br />
JEBB, PROFESSOR. Sophocles: The Plays and Fragments.<br />
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Press.<br />
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Poems.<br />
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18. - , , --<br />
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266 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/266 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 02 (July 1894) | <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.+05+Issue+02+%28July+1894%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 02 (July 1894)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1894-07-02-The-Author-5-2 | | | | | 33–60 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1894-07-02">1894-07-02</a> | | | | | | | 2 | | | 18940702 | C be El utb or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.)<br />
CONDUCTED BY WALTER BESAN. T.<br />
WoL. W.-No. 2.]<br />
JULY 2, 1894.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
For the Opinions earpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
Tesponsible. Wome of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as earpressing the<br />
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Thring, Sec. -<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
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jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
*~ * ~ *<br />
g- - -,<br />
WARNINGS AND ADVICE,<br />
I. T is not generally understood that the author, as<br />
the vendor, has the absolute right of drafting the<br />
agreement upon whatever terms the transaction<br />
is to be carried out. Authors are strongly advised to<br />
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ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
WOL. W.<br />
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reserved for himself. r<br />
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business men. Be yourself a business man.<br />
Society’s Offices :-<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
*— — —”<br />
e= *<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY,<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
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has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member,<br />
E 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 34 (#48) ##############################################<br />
<br />
3+ THE<br />
AUTHOR.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
*- - -º<br />
r- - -<br />
THE AUTHORS' SYNDICATE,<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
1. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. With, when<br />
necessary, the assistance of the legal advisers of the Syndi-<br />
cate, it concludes agreements, collects royalties, examines<br />
and passes accounts, and generally relieves members of the<br />
trouble of managing business details.<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors' Syndicate are<br />
defrayed solely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. Notice is, however, hereby<br />
given that in all cases where there is no current account, a<br />
booking fee is charged to cover postage and porterage.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiation<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
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should, in all cases, be sent to defray postage.<br />
7. 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 />
8. The Syndicate undertakes arrangements for lectures<br />
by some of the leading members of the Society; that it has<br />
a “Transfer Department * for the sale and purchase of<br />
journals and periodicals; and that a “Register of Wants<br />
and Wanted” has been opened. Members anxious to obtain<br />
literary or artistic work are invited to communicate with<br />
the Manager. - *. -<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 />
NOTICES,<br />
HE Editor of the Awthor 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 />
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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why them<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
389 4s. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 />
<br />
<br />
## p. 35 (#49) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
35<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 call it.<br />
*- - -<br />
r- > -s<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—A CASE OF SECRET PROFITs.<br />
WHE case which was mentioned in the Author<br />
for March, 1893 (p. 353), and June, 1894,<br />
(p. 14), plain as it may have appeared,<br />
has now dragged along for some four years,<br />
The French writer, known by the nom de<br />
plume of “Léo Taxil,” had some reason or other<br />
for suspecting that his publishers were treating<br />
him unfairly as to the number of copies of his<br />
many books printed and sold, and that they were<br />
thus depriving him wholesale of his royalty per<br />
copy. He therefore called for an account which,<br />
when received in July, 1890, showed him some<br />
438 in debt to the publishing firm.<br />
The author, naturally indignant, set in motion<br />
a criminal prosecution for “abuse of confidence.”<br />
The outcome of this move was that the publishers<br />
informed the author that they had unfortunately<br />
omitted from the account rendered two whole<br />
editions of one of his books, and that there was due<br />
to him in consequence 3133. At the same time<br />
they admitted that on his other works the number<br />
of copies sold had exceeded the figures shown in<br />
the account rendered to such an extent that the<br />
royalty due to the author was understated by<br />
312O more, making £253 due to him instead of<br />
398 due from him.<br />
But expert accountants were then put in by the<br />
courts to examine the firm’s books, and the total<br />
damage to the author was assessed by them at<br />
no less than £152O, for Léo Taxil's books, what-<br />
ever may be thought of them, have had a con-<br />
siderable circulation.<br />
The criminal prosecution therefore went on,<br />
though the legal proceedings are somewhat diffi-<br />
cult to reconcile. Here, however, is a resumé of<br />
the facts as taken from the Journal des Débats,<br />
the Gazette des Tribunawa, and the Siècle. To<br />
begin with, the correctional tribunal (a criminal<br />
court) acquitted the publishers, in Feb., 1892,<br />
of “abuse of confidence.” On appeal by the<br />
Public Prosecutor (and by the author also on the<br />
point of damages) a decision of the court above,<br />
in the following April, quashed the previous pro-<br />
ceedings as having been in error, because the<br />
facts as alleged would, if proved, constitute not<br />
mere “abuse of confidence,” but falsification of<br />
documents and criminal use of the same.<br />
Accordingly, in Feb., 1893, the case was sent<br />
down again (in spite of a fresh appeal from the<br />
publishers) for retrial in this sense.<br />
Eventually the publishers were again indicted<br />
for entering in their books, and in their accounts<br />
rendered, certain erroneous items, with the effect<br />
of depriving M. Léo Taxil of a portion of his<br />
“author's rights” to the extent of £152O. In<br />
the meanwhile, however, as the Gazette des<br />
Tribunaua, reports the case, the publisher had<br />
induced the author to desist, paying him £4600<br />
(115,000 francs) as damages. But the court,<br />
nevertheless, compelled him to continue to appear<br />
in the case as an interested party.<br />
The case only came on for trial at the May<br />
assizes of this year, when the defence was that<br />
the admitted errors in the books were merely<br />
clerical, and that, according to a custom of the<br />
trade, publishers had a right to print for them-<br />
selves twenty copies of a work over and above<br />
every 100 copies acknowledged to the author.<br />
That is to say, that when an author receives<br />
royalty on 5000 copies, 6000 have actually been<br />
printed and sold.<br />
The Public Prosecutor having admitted that<br />
there were “extenuating circumstances” in favour<br />
of the accused, a Parisian jury acquitted them,<br />
while M. Léo Taxil was, in consequence of this<br />
acquittal, cast in the costs. How much these<br />
may be we know not, nor are we told what<br />
offence he had committed to merit this penalty;<br />
but it would be well for English authors who may<br />
purpose any professional work in France to make<br />
a careful mote of this strange case, and of that<br />
alleged secret custom of confiscating one in six of<br />
the copies of every edition as publisher's per-<br />
quisites. J. O’N.<br />
The following is the official report from the<br />
Gazette des Tribunawa .<br />
L'affaire dont a eu ä connaitre aujourd’hui la Cour<br />
d’Assizes mettait en présence, d'une part, M. Léo Taxil<br />
et son gendre, M. Joubert, et de l'autre, MM. Letouzey et<br />
Ané, editeurs.<br />
Il s'agit, non d’un procès de presse, mais d’une affaire<br />
de faux, engagée sur la plainte de M. Léo Taxil. C'est<br />
l’épilogue des nombreux incidents qui signalèrent les<br />
démélés de M. Léo Taxil avec ses éditeurs et dont le début<br />
remonte à 1892. Ceux-ci ont successivement publié un<br />
grand nombre de volumes et des brochures de M. Léo<br />
Taxil. Soupçonnant que ses éditeurs ne lui remettaient pas<br />
exactenment les droits d’auteur auxquels il avait droit, M.<br />
Léo Taxil, ne pouvant obtenir un relevé de compte exact,<br />
déposa une plainte contre eux.<br />
Une instruction fut ouverte qui se termina par la com-<br />
parution de M.M. Letouzey et Ané et de M. Picquoin, leur<br />
imprimeur, devant le Tribunal correctionnel sous la pré-<br />
vention d’abus deconfiance et de complicité. Tous trois furent<br />
acquittés (W. Gaz. des Trib. du 17 février 1892).<br />
Le ministère publie et M. Léo Taxil ayant fait appel, la<br />
Cour confirma le jugement de première instance en déclarant<br />
que les faits relevés à la charge des prévenus constitue-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 36 (#50) ##############################################<br />
<br />
36<br />
THE A UTHOR.<br />
raient, s'ils étaient établis, des faux et non pas le délit<br />
d'abus de confiance (V. Gaz. des Trib. du 15 avril 1892),<br />
La Cour de Cassation, saisie d'une demande de règlement<br />
de juges et d'un pourvoi de MM. Letouzey et Ané, rejeta<br />
le pourvoi et renvoya les prévenus devant la Chambre des<br />
mises en accusation (V. Gaz. des Trib. du 12 février 1893).<br />
Un arrêt de cette chambre ordonna un supplément d'informa-<br />
tion à la suit de laquelle, l'imprimeur Picquoin a été écarté<br />
de la poursuite et MM. Letouzey et Ané renvoyés devant la<br />
Cour d'Assizes.<br />
C'est dans ces condition que ceux-ci se présentent<br />
aujourd'hui, devant le jury. L'accusation leurs reproche<br />
d'avoir porté sur leurs livres et dans leurs règlements de<br />
comptes, des chiffres inexacts, de manière à frustrer M.<br />
Léo Taxil d'une partie de ses droits d'auteur évaluée dans<br />
l'expertise à environ 38,ooo francs. Pour arriver à ce<br />
résultat MM. Letouzey et Ané auraient, non seulement<br />
indiqué un nombre de volumes inférieur à la réalité, mais<br />
aussi omis de mentionner deux éditions entières.<br />
Les accusés prétendent pour leur défense que les irrégu-<br />
larités constatées sont de simples erreurs de comptabilité ;<br />
que, de plus, d'après les usages de librairie, ils avaient le droit<br />
de tirer un nombre d'exemplaires supérieur de 2o p. IOO au<br />
chiffre officiel. L'expertise conteste l'exactitude de ces<br />
explications. •<br />
· Au cours de l'instruction MM. Letouzey et Ané ont<br />
obtenu de Léo Taxil son désistement, moyennant le paiement<br />
d'une somme de I 15,ooo francs, chiffre auquel a été évalué<br />
le préjudice éprouvé par celui-ci.<br />
M. Léo Taxil n'en a pas moins été assigné comme partie<br />
civile, qualité qu'il a prise dès le début de ces contestations.<br />
Il est assisté à l'audience par son gendre M. Joubert.<br />
Divers témoins sont entendus : M. Rossignol, expert, M.<br />
Eugène Moreau, éditeur, qui confirment les fait de l'accusa-<br />
tion. M. Picquoin, l'imprimeur primitivement compris dans<br />
les poursuites, fait une déposition embarrassée et très peu<br />
précise.<br />
M. Léo Taxil présente certaines explications et conteste<br />
les allégations des accusés.<br />
L'audience est levée à six heures et renvoyée à demain<br />
pour les réquisitions de M. l'avocat général Van Cassel, et<br />
les plaidoiries de M° Pouillet et de M° Georges Maillard,<br />
défenseurs des accusée.<br />
(Cour d'Assises de la Seine.—Présidence de M. le con-<br />
seiller Potier.—Audience du 28 mai.)<br />
· L'affaire de faux, suivie contre MM. Letouzey et Ané,<br />
éditeurs, sur la plainte de M. Leo Taxil, s'est terminée<br />
aujourd'hui devant la Cour d'Assises.<br />
M. l'avocat général Van Cassel soutient l'accusation ; il<br />
ne s'oppose pas à l'admission de circonstances atténuantes.<br />
M° Pouillet et Me Georges Maillard présentent la défense<br />
des accusés, qui sont acquittés.<br />
La partie civile est condamnée aux dépens.<br />
(Cour d'Assises de la Seine.—Présidence de M. le con-<br />
seiller Potier.—Audience du 29 mai.)—G. des T. 3o mai,<br />
I894.<br />
II.—PUBLISHING ON COMMIssIoN.<br />
It seems a method so fair and so simple. The<br />
author goes to a publisher and says : º Take my<br />
book and publish it. I will pay you for your<br />
trouble so much per cent. on all the sales.'' What<br />
can be fairer ?<br />
What, indeed ? Now, the following is an illus-<br />
tration of how the plan may work. This is an<br />
actual case which occurred yesterday.<br />
- First of all, the publisher demands payment in<br />
advance of the whole amount which, according to<br />
him, the book will cost.<br />
For himself, he pays the printer three or six<br />
months after the work is done. -<br />
If he takes six months'credit, he has the money<br />
to use for his own business purposes for this time.<br />
It is an addition to his working capital on which<br />
he calculates to make something like 2o per cent.,<br />
but, if it is not to be considered working capital,<br />
it is money on which he may get interest at, say,<br />
4 per cent.<br />
Next, he sends in an estimate lumping every-<br />
thing together, the said estimate being enormously<br />
overcharged. He explains that he has only<br />
allowed for binding of a certain number, He<br />
further notes, casually, that advertising is not<br />
included. But he points out that the sale will<br />
give the author so much for every hundred<br />
volumes sold.<br />
The luckless author falls into the trap, pays<br />
the money, calculates what he is to receive, and<br />
expects the returns. There will be so much<br />
profit, he thinks : he cannot lose anything. Alas !<br />
He knows nothing : he actually forgets the adver-<br />
tising. There will be a tremendous bill on that<br />
account. And he forgets the corrections, and the<br />
remaining copies will have to be bound. Then<br />
there are the illustrations. Finally, the author,<br />
even when the whole edition has gone, will find<br />
himself a loser to the tune of a hundred pounds<br />
Ol" SO .<br />
In the case before us, the cost of production was<br />
overcharged by about 83o. The author stood to<br />
lose 87O on the most favourable result, viz., the<br />
sale of the whole edition.<br />
The publisher's profit would stand as follows :<br />
Overcharge of production s£3O O O<br />
Interest on money advanced (say)... 3 O O<br />
@ @ @ • • • • • • • • e<br />
Commission on sales .................. 23 O O<br />
Overcharge on binding the rest of<br />
the edition ........................... 3 O O<br />
Overcharge on advertisements<br />
reckoned on the same scale ...... 8 O O<br />
Illustrations overcharge on same<br />
scale ................................ I O O O<br />
Overcharge on corrections ............ 5 O O<br />
Whole profit ............ 4282 o o<br />
The reader will please observe these figures.<br />
Remark that, if not one single copy sells, the<br />
publisher makes 86o by the job, and the whole<br />
by secret profits !<br />
And yet we are accused of " attacking pub-<br />
lishers " when we expose these tricks !<br />
How, then, is an author to publish on commis-<br />
sion ? He must get advice from the Society on<br />
the proper firm to employ. He must then have<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 37 (#51) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
37<br />
an estimate showing the exact details on every<br />
point. This, with the agreement proposed, he<br />
must submit to the consideration of the secre-<br />
tary.<br />
# the publisher refuses to furnish the details,<br />
there is but one inference to be drawn.<br />
Meantime, let it be distinctly understood, when<br />
estimates are sent in, that the Society can get the<br />
work done at the prices given in the “Cost of<br />
Production,” with the change in the item of bind-<br />
ing, as advertised every month in the Author.<br />
III.-CANADIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
Since the last article appeared in the Author on<br />
Canadian copyright, certain papers have been<br />
forwarded to the Society by the Secretary of State<br />
for the Colonies. The Society has taken the<br />
opinion of counsel on the papers.<br />
Mr. William Oliver Hodges, of 3, Paper-<br />
buildings, Temple, E.C., barrister, and Mr. G.<br />
Herbert Thring, secretary to the Society, have<br />
been appointed by the committee as delegates to<br />
attend the meetings of the Copyright Committee<br />
alluded to in the last number. The first meeting<br />
was held on Monday, June 25. A statement of<br />
what passed at this meeting will be printed,<br />
together with counsel's opinion on the papers on<br />
Canadian copyright, in next month's Author.<br />
IV.-AMERICAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
The Speaker, in recently reviewing an American<br />
book, said: “This book is twenty years old in<br />
America, and what is stated to be its fifth edition<br />
is now brought over here to be sold, having been<br />
printed and copyrighted in America by the<br />
American publisher, and then again copyrighted<br />
by him here, by entry at Stationers' Hall, as the<br />
liberal English law allows him to do. By the<br />
unfairly unequal American law—drafted and<br />
passed so as to be unfairly unequal—it is<br />
impossible for a book printed in England to be<br />
similarly copyrighted in the United States, for it<br />
must be first printed there too. Therefore this<br />
book is one of those by which the Yankee cobbler<br />
manages to cut a whang out of our leather.”<br />
W.—LIBRARIES AND NOVELS.<br />
The following circulars were published in the<br />
Daily Chronicle of June 30. At the moment of<br />
going to press we have not yet received a copy,<br />
but it may be supposed that the text is accu-<br />
rately printed, and first, Messrs. Mudie's runs as<br />
follows:— - -<br />
Owing to the constantly increasing number of novels and<br />
high-priced books, and to the rapid issue of the cheaper<br />
editions, the directors are compelled in the interests of the<br />
business to ask publishers to consider the following<br />
suggestions:— - -<br />
I. That after Dec. 31, 1894, the charge to the library for<br />
works of fiction shall not be higher than 4s. per volume,<br />
less the discount now given, and with the odd copy as<br />
before. | -<br />
II. That the publishers shall agree not to issue cheaper<br />
editions of novels, and of other books which have been<br />
taken for library circulation, within twelve months from the<br />
date of publication.<br />
The directors have no wish to dictate to the publishers,<br />
but, in making these suggestions, they point out the only<br />
terms upon which it will be possible in the future to buy<br />
books in any quantity for library use. - -<br />
The terms of Messrs. Smith and Son’s circular<br />
are these :— -<br />
For some time past we have noted with concern a great<br />
and increasing demand on the part of the subscribers to our<br />
library for novels in sets of two and three volumes.<br />
To meet their requisitions, we are committed to an expen-<br />
diture much out of proportion to the outlay for other kinds<br />
of literature.<br />
Most of the novels are ephemeral in their interest, and<br />
the few with an enduring character are published in cheap<br />
editions so soon after the first issue that the market we for-<br />
merly had for the disposal of surplus stock in sets is almost<br />
lost.<br />
You may conceive that this state of matters very seriously<br />
reduces the commercial value of the subscription library.<br />
We are therefore compelled to consider what means can be<br />
taken to improve this branch of our business. As a result<br />
of our deliberations, we would submit for your favourable<br />
consideration :- -<br />
(1) That after Dec. 31 next the price of novels in sets<br />
shall not be more than 4.s. per volume, less the discount now<br />
given, and with the odd copy as before. You will please<br />
observe that the date we name for the alteration of terms is<br />
fixed at six months from the end of this current month, in<br />
order that your arrangements may not be affected by the<br />
suggested alterations. - -<br />
(2) In respect of the issue of the cheaper editions, and the<br />
loss to us of our market for the sale of the best and earlier<br />
editions of novels and other works, through their publication<br />
in a cheaper form before we have had an opportunity<br />
of selling the surplus stock, we propose that you be so good<br />
as to undertake that no work appear in the cheaper form<br />
from the original price until twelve months after the date of<br />
its first publication. -<br />
The libraries, certainly, have a perfect right to<br />
name their own price within recognised bounds of<br />
fairness for a form of book which only exists for<br />
them. The price now proposed is, according to<br />
the Chronicle, 4s. a volume, discount and odd<br />
volume to remain as they are, i.e., 5 per cent.<br />
discount and twenty-five as twenty-four. This<br />
means 3s. 8d., within a very tiny fraction, per<br />
volume, or I Is. a copy. +<br />
The former price was not fixed; it varied with<br />
the library and with the house. If we take it at<br />
an average of 5s. a volume, with discount and<br />
the odd copy we have an average price of a little<br />
under I 4s. Let us suppose that there is a<br />
difference under the new tariff of 3s. a copy—a<br />
loss of 3s. a copy. , - . " -<br />
This loss must be met by the author as well as<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 38 (#52) ##############################################<br />
<br />
38<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
the publisher. It can be met by changing the<br />
royalty to that extent. The advertised price of<br />
31s. 6d. has, in this case, nothing at all to do<br />
with the question, because the circulating<br />
libraries alone need be considered.<br />
The problem is therefore very simple. Given<br />
a reduction of 3s. a copy, how is that reduction to<br />
be met by the author P<br />
Clearly, by reducing the royalty by half that<br />
amount.<br />
Thus the reduction being by one-fifth the<br />
former price the publisher and the author must<br />
each bear the loss of one-tenth.<br />
Or the royalty would be thus adjusted:<br />
Suppose the author had a royalty of 6s. a copy,<br />
i.e., a fraction on the assumed price of one-third.<br />
It would now have to be 6s. less one-tenth the<br />
former price, i.e., 6s. less one-tenth of 15s., or 6s.<br />
less Is. 6d., i.e., 4s. 6d.<br />
Bow would this work out P<br />
An edition of IOOO copies costs nearly £200,<br />
and can be produced for less. It would, under<br />
the new tariff, sell for £550. The clear profit is,<br />
therefore, 3350.<br />
The author's share at 4s. 6d. a copy is 3225.<br />
The publisher's share would be £125.<br />
The editor will be very glad to receive<br />
suggestions and opinions on the above.<br />
WI.-AN IMPORTANT CASE.<br />
The reserved judgment of the Court of Appeal<br />
delivered by Lord Justice Lindley, reversing -<br />
the decision of Mr. Justice Stirling in the<br />
“Living Pictures” case, involved a point of great<br />
importance and interest in the law of copy-<br />
right. Herr Hanfstaengl, who is a German Art<br />
publisher, brought two actions asking for injunc-<br />
tions to restrain the directors of the Empire<br />
Palace Company Limited and the proprietors and<br />
publishers of the Daily Graphic from infringing<br />
his copyright in certain pictures. In the former<br />
case he complained that his pictures were repro-<br />
duced in the form of tableaua vivants upon the<br />
stage of the Empire Theatre, but Mr. Justice<br />
Stirling held that the representations of these<br />
pictures on the stage by means of living actors<br />
were not an infringement of the plaintiff’s copy-<br />
right, and that decision was affirmed by the Court<br />
of Appeal in February last. In the case of the<br />
Daily Graphic, the complaint was that accounts<br />
were published in that paper of the represen-<br />
tations at the Empire Theatre, which were illus-<br />
trated by sketches taken by artists who attended<br />
the theatre for that purpose. Although the<br />
newspaper illustrations were sketched from the<br />
living figures employed in the representations on<br />
the stage, the plaintiff contended that they were<br />
copies of the designs of his original pictures, and<br />
therefore were infringements of his copyright.<br />
Mr. Justice Stirling adopted that view, and<br />
granted an injunction restraining the proprietors<br />
and publishers of the newspaper from printing<br />
publishing, selling, or offering for sale, or other<br />
wise disposing of, any copies or colourable<br />
imitations of the copyright pictures of the<br />
plaintiff. From that decision the defendants<br />
have successfully appealed, and judgment was<br />
directed to be entered for them with costs both<br />
of the appeal and of the application in the court<br />
below. The plaintiff based his claim for pro-<br />
tection on the International Copyright Act of<br />
1886 and the Order in Council thereunder of the<br />
28th Nov. 1887, and on the English Copyright<br />
Act of 1862, and it is highly satisfactory that,<br />
alike on the consideration of the facts and circum-<br />
stances, and of the law as it has been laid down<br />
and is applicable to them, the Court of Appeal<br />
has unanimously determined that the plaintiff<br />
has suffered no wrong which these statutes<br />
were intended to redress, and that he is not<br />
entitled to the protection which he claimed. Lord<br />
Justice Lindley cited and adopted the definition<br />
long ago laid down by the late Mr. Justice Bayley<br />
of a “copy” as that which so closely resembles<br />
the original as to convey the same idea as that<br />
created by the original. Both Lord Justice Lopes<br />
and Lord Justice Davey, in the brief judgments<br />
in which they assented to that of Lord Justice<br />
Lindley, quoted with approval this definition;<br />
and, tried by that test, it could not be reasonably<br />
suggested that the rough sketches in the news-<br />
paper of the tableaua vivants at the Empire were<br />
copies of the original pictures of the plaintiff, and<br />
were calculated to injure his rights or depreciate<br />
the value of the original pictures. The learned<br />
Lord Justice emphatically declared that neither<br />
intentionally nor unintentionally, neither directly<br />
nor indirectly, had the artist of the Daily Graphic<br />
copied in the correct sense of the term the plain-<br />
tiff's pictures so as to infringe his copyright in<br />
them. He had not in the slightest degree repro-<br />
duced, or attempted to reproduce, the artistic<br />
merits and beauties of the original pictures, which<br />
indeed, he had never seen. The whole intention<br />
of the sketch was to give a rough and ready<br />
impression of the representations at the Empire<br />
Theatre, and there was no design of making gain<br />
by a colourable imitation or reproduction of the<br />
plaintiff's pictures. The court founded its<br />
decision on broad grounds and on a wide view of<br />
the aspects of the case and of the law. “Copy-<br />
right law and patent law,” said Lord Justice<br />
Lindley, “conferred monopolies on individuals<br />
in certain respects, thereby preventing people from<br />
doing that which otherwise it would be lawful for<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 39 (#53) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
39<br />
them to do, and they were designed to insure to<br />
those protected the enjoyment of the advantages<br />
of their own abilities when these took the form of<br />
pictures, designs, inventions, and so forth. So<br />
far as they did this, and did this only, they<br />
were just and right, but they were not to be made<br />
the instruments of oppression and extortion.”<br />
This sound principle, will commend itself to every<br />
reasonable and fair-minded judgment.—Times.<br />
g- - -<br />
THE AUTHORS' CLUB,<br />
I.-AT HOME.<br />
N the 3oth ult., at 4 o’clock in the afternoon,<br />
() the Authors’ Club were “at home * to a<br />
select number of guests of both sexes.<br />
In spite of inclement weather and frequent<br />
showers of rain the rooms were crowded with<br />
literary and artistic people. No doubt the pro-<br />
longed inclemency of the elements had hardened<br />
the heart against its dangers.<br />
Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, C.M.G., the chairman of<br />
the club, was present to welcome the arrivals,<br />
and he was seconded by Lord Monkswell, Mr.<br />
Walter Besant, and Mr. H. R. Tedder, the other<br />
directors. Lady writers were very well repre-<br />
sented, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Madame Sarah<br />
Grand, the Misses Hepworth Dixon, Mrs. Craigie,<br />
Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Mrs. Croker, Mrs. Hodgson<br />
Burnett, and Miss Helen Mathers being among<br />
those present. ..at<br />
The meeting was a success, and no doubt the<br />
club will repeat the gathering in the winter in the<br />
same or some other similar way.<br />
Mr. Hall Caine has joined the Board of<br />
Directors, --<br />
II.-IN NEW YORK.<br />
At the Authors Club of New York the<br />
following gentlemen were in May elected<br />
honorary members:—Alphonse Daudet (France),<br />
Maartin Maartens (Holland), Maeterlinck (Bel-<br />
gium), Walter Besant (Great Britain).<br />
*- - --"<br />
-- - -,<br />
THE SOCIETY OF AUTHORS,<br />
BEPORT of DINNER, 3 IST MAY, 1894.<br />
HE annual dinner of the Society of Authors<br />
T was held last night at the Holborn Res-<br />
taurant, Mr. Leslie Stephen presiding.<br />
The following is the list of the guests:<br />
E. A. Armstrong John Bumpus<br />
Mrs. Armstrong Miss Marie Belloc<br />
Oscar Browning Walter Besant<br />
WOT. W.<br />
Mrs. Walter Besant<br />
F. H. Balfour<br />
The Rev. Prof. Bonney<br />
W. H. Besant,<br />
Mackenzie Bell<br />
Poulteney Bigelow<br />
Mrs. Brightwen<br />
F. G. Breton<br />
Mrs. Oscar Beringer<br />
James Baker<br />
C. F. Moberley Bell<br />
Rev. Canon Bell, D.D.<br />
Rev. J. B. Baynard<br />
A. W. A. Beckett<br />
Thos. Catling<br />
Mrs. W. K. Clifford<br />
Miss K. M. Cordeaux and<br />
Guest<br />
Edward Clodd<br />
Miss Roalfe Cox and Guest<br />
Mrs. Craigie<br />
Mrs. McCosh Clarke<br />
Lieut.-Col. J. R. Campbell<br />
Miss Carpenter<br />
Sir. W. T. Charley<br />
R. Copley Christie<br />
Miss E. R. Chapman<br />
W. Morris Colles<br />
Mrs. Colles<br />
P. W. Clayden (President<br />
Institute of Journalists)<br />
Egerton Castle, F.S.A.<br />
Miss Lily Croft<br />
Professor Lewis Campbell<br />
Miss B. Chambers and<br />
Guest<br />
Moncure Conway<br />
Mrs. Custer<br />
E. H. Cooper<br />
H. Cust, M.P.<br />
John Davidson<br />
C. F. Dowsett<br />
Mrs. Dambrill Davies<br />
Arthur Dillon<br />
Austin Dobson<br />
A. Conan Doyle<br />
A. W. Dubourg<br />
Gerald Duckworth<br />
Miss Doyle<br />
Miss Duckworth<br />
Daily Graphic<br />
Daily News<br />
Daily Telegraph,<br />
Daily Chronicle<br />
A. Symons Eccles<br />
W. L. Ellis<br />
Mrs. Edmonds<br />
Mr. Edmonds<br />
Mrs. Walter Ellis<br />
Miss Agnes Fraser<br />
Mrs. Gerard Ford<br />
Prof. Michael Foster<br />
S. M. Fox<br />
Mrs. Gordon<br />
Henry Glaisher<br />
Alfred Giles (President In-<br />
stitute of Civil Engineers)<br />
Edmund Gosse<br />
Mrs. Aylmer Gowing<br />
J. C. Grant<br />
Mrs. Grant<br />
Dr. L. Garnett<br />
Miss Goodrich-Freer<br />
Miss H. F. Gethen<br />
Mrs. Gamlin<br />
Francis Gribble<br />
Mme. Sarah Grand<br />
Mrs. Spencer Graves<br />
Maj.-Gen. Sir F. J.<br />
smid, C.B.<br />
J. A. Goodchild<br />
A. P. Graves<br />
Miss Mabel Hawtrey<br />
Holman Hunt<br />
Bernard Hamilton<br />
Dr. Vaughan Harley<br />
E. G. Hobbes<br />
Miss W. Hunt<br />
Rev. W. Hunt<br />
Miss Hargreaves<br />
H. Holman<br />
F. de Haviland Hall<br />
Mrs. Wyndham Hill<br />
Clive Holland<br />
Comtesse Hugo<br />
Dr. Sophia Jex-Blake<br />
C. T. C. James<br />
Miss Kenealy<br />
A. C. Kenealy<br />
Rev. Dr. S. Kinns<br />
Lord Kelvin<br />
Royal Society)<br />
C. B. Roylance Kent.<br />
C. A. Kelly.<br />
Mrs. Lynn Linton<br />
Mrs. Long<br />
A. H. N. Lewers<br />
Sidney Lee<br />
Edmund Lee<br />
John Lane<br />
Sidney Low (St. James's<br />
Gazette)<br />
W. Meredith<br />
Mrs. W. Meredith • '<br />
Rev. C. H. Middleton-<br />
Wake<br />
George Moore<br />
Mrs. Morgan<br />
Miss A. A. Martin<br />
Norman Maccoll<br />
Morning Post<br />
S. B. G. McKinney ,<br />
Miss Helen Mathers and<br />
Guest<br />
Cosmo Monkhouse<br />
Miss Moss<br />
Gold-<br />
(President<br />
W. E. Norris<br />
Henry Norman<br />
The Lord Bishop of Oxford:<br />
John Warden Page<br />
Stanley Lane Poole<br />
Arthur Paterson<br />
Miss E. C. Pollock<br />
Sir F. Pollock, Bart., LL.D.<br />
Lady Pollock , -.<br />
D. H. Parry -<br />
Pall Mall Gazette<br />
The Queen<br />
W. Fraser Rae<br />
C. F. Rideal<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 40 (#54) ##############################################<br />
<br />
4O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Miss Ross<br />
R. Sisley<br />
Percy Spalding<br />
Douglas Sladen<br />
T. Bailey Saunders<br />
Mrs. Steel<br />
Leslie Stephen<br />
Mrs. Leslie Stephen<br />
David Stott<br />
H. G. Sweet<br />
The Standard<br />
S. S. Sprigge<br />
M. H. Spielmann.<br />
Howard Swan<br />
Rev. Prof. W. W. Skeat,<br />
LL.D.<br />
Ballard Smith<br />
Colonel Sutherland<br />
J. Ashby Sterry<br />
The Times<br />
T. S. Townend<br />
G. H. Thring<br />
Mrs. G. H. Thring<br />
Sir Henry Thompson<br />
A. W. Tuer<br />
W. Moy Thomas<br />
Mrs. F. Moy Thomas<br />
Mrs. Tweedie<br />
E. Maunde Thompson (Chief<br />
Librarian British Museum)<br />
Miss Traver -<br />
Miss Tabberner -<br />
Miss E. Underdown<br />
John Underhill<br />
Mrs. J. Owen Visger<br />
Rev. C. Voysey<br />
Westminster Gazette<br />
Hagberg Wright<br />
Library)<br />
A. P. Watt,<br />
Theodore Watts<br />
W. J. Walsham<br />
Mrs. Woolastom White<br />
Miss B. Whitby<br />
W. H. Wilkins<br />
S. F. Walker<br />
Colonel Sir Charles W.<br />
Wilson, K.C.M.G.<br />
Arnold White<br />
Dr. Wallace<br />
P. F. Walker<br />
I. Zangwill<br />
(London<br />
The Chairman first proposed the health of the<br />
Queen.<br />
The Chairman next proposed “The Society of<br />
Authors.” He said: I have now to undertake a<br />
more difficult task. It is not that I have any<br />
doubt that you will receive with sympathy the<br />
toast which I am about to propose, for I am<br />
going to ask you to drink your own health. But,<br />
however much you may approve the Society of<br />
Authors, I think it highly probable that you will<br />
doubt whether I am the proper person to propose<br />
it. As a matter of fact, I not only doubt,<br />
but am rather convinced that I am a highly<br />
improper person to do so. I will, however, say<br />
in self-defence that when I was first asked to<br />
accept this honourable position, I declined it. I<br />
was foolish enough (it is inconceivable that any-<br />
one could have been so foolish at my time of life)<br />
to give a reason, and of course my reason not<br />
only broke down, but recoiled upon myself in the<br />
way that reasons always will recoil. (Laughter.)<br />
My reason is, that I had not the honour to be a<br />
member of this Society, and it puts me in rather<br />
an uncomfortable dilemma, because the question<br />
naturally occurs, why am I not a member of the<br />
Society P I feel a great difficulty in answering it.<br />
I could not say, what would have been conclusive,<br />
that I disapproved of the Society on high moral<br />
grounds. (Laughter.) In the first place, it would<br />
not have been polite, and in the second place, it<br />
would not have come so near the truth as even<br />
those deviations which I generally allow myself<br />
will permit. I myself feel that my real reason is<br />
one which I must decline to confide to you, and I<br />
must be content to give you in imaginary reason<br />
which will answer for the present occasion. I<br />
will suggest as, at least, a possible reason, that<br />
in the first place I do not like to dwell upon my<br />
own mental defects and moral obliquities; I am<br />
attached to them, but do not like to intrude<br />
them upon others. I would suggest perhaps a<br />
more plausible, but still, perhaps, not the true,<br />
reason—namely, that I am known to most of you,<br />
not so much as an author as an editor. Now,<br />
you are aware that an editor is a kind of equivocal<br />
being, and that he resembles the bat in AEsop's<br />
fable, who was equally at war with the birds and<br />
with the beasts. The birds, of course, find<br />
their analogue in the author who soared into the<br />
literary heavens; as for the beasts, perhaps I had<br />
better not attempt to specify what would corre-<br />
spond to them. (Laughter.) Now, as an editor, I<br />
know what view the authors take of me. I<br />
remember a long time ago receiving a frank con-<br />
fession from a young gentleman (I hope he is<br />
wiser now) who had written a tragedy in five<br />
acts upon a subject which he had discovered in<br />
course of his researches into history. I believe it<br />
was Mary Queen of Scots (I may mention that I<br />
am not referring to Lord Tennyson)–(laughter)<br />
—and when I declined to publish this tragedy<br />
in the next number of the magazine which I<br />
was then editing, the author informed me that my<br />
refusal was due to a base jealousy, which was not<br />
surprising, as my own attempts to rival Shake-<br />
speare had never got into print. He was kind<br />
enough to add, that there was nothing to be<br />
ashamed of in this, because, he said, my occupa-<br />
tion was such as would have deadened any sense<br />
of justice or fair play, even in an angel, and he<br />
had no reason to believe that my qualities had<br />
ever been angelic. Now you will understand,<br />
that the class of persons who is regarded in this<br />
way by the unthinking author is apt to see the<br />
weaknesses of authors. I occasionally became<br />
aware of their little vanities, of their self-illusions,<br />
of their conviction that they are the objects of<br />
the demoniacal malignity of a clique of critics.<br />
I must add that I should have been a much<br />
harder hearted person than I believe I am, if I<br />
had not also learnt to see a great deal of the<br />
hardships of a literary career, and to sympathise<br />
with those who suffer. I had the honour to<br />
succeed to the cushion occupied by Thackeray<br />
before me, and I have found that some of the<br />
thorns of which Thackeray spoke are still left in<br />
it. I had to read letters from the decayed lady<br />
who had a widowed mother or a small family<br />
dependent upon her exertions, and who tried to<br />
brush up her old recollections of French, and<br />
expected to make a living by translating from<br />
that recondite language. There was something<br />
ridiculous, but a great deal more that was<br />
pathetic in such letters. I have had to<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 41 (#55) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 41.<br />
deal with many of those people who in the<br />
last century would have been ridiculed and<br />
taunted with their poverty as occupants of<br />
Grub-street. When I had to cut down contribu-<br />
tions from such gentlemen to about a third of<br />
the length of that they had sent me, I used to<br />
feel that I was taking a crust from a beggar and<br />
scraping off the butter, and yet my action, how-<br />
ever cruel it might appear, was necessary, and<br />
was received on the whole with an amount of<br />
common sense and consideration for which I<br />
Ought to be grateful. I do not know whether<br />
I ever snuffed out a heaven-born genius. If I<br />
did, I am very sorry; but I snuffed him out so<br />
effectually that he has never been able to make<br />
any protest. People are apt to fall on the<br />
critics who extinguished Keats and poo-poohed<br />
Wordsworth. We are quite clear that we are<br />
much wiser, and yet I know one or two men,<br />
whom every one now honours, who have had to<br />
go through a long probation of disregard and<br />
contempt. I must confess that, with all respect<br />
to the critics of to-day, I do not think they<br />
are infallible, and I cannot help fancying it<br />
possible that some fifty years hence someone<br />
may point out how wrongly they have acted to<br />
the rising geniuses whose names none of them<br />
know at the present moment. I have only re-<br />
ferred to this to show that I have seen some<br />
of the seamy side of the author's profession,<br />
and I claim to have sympathised with their<br />
sufferings, and to be very anxious to see the pro-<br />
fession raised by every possible means. There<br />
are various opinions as to the best way in which<br />
that could be done; some people are of the<br />
opinion that authors ought to be paid for their<br />
writings; some are of the opinion that every<br />
promising aspirant should receive a good salary<br />
from Government, and that it should be left to<br />
their sense of honour to turn out whatever work<br />
seemed to them best. I am of the opinion that,<br />
considering how pleasant an occupation writing<br />
is, and how valuable it is to read what we write,<br />
perhaps the right plan would be for a future<br />
Chancellor of the Exchequer to lay a heavy tax<br />
on the luxury, and to make everybody who is<br />
impertinent enough to suppose that what he said<br />
would be of value to the public, pay for it. I<br />
won’t, however, argue the question, because I am<br />
afraid that I should not have either a sympa-<br />
thetic or impartial audience. I have no doubt<br />
that authors will be paid, and will want to be<br />
paid more for some years to come, and I also feel<br />
that there will always be more or less of that<br />
difficulty which naturally occurs now in the rela-<br />
tions between authors and publishers. The<br />
author is a man of genius, sometimes; he is<br />
always sensitive ; he is apt to place an excessive<br />
WOL, W.<br />
value upon the children of his own brain ; and if<br />
his work fails he is rather inclined to throw the<br />
blame upon any other cause than his own stupi-<br />
dity. The author is apt to be one of those<br />
persons to whom a balance-sheet is a source of<br />
hopeless bewilderment; he is rarely a man of busi-<br />
ness; while on the other hand the publisher is a<br />
man of business, and has that peculiar talent in<br />
which all men of business are so conspicuous, the<br />
talent for proving that he is always losing by his<br />
business, and yet of living as if his business were<br />
distinctly profitable; and very often he has had<br />
to console himself for the losses which he made<br />
by speculating in unsuccessful literature by<br />
accepting some of the profit made out of the<br />
brains of men of genius. Undoubtedly such a<br />
relation must be a very difficult one, and so far<br />
as this Society endeavours to put it on a better<br />
basis I most heartily and cordially sympathise<br />
with the work which it is doing. Undoubtedly<br />
it is desirable that when bargains are made, and<br />
when the author is for the time in partnership<br />
with the publisher, they should distinctly under-<br />
stand the terms on which they come together,<br />
and that they should take advantage of the<br />
experience of their comrades in making terms in<br />
such a form that it is not likely to lead to mis-<br />
understandings, and that honourable men on<br />
both sides may be brought together and put<br />
in such a position that if any misunderstanding<br />
arise it must be a mere accident, and not<br />
involve any disagreeable suspicion on either<br />
side. That is, I believe, a state of things which<br />
you are endeavouring to bring about, and there-<br />
fore, as I have said, I most cordially wish you<br />
success. Mr. Stephen coupled the toast of “The<br />
Society” with the name of Sir Frederick Pollock.<br />
In responding, Sir Frederick Pollock said: My<br />
Lord Bishop, ladies and gentlemen, the first<br />
thing which I must express in the name of the<br />
Society is the great pleasure which we all feel in<br />
having Mr. Leslie Stephen as our chairman. If<br />
there is to be found a worthy representative of<br />
the higher art of literature I think Mr. Leslie<br />
Stephen is that representative, but as Mr.<br />
Stephen is a very old friend of mine, and I am<br />
speaking not in my personal capacity, but in the<br />
name of the Society, it would be unfair to take<br />
the words out of the mouth of Mr. Gosse, who will<br />
have something to say on the subject. At present<br />
the question of Canadian copyright is the most<br />
urgent matter under our notice, and within a few<br />
weeks a joint committee will probably be formed,<br />
representing this Society, the Copyright Associa-<br />
tion, the Iondon Chamber of Commerce, and<br />
possibly other bodies, and I hope that that com-<br />
mittee will be able to do some useful work in<br />
strengthening the hands of the home authorities.<br />
F 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 42 (#56) ##############################################<br />
<br />
42 THE AUTHOR.<br />
Some people think that our Society encourages<br />
nothing but light literature, and that we look to<br />
nothing but a rapid sale of our volumes. I will<br />
simply observe that I have here at my right hand<br />
one of our most serious writers of literature, the<br />
Bishop of Oxford. He has shown us how litera-<br />
ture in the highest sense can be dealt with. The<br />
Bishop is one of those whom I was proud to count<br />
among my colleagues for a few years at Oxford.<br />
He has done more than write a classical history;<br />
he has shown us what history is and how history<br />
ought to be treated. Mr. Conan Doyle has shown<br />
us the legitimate use of history for the purposes<br />
of (what is called) lighter literature. The<br />
Society will doubtless join me in the hope that<br />
he will lose no time in giving us another “White<br />
Company.” I ask you, therefore, to couple the<br />
toast of Literature with the name of the Bishop<br />
of Oxford and that of Mr. Conan Doyle.<br />
The Bishop of Oxford, in responding, said:<br />
“Mr. Stephen, ladies and gentlemen, I will not<br />
waste your time by telling you how very grateful<br />
I am for the kind reception given to me. When<br />
I was told last week that it would be my duty to<br />
return thanks on behalf of the serious side of<br />
literature, I began to think what I should say.<br />
In the first place, I was not quite sure what<br />
serious literature was, and in the second<br />
place, I am not quite sure whether my<br />
writings are such as to entitle me to reply<br />
to the toast. I have written many hundred-<br />
weights of books, and have been frequently asked<br />
how I acquired my “style.’ I reply by saying I<br />
do not know that I have any special style; but, if<br />
I had, I acquired it by writing two sermons every<br />
week. I only wish that I could have answered<br />
better for the great society which I have been<br />
called upon to represent.” -<br />
Mr. Conan Doyle said: “While I had rather<br />
that it had been in other hands than mine, I am<br />
still glad that fiction should be represented on<br />
this occasion. It is an honour, and fiction is<br />
accustomed to be more popular than honoured.<br />
Our Colleagues of poetry, of science, and of<br />
history have made their way as high as the House<br />
of Peers and the Privy Council. But fiction has<br />
always been the Cinderella of the family. When<br />
her fair sisters go to the prince's ball, she remains<br />
behind with her wicked stepmother the critic.<br />
But she has her compensation. She still has that<br />
good old fairy godmother, and her name is Imagi-<br />
nation. With her aid, it is still as easy as ever to<br />
turn the pumpkin into the carriage and the white<br />
mice into steeds. One might even do more.<br />
With her help one might imagine that all is well<br />
with fiction, that among the successful business<br />
men from whom the peerage is recruited a place<br />
had been found also for a Scott, a Dickens, or a<br />
Thackeray; or, to come to more modern instances,<br />
that the State had shown its recognition of work<br />
done by such men as Charles Reade in the past,<br />
or Walter Besant in the present. We are periodi-<br />
cally informed by the papers, which are usually<br />
owned and edited by knights and baronets, that<br />
State recognition does not increase the prestige<br />
of the literary man. It is true. It does not<br />
increase the prestige of the author. But it<br />
enormously increases the prestige of the State.<br />
Still, come what may, we have our own kingdom<br />
of fiction, and in it we can all be kings and<br />
queens. But that kingdom has, in this country,<br />
well defined boundaries. We know how these<br />
frontiers run. To the north we are bounded by<br />
the Glasgow baillie, to the south the young ladies'<br />
seminary, and then to the east and west, of course<br />
by the two great circulating libraries. Still, it would<br />
be idle to deny that within these limitations there<br />
is room for plenty of good work. And our frontiers.<br />
are enlarging. Within the last ten years several<br />
noble novels have come from the pens of men and<br />
women which would have been, I think, impos-<br />
sible a decade earlier. It is becoming year by<br />
year more understood that it is not the indication<br />
of vice, but its glorification, which is objection-<br />
able, and that the most immoral thing which can<br />
befall literature is that it should be entirely<br />
divorced from life and truth. Fiction is at<br />
present in a state of unrest and fermentation,<br />
Some critics, I know, say that the old tree is<br />
barren, but it seems to me that I see green shoots<br />
on all her branches. I believe from my heart<br />
that the present generation will uphold the<br />
glorious inheritance which has come down to us,<br />
and will pass it on to our posterity in a manner<br />
which shall not be unworthy.<br />
Mr. EDMUND GossE.—Sir Frederick Pollock,<br />
my Lords, ladies, and gentlemen. —It is my<br />
pleasant duty to ask you to fill your glasses, and<br />
drink to the health of our chairman, Mr. Leslie<br />
Stephen. It Ought not, I think, to be difficult to<br />
speak appropriately of one who has himself<br />
spoken so wisely and so genially of a host of<br />
others. No one here to-night but must feel a<br />
debt of gratitude for some gift or other of Mr.<br />
Leslie Stephen's, But, as the Society of Authors,<br />
we welcome him among us with unusual cheer-<br />
fulness, because he is one of the prodigal fathers<br />
of our society. He is one of the very few leading<br />
men of his generation who have always looked<br />
out of window when anybody spoke of the Society<br />
of Authors. He has been not with us, and there-<br />
fore against us. He is now with us, and will for<br />
the future always be for us. We rejoice over Mr.<br />
Leslie Stephen more than over ten celebrities who<br />
have been perfectly kind to us from our foundation.<br />
If we regard the literary career of our chair-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 43 (#57) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
43<br />
man of to-night, we are struck, I think, first<br />
of all, by the width and catholicity of his sym-<br />
pathies, and then by the curious fate which has<br />
driven him from one corner of the intellectual<br />
province to another. He has been an authority<br />
on mountaineering and on ethics, and alternately<br />
at home with the founders of deism and with the<br />
makers of dictionaries. He began literary life, I<br />
think, as one of those who, conscious of their<br />
unconfessed offences, voluntarily make them-<br />
selves excessively uncomfortable with penitential<br />
hard labour in the Alps. Flung from peak to<br />
peak, and picking himself up at last, more dead<br />
than alive, at the foot of a glacier, he decided in<br />
future to spend his hours in the shelter of a<br />
library. And there he began a new thing;<br />
there he took down book after book, and talked<br />
to us about them, not as one of the pedantic<br />
Sanhedrim, but easily, confidentially, penetra-<br />
tively. He was dragged out of his library to<br />
become editor of the Cornhill Magazine, and now<br />
a wider work of influence began.<br />
I think he must be a little moved to-night<br />
to see around him here not a few of those<br />
whom he marshalled and encouraged in the<br />
pages of that serial, then unquestionably the<br />
most purely literary magazine which has ever<br />
been issued in this country. It was in the<br />
capacity of a contributor to the Cornhill that<br />
my own acquaintance with our chairman began,<br />
just twenty years ago. It was quite a little<br />
close corporation, and there were always wel-<br />
come, before they were welcome elsewhere, many<br />
who are widely known to-day — Mr. Thomas<br />
Hardy, Mr. Norris, Mr Austin Dobson, Mr. Grant<br />
Allen, our lamented friend John Addington<br />
Symonds, you, Sir, yourself, and many whom I<br />
do not at this moment recall. And to these, one<br />
day in 1875, was added a new writer who signed<br />
himself R. L. S. I have a letter from our chair-<br />
man, written at that time, in which he says,<br />
replying to a question of mine, “The initials are<br />
not those of the Real Leslie Stephen, as a friend<br />
of mine suggests, but of a young Scotchman<br />
from Edinburgh, called Robert Louis Stevenson.”<br />
Everyone of these, I think I may boldly say,<br />
looks back to the patient encouragement, the<br />
cordial and tireless sympathy of the best of<br />
editors with genuine gratitude.<br />
In those early days, as many of us remember,<br />
and as he himself no doubt forgets, there was no<br />
one who laughed more gaily at the trivialities of<br />
biographical literature, or who less resembled Dr.<br />
Dryasdust. It is whispered to me that a letter<br />
exists in which Mr. Leslie Stephen repudiates with<br />
contempt the man who cares to know who any<br />
other man's grandmother was. Ah! the irony of<br />
fate | Some twelve years ago, he was called upon<br />
to undertake a colossal work, the very essence of<br />
which depends upon knowing everything about<br />
everybody’s grandmother, nay, more, upon being<br />
familiar with all those mysterious consangui-<br />
nities which we read on summer Sundays at the<br />
back of the church-door. Well, he took up this<br />
task, too, as he has taken up so many others, with<br />
perfect good-nature, with exhaustive erudition,<br />
with combined energy and patience, and we all<br />
know what he made of it. But now he is<br />
released at last, this weary Titan of National<br />
Biography. He has shaken off the cousins' sisters<br />
and the mother-in-law’s nieces' husbands of<br />
genius. He can come back to literature, and that<br />
is where we love to see him. We love to see him<br />
here, at the table of the Society of Authors, and I<br />
beg you all to join with me in testifying your<br />
satisfaction. Mr. Leslie Stephen!<br />
ar- - -s<br />
REAL AUTHORS,<br />
To the City Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette.<br />
SIR,-A paragraph-writer in this morning's<br />
press on the dinner of the Society of Authors is<br />
pleased to remark on the small proportion of<br />
“real authors” present. Apparently he does<br />
not mean to deny that (omitting all those who<br />
could be said in any sense to be officially present)<br />
such people as Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Morris,<br />
Mr. George Moore, Mrs. W. K. Clifford, Miss<br />
Helen Mathers, Mrs. (or Madame as the reporters<br />
will have it, I cannot think why) Sarah Grand,<br />
and so forth, are real authors, but only to be sur-<br />
prised that they were in a minority; in fact, he<br />
guesses that not more than one in three of the<br />
company was a well-known author.<br />
It may be well to point out that the Society of<br />
Authors exists for the benefit, not of those<br />
authors who have already made their reputation,<br />
and may be presumed able to look after their<br />
own interests, but of those who still have their<br />
reputation to make. It does not profess to be<br />
a club of literary celebrities. If a representa-<br />
tive gathering of the society did consist mostly<br />
of writers already well known, it might be a<br />
more brilliant assembly from the reporter's point<br />
of view, but the fact would only show that the<br />
society was failing in its proper work, and had<br />
ceased to be useful, or a centre of interest to<br />
those for whose sake it was founded. The<br />
society’s definition of a “real author’’ is a<br />
person who has written and published at least<br />
one book, or its equivalent. This is a much less<br />
ambitious definition than the commentator's, but<br />
I venture to think it more accurate.—Yours, &c.<br />
June I. F. POLLOCK.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 44 (#58) ##############################################<br />
<br />
44<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
AN AMERICAN MAGAZINE.<br />
HE President of the Century Company has<br />
been reading a paper on the methods and<br />
the production of the Century magazine.<br />
The paper contains certain facts which may be<br />
useful and instructive to ourselves, especially in<br />
the light of the fact that one or two American<br />
magazines, not for their cheapness, nor because<br />
they can be charged with a low standard of style<br />
and subject, can fairly boast that the circulation<br />
of each as a monthly actually represents by itself<br />
at least three times the circulation of all the<br />
English monthly magazines combined, excepting<br />
two or three; and that the circulation in this<br />
country alone, of one or two, is equal to the circu-<br />
lation of any three English magazines combined,<br />
still excepting these two or three. It is worth<br />
while, perhaps, to read this paper, and to attempt<br />
some explanation of what is certainly astonishing,<br />
and, except on the theory that the English maga-<br />
zines are written for the highest culture only—a<br />
theory which it would be difficult to maintain—<br />
extremely humiliating.<br />
The Century magazine contains 160 pages,<br />
making about thirty articles—long and short.<br />
There are, then, from 350 to 4oo articles every<br />
year. Out of this number about 175 are either<br />
poetry or fiction. The rest are historical, bio-<br />
graphical, of travel, of social matters, and miscel-<br />
laneous. It is found that fiction, even when a<br />
novel is produced by one of the foremost English<br />
or American writers of the day, does not seem to<br />
advance the circulation of the paper. Yet it<br />
keeps up the circulation which begins to drop<br />
when the fiction is weak or unattractive. This<br />
statement probably amounts to saying that<br />
general excellence in every branch must be main-<br />
tained or the circulation suffers. On the other<br />
hand, the most popular subject ever started by<br />
the Century was that of the Civil War, on which<br />
a series of papers appeared. This series caused<br />
the circulation to go up by leaps and bounds.<br />
It is found, next, that no American magazine<br />
has ever attained a popular success unless it<br />
was illustrated. In recognition of this fact, the<br />
Century has always paid the greatest attention<br />
to its illustrations, which are now the finest that<br />
can be procured. That is to say, the artistic branch<br />
demands now a very large part of the expenditure.<br />
So great is the outlay on illustrations, as well as<br />
contributions, that every number costs, before it<br />
goes to press, about £2OOO. Even if this includes<br />
the salaries of editors, managers, and clerks, the<br />
rent of offices and the service of distribution, it is<br />
evident that a very large capital is embarked in<br />
'an American magazine, and that the risk of a<br />
fall in the circulation means a possible loss of<br />
this large capital. This danger alone proves the<br />
necessity for the most unceasing watchfulness,<br />
the most intelligent apprehension of the subjects<br />
that the public like to read about, and the<br />
greatest care in finding the writers most capable<br />
of presenting those subjects. That artists and<br />
authors when engaged should be paid in pro-<br />
portion to the services they render, i.e., greatly in<br />
excess of what they have been accustomed to<br />
receive from journals of less circulation, is a<br />
natural result of increased interests and a larger<br />
property to defend and to advance.<br />
What is the circulation of American maga-<br />
zines P Of one it is said that it circulates 200,000<br />
in America and 30,000 in this country. Another<br />
is reported greatly to surpass this number in<br />
America, though its circulation is small in Great<br />
Britain; of two or three more it is said that they<br />
circulate over IOO,OOO in the States, besides having<br />
a small circulation in this country. Now, in<br />
America, our magazines are hardly ever seen; there<br />
are none on the bookstalls, either at the stations or<br />
in the hotels. Why does the American magazine<br />
come here P Why does not the English maga-<br />
zine go over there P. How comes it that while in<br />
a population of 60,000,000 some of their journals<br />
arrive at a circulation of 200,000, we find, in our<br />
own population of 37,000,000, without counting the<br />
I 5,OOO,OOO of Britons abroad and in the Colonies,<br />
our magazines crawling along with a circulation of<br />
2OOO to 20,000 P. We speak here of old-estab-<br />
lished magazines which, like those of America,<br />
are “serious,” that is, do not aim at popularity<br />
alone. There are monthly magazines here which<br />
appeal to popular tastes, and, without being<br />
necessarily unwholesome or sensational, do attain<br />
to a popularity which rivals that of the Americans;<br />
but those we do not here consider. Why is it, in<br />
short, that the old established and highly respect-<br />
able paper the Cheapside is sending out every<br />
month its ten thousand instead of its quarter of a<br />
million ?<br />
Among some of the causes are, perhaps, these :<br />
In the States, the editor—always a man of proved<br />
ability—is engaged to give his whole time, all his<br />
thoughts, all his ability, to the conduct of his<br />
paper. He has assistants, all of whom are<br />
engaged also to give to the paper their whole<br />
time and all their thoughts. In this country the<br />
editor too often does a great many other things;<br />
he has engagements which distract his attention;<br />
he does work of his own which absorbs him. The<br />
first essential for the successful conduct of a<br />
magazine seems to be that one man, at least,<br />
should think for it—think all day for it.<br />
Again, it has hitherto been considered enough<br />
for an editor to sit at his table and receive the<br />
contributions poured in upon him by every post,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 45 (#59) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
45<br />
to read them, reject most of them, and select a<br />
few. It is only quite recently that he has even<br />
begun the American method—to plan beforehand,<br />
to arrange what he will have for the next year,<br />
and for the year after, what fiction he will invite,<br />
what poetry he will invite, what special subjects<br />
he will treat, and, to be in touch with points of<br />
the day, what men will be best to treat them for<br />
him. One lesson for us would seem to be that<br />
the casual contributor by himself cannot be trusted<br />
to create a popular demand.<br />
Few of our magazines are illustrated. Is the<br />
absence of illustrations a cause of failure ? Some<br />
years ago a new illustrated monthly was started,<br />
in which the artistic element was treated most<br />
carefully. One knows not, with any certainty,<br />
how far this magazine failed or succeeded. But<br />
it has changed hands twice. Therefore good<br />
illustrations alone do not seem to bring success.<br />
Perhaps the English are not so keen after<br />
pictures as the Americans. Some English<br />
readers, certainly, do not like the photogravure<br />
processes with the broad black line all round<br />
which decorate the American page.<br />
As regards fiction, our magazines are apt to<br />
fall into one of two extremes; either, that is,<br />
they neglect and “starve” fiction, publishing<br />
poor weak stuff; or they sacrifice everything to<br />
fiction, running two or three serials and depending<br />
entirely on them for success. Fiction in a high<br />
class magazine must be of the best; but it must<br />
never be considered the only thing.<br />
Another lesson we may learn from the<br />
Americans. We have hardly yet got beyond the<br />
prejudice that the only serial in a magazine must<br />
be the novel. This is a very foolish prejudice,<br />
mischievous alike to the publisher of the magazine<br />
and to the author. For there are many books<br />
written every year—books of historical research,<br />
biographies, collections of verse, essays, travels,<br />
popular science, which, if first run through a<br />
magazine as serials, would attract thousands of<br />
readers, and give the book when published a far<br />
greater chance of success. At present the author<br />
has to be content, say, with a single edition of a<br />
thousand, or even 500 copies. If he expects any<br />
money he is disappointed. Perhaps he only expects<br />
general reputation or distinction. How much of<br />
either can he get from this mere mite of a circula-<br />
tion? One or two attempts in this direction have<br />
already been made—but tentatively. It is as if<br />
editors do not as yet recognise the fact that an<br />
extremely attractive serial may be made of a sub-<br />
ject not belonging to fiction at all. For instance,<br />
many volumes of poetry are run through various<br />
magazines first. I would run them through one<br />
magazine only. “Mr. Austin Dobson’s new<br />
volume of verse will be commenced in the January<br />
number of the New Year; it will run through<br />
twelve months, and will be published in volume<br />
form in November.” Would not such an an-<br />
nouncement be attractive P Or this: “Professor<br />
Dowden's new work on Shakespeare is nearly<br />
completed. It consists of twelve chapters, and<br />
is to run through twelve numbers of the Cheapside<br />
magazine; it will then be published in the<br />
autumn books of Messrs. Bungay.” Does any<br />
one pretend that the comparatively wide cir-<br />
culation of the magazine would not assist the<br />
author in disseminating his teaching and the<br />
publisher in afterwards distributing the book?<br />
The next point is the investment of large sums<br />
of money in the enterprise. This, no doubt, is<br />
risk; such risk as few publishers care to face.<br />
Yet, if one appeals to the great public there are<br />
but two ways: to hope for gradual recognition of<br />
work always good; or by a bid for popularity—<br />
immediate and wide-spread — by treatment of<br />
topics always fresh and interesting, and by wide<br />
advertisement. Both methods, however, mean<br />
the investment of money. g<br />
One more reason, perhaps, why our higher class<br />
magazines are not popular. Nearly all of them aim,<br />
more or less, at expounding and perhaps solving<br />
the many questions and problems of the day.<br />
Not, that is, the treatment of fresh topics, but<br />
the difficulties of the day. The articles are, as a<br />
rule, very well written; the American magazines<br />
do not seem to me, on the whole, nearly so well<br />
written as our own ; but if we take up the new<br />
numbers of any magazine of the better kind,<br />
what we find in it is too often the continuation<br />
or even the repetition of the daily and weekly<br />
leading article. If the editors would only con-<br />
sider that the same subject which we gladly<br />
read when treated in the Times of to-day and<br />
in the Spectator of next Saturday, will become<br />
wearisome when treated, without much new light<br />
or much new wisdom, in the monthly magazine of<br />
the week after next, they would perhaps refuse<br />
certain papers. There are, of course, brilliant<br />
exceptions, as when the One man who knows<br />
can be got to speak, or when one who is allowed<br />
to be a leader speaks. For the most part the<br />
writers are not known by the world to be of<br />
greater eminence on this question or on that<br />
than the anonymous writer in the Times or the<br />
Spectator.<br />
Another reason, perhaps equally weighty, is<br />
the undue prominence given by English maga-<br />
zines to literary papers and especially those of the<br />
mournful or the savage kind. It is a great<br />
mistake to suppose that people, even of culture,<br />
are always wanting to tear the literature of the<br />
day up by the roots, to see how it is getting on;<br />
and it is quite certain that the kind of criticism<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 46 (#60) ##############################################<br />
<br />
46<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
which only sneers and depreciates, and can only<br />
find in the popularity of a writer a reason for<br />
pretended contempt, is offensive to all readers,<br />
whether of culture or not. Of the “Decay of<br />
Fiction,” the “Decay of Poetry,” the “Decay of<br />
the Drama,” people have already heard too much.<br />
Americans do not strike this note, nor will they<br />
endure it; theirs must be the note of hope, eager<br />
looking forward and confidence. There is no<br />
reason why in every field of intellect, art, science,<br />
imagination, this note of confidence should not be<br />
struck by ourselves. I, for one, believe that it is<br />
the true note—that the present is a time of great<br />
endeavour and of deserved success. It is true<br />
that there are failures by the million, because<br />
there are attempts by the million. Instinctively<br />
the people — better class and all — turn with<br />
disgust from the pessimist and the mournful<br />
downcrier of what he dares not even try to<br />
imitate. Let us leave the million failures to die<br />
in nameless peace. Let us rejoice in the successes,<br />
and lift up our heads with something of the<br />
American hope and confidence. We are a young<br />
country still, with our future still before us.<br />
These are some of the reasons why the English<br />
magazine is distanced and beaten by the American:<br />
rival. The problem before us is this: “How are<br />
we to maintain a high level of style and subject,<br />
and yet make a serious bid for the popularity<br />
which this rival obtains P” W. B.<br />
*- - -º<br />
- - -<br />
NOTES AND NEWS,<br />
Tº Literary Congress of San Francisco<br />
seems to have been a comparative failure.<br />
The original plans, a correspondent writes,<br />
were changed, and it was hurried upon the boards<br />
long before the time originally planned. Conse-<br />
quently few were there, and “it became merely a<br />
provincial gathering of people of unequal ability,<br />
and not in the least representative of California.<br />
It was disappointing to those who had been most<br />
active in planning it.”<br />
*-<br />
It is pleasant, for one who took part in it, to<br />
read that the Literary Congress of Chicago is<br />
bearing fruit in the best possible way. The<br />
following is an extract from the Critic of New<br />
York, the only paper to which we can look for a<br />
week-by-week record of American literature:<br />
It was evidently not in vain that Chicago lavished her<br />
millions in time and money upon the Fair. The intellectual<br />
returns are beginning to come in, and they indicate a<br />
remarkable enlargement of vision, an increased appreciation<br />
of science and art, and of what they can offer. It was<br />
inevitable that such would be the result; the mere labour of<br />
design and construction was bound to develop the ingenuity<br />
and the resources of the people. But the most sanguine of<br />
us looked forward many years before the evidence of this<br />
inspiration should appear. We did not expect the fruit to<br />
ripen overnight ; we forgot the rapidity with which the<br />
American people take up an idea and develope it and make<br />
it their own. Of course, it is too soon for the effect to be<br />
visible in deeds, but there are many things that indicate the<br />
general tendency. And not the least of these is the state-<br />
ment of Mr. Hill, the librarian of the Public Library, in<br />
regard to the changes in the demand for books. He says<br />
that the standard of quality in the books called for at the<br />
library is decidedly higher than it was a year ago.<br />
Art has felt the same stimulus from the Fair. The inte-<br />
rest in pictures and sculpture is evidenced by the crowds<br />
that enter the Art Institute, and even more positively by the<br />
statements of the dealers. Mr. O’Brien, who has been giving<br />
a series of delightful exhibitions of works by American<br />
painters, says that a year ago such pictures would have been<br />
utterly neglected here. But at present the galleries in which<br />
they are hung are crowded. Many collectors, too, have been<br />
developed by the Fair—men and women who, before it,<br />
never thought of buying a picture. These facts are, of<br />
course, merely straws, but they show the direction of the<br />
wind. The fruit of the fair in production will be slower in<br />
ripening, but the buildings, the statues, the pictures, and<br />
poems it will inspire will be worth the waiting for.<br />
“At the dinner of the Authors’ Club last week, which<br />
brought together a large company, who seemed to be toler-<br />
ably happy in spite of the continued existence of publishers,<br />
Mr. Leslie Stephen foretold ‘the coming of that glorious<br />
time ’ when writers will be better paid than they are now.<br />
The prophecy excited, on the whole, more doubt than<br />
belief. We hear, however, that a new literary agency is in<br />
process of formation, with a large capital behind it, which<br />
will employ its own readers, and pay authors a sum down as<br />
soon as it has approved their works. One of its chief<br />
objects will be to force up the average price of serial<br />
rights.”<br />
The above is a cutting from the Athenæum of<br />
June 9. One wonders who are the people who<br />
amuse themselves by concocting such paragraphs.<br />
The Authors’ Club has held no dinner at all except<br />
its monthly house dinner. Mr. Leslie Stephen has<br />
never yet favoured the club with his presence at<br />
that or any other function. The Authors’<br />
Society held its annual dinner, and the president<br />
of the evening was Mr. Leslie Stephen. His speech,<br />
reported verbatim, will be found on p. 39 of this<br />
number. The words attributed to him were not<br />
spoken by him; he did not “foretell the coming<br />
of that glorious time ’’—the inverted commas<br />
mean a quotation, which makes it a deliberate<br />
invention—when writers will be better paid than<br />
now. He said nothing of the kind; he did not<br />
use the words “glorious time ’’ at all; what he said<br />
was that, in the aim of the Society towards the<br />
adjustment of their own affairs, he wished it every<br />
success. “The prophecy excited, on the whole,<br />
more doubt than belief.” Wonderful | First,<br />
to invent a prophecy, never uttered, and them to<br />
describe the way in which that prophecy was<br />
received Even a prophet of Baal had to say<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 47 (#61) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
47<br />
something before his audience began to consider<br />
his prophecy.<br />
As regards the alleged “new literary agency,”<br />
that bears on the face of it every sign of being<br />
another invention—perhaps an invention intended<br />
to be comic. Certainly no one in his senses could<br />
deliberately set himself to persuade people that a<br />
company had been formed whose “chief object”<br />
was to force up the “average" price of serial<br />
rights. What, to begin with, is the “average *<br />
price? Is it the average of all the magazines<br />
and journals that exist without reference to<br />
subject, circulation, name, character of the paper?<br />
As for “forcing,” one has always considered, in<br />
matter of papers for magazines, that the editor<br />
is a despot from whose word there is no appeal.<br />
He can say, and he does say, that his remuneration<br />
is a certain stipulated sum. It is for the author<br />
to “take it or leave it.” Nor can any “forcing ”<br />
alter this condition of things. Certain magazines<br />
and journals acquire a good name for their<br />
treatment of contributors in this respect; such a<br />
good name, no doubt, is a very useful thing for a<br />
journal to possess; one ventures to believe and to<br />
hope that it helps the circulation. Certain other<br />
magazines acquire precisely the opposite reputa-<br />
tion, insomuch that the literary world regards<br />
with complacency the decline and fall of those<br />
magazines. The only influences that can be<br />
brought to bear upon this monarch of all he<br />
surveys—the editor—are those of competition<br />
first—it needs no company “with a large capital<br />
behind it,” to create competition among editors;<br />
and, next, a sense of what is due to the producer,<br />
in other words, a sense of justice. Since the most<br />
friendly relations seem to prevail between the<br />
editors of our high-class magazines and their con-<br />
tributors, it seems as if this sense of justice does<br />
exist.<br />
The following is from the New York Critic.<br />
The same circular has been sent to myself,<br />
doubtless among many others:<br />
Authors have strange requests sometimes. Here is one<br />
recently received by a well-known novelist from the editor<br />
of a periodical which up to this time has devoted itself to<br />
illustration rather than to text :—“Although it is not the<br />
custom of our paper to publish stories, yet if you have<br />
an unpublished novel of medium length which you could<br />
remodel only to the extent of having a portion of the scenes<br />
laid in studios and art galleries, I should be pleased to have<br />
you submit the same, and am willing to pay well for it. We<br />
always pay for MSS. as soon as accepted.” There is some-<br />
thing attractive in this last statement, for authors as a rule<br />
are needy. The one in question is not, however, so he failed<br />
to be caught on this well-baited hook. The editor of this<br />
paper evidently thinks that authors have no feelings, or<br />
why would he expect them to recast their stories to suit his<br />
audience P<br />
A very useful compilation is the Index to the<br />
Periodicals of the World, published by the<br />
Review of Reviews Office. The list of periodi-<br />
cals fills thirty-seven pages devoted to English<br />
and American periodicals alone, and fifty pages<br />
for the periodicals of all countries. Reckoning<br />
roughly, an average of thirty-four to a page, we<br />
have 1700 periodicals of the whole world indexed<br />
in this volume, and I 258 English and American<br />
periodicals. Those that specially concern our-<br />
selves—the literary journals—are about Io2 in<br />
number, but there are many others — some<br />
educational, musical, artistic, historical, legal,<br />
economical, medical, and scientific, which concern<br />
many of our members. The papers and articles<br />
on literature in one or other of its branches are<br />
innumerable. It is the one subject of which<br />
editors seem never tired. The American perio-<br />
dical abounds with personal descriptions of<br />
literary men, especially with accounts of their<br />
methods of working, about which one wonders<br />
why there exists any curiosity at all; for certainly,<br />
if one knew the methods of every writer under<br />
the sun, without natural aptitude one would be<br />
not a whit advanced. The discussion of the<br />
novel is more favoured by English magazines.<br />
The reason, one fears, is not that the public<br />
demands this vast mass of criticism or talk about<br />
literature, but that it can be produced in any<br />
quantity, either from the man with a name or the<br />
man without a name. These indexes have<br />
become indispensable. .<br />
I have always advocated for those writers who<br />
are not men—or women—of business the employ-<br />
ment of an agent. The only argument which<br />
appears to me of any weight at all against the<br />
middleman is that where an author is able to<br />
manage his own affairs he may just as well do so,<br />
and save the commission. Even in that case it<br />
may be worth the author's while, if he is a busy<br />
man, to let his agent think for him and plan for<br />
him. As for those who do not possess the<br />
necessary knowledge or habits of business, the<br />
only danger, it seems to me, that they have to<br />
fear is that of falling into bad hands, and the<br />
only real objection that can be raised, by the<br />
other side to the agent, is that he is expected to<br />
conduct negotiations in a business manner; in<br />
other words, he prevents his client from being<br />
“bested ”—a word which very often covers, but<br />
does not hide, another and an older word.<br />
Now, if the agent works for the author, he<br />
must be paid by the author. This seems ele-<br />
mentary. But I have heard certain stories which<br />
ought, I think, to be brought out into light.<br />
There is, for instance, the story of the author who<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 48 (#62) ##############################################<br />
<br />
48 THE AUTHOR.<br />
comes to the agent, finds out the name of the editor<br />
or the publisher to whom he proposes to send the<br />
work, and then uses the information and goes<br />
there himself. There is, again, the author who,<br />
when he has been successfully placed, gets the<br />
cheque sent to himself, and then refuses to pay<br />
the commission. There is, again, the case where<br />
the publisher writes direct to the author after<br />
receiving an offer from the agent. It is of course<br />
the author's duty, as a matter of honour, to send<br />
that letter to the agent in whose hands he has<br />
already placed the MS., and whose work for him<br />
has obtained this offer. Unfortunately he does<br />
not always do so. Now, most of these practices<br />
come from failing to understand that transactions<br />
in literature are like those in every other kind of<br />
business, so that the same rules should obtain<br />
between author and agent as between client and<br />
solicitor. Of one thing writers may rest assured,<br />
that any attempt made to detach the author from<br />
his agent can only be due to an intention to<br />
profit by the author's ignorance. As for the<br />
pretended desire to maintain friendly relations,<br />
a friendship which will not survive the adjust-<br />
ment of honourable terms between two men is<br />
worth nothing — nothing at all. Any person<br />
who ventures to put forth this ridiculous plea<br />
stands self-condemned.<br />
On more than one occasion an agent's commis-<br />
sion of so much per cent. has been represented to<br />
an author as the deduction of a royalty of so much<br />
per cent. " This amazingly impudent assertion has<br />
been actually accepted and credited Let us there-<br />
fore see exactly what it means. We will suppose<br />
a royalty of 20 per cent., which is a little over<br />
Is. 2d. On a 6s. book. The returns show a sale,<br />
say, of 3OOO copies, which at this royalty means<br />
for the author the sum of £180. On this the<br />
agent takes, say, Io per cent., i.e., 318. Now, if<br />
the commission had been the deduction of a IO per<br />
cent. royalty, the agent would have received £90.<br />
A commission is a percentage on the whole<br />
amount received from royalties or from purchase;<br />
a royalty is a percentage on the advertised pub-<br />
lished price of each copy. This explanation may<br />
seem elementary, but there are really no “sums”<br />
in literary business which are too elementary to<br />
be explained.<br />
“But,” said a publisher plaintively, “why incur<br />
this extra expense P Why not come to me,<br />
as my friends, Lord Addlehede and Professor<br />
Insipiens always have done, direct, and so save<br />
the intervention of the other party P” Let us,<br />
in reply, without calling names, or getting angry,<br />
recognise the plain fact that when a man of<br />
business transacts affairs with a man who does<br />
not understand business, the former always gets<br />
the better of the latter, which is the reason<br />
why Lord Addlehede and the Professor above<br />
named would do well to consider their ways, and<br />
approach their publisher with the help of a man<br />
of business.<br />
The book of the month is, of course, our<br />
President’s new novel, “Lord Ormont and His<br />
Aminta.” A great many have followed it in its<br />
course through the Pall Mall Magazine.<br />
Meredithians—how large a company have they<br />
become !—will rejoice in it, while the old charge<br />
of obscurity certainly cannot be brought against<br />
any of the characters in this the latest, and, in<br />
some respects, perhaps the best of this author's<br />
remarkable series of novels.<br />
William Watson's sonnet to France (June 25,<br />
1894), which appeared in the Westminster<br />
Gazette, seems to me very fine. To France—<br />
“immortal and indomitable France.”<br />
Nation whom storm on storm of ruining fate<br />
Unruined leaves—nay, fairer, more elate,<br />
Hungrier for action, more athirst for glory !<br />
It is the gift and the privilege of the poet to<br />
speak the voice of one nation to another in days<br />
of great sorrow or great disaster, as well as in<br />
days of great joy and great victory. William<br />
Watson speaks to France for England:<br />
Little thou lov’st our island—<br />
Yet let her in these dark and bodeful days,<br />
Sinking old hatreds 'neath the sundering brine—<br />
Immortal and indomitable France —<br />
Marry her tears, her alien tears, to thine.<br />
The premature death of Mr. John Underhill<br />
from some affection of the brain—a tumour<br />
apparently—took place on Wednesday, June 27,<br />
at his residence, Wimbledon. Mr. Underhill was<br />
only twenty-nine years of age. He was born at<br />
Barnstaple, where he was privately educated by<br />
the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie, at that time<br />
vicar of Barnstaple. He developed an intense<br />
love for books and for everything that belongs<br />
to literature. It became obvious that no career<br />
except that of literature was possible for him.<br />
He therefore came to London proposing such<br />
a career. He was armed with one or two<br />
letters of introduction. One of these was to<br />
Mr. W. T. Stead, who was at that time assistant<br />
editor, or actual editor, of the Pall Mall<br />
Gazette. Mr. Stead assisted the lad, as he has<br />
assisted many others, by giving him a start. He<br />
placed him in his office and taught him<br />
journalism. He remained on the staff of the<br />
Pall Mall Gazette till a few weeks ago, when<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 49 (#63) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
49<br />
he resigned his post, intending to devote<br />
himself entirely to literature. As an original<br />
writer he would not have succeeded; he knew<br />
his own limitations, and aspired only to the<br />
humbler but not less useful work of editing,<br />
annotating, writing biographies, and compilations.<br />
That is, he would never have become a bookmaker;<br />
but he would have been, and was already, a<br />
most useful and trustworthy editor. His private<br />
character was beyond all reproach ; he was<br />
always, as a journalist, on the side of honour and<br />
of truth; as a reviewer he was wholly unin-<br />
fluenced by personal feelings, he was incapable<br />
of rancour or of spite. That he had his own<br />
way to make in the world only increases the<br />
honour of having made his way so far with so<br />
much distinction. That he made friends every-<br />
where is a proof of his generous and sympathetic<br />
mature. He was especially engaged at the time<br />
of his death on a history of journalism. He<br />
leaves behind him a young widow and one<br />
child.<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
*- a .sº<br />
GEORGE ELIOT AND HER CREED,<br />
NE little story of George Eliot's childhood<br />
has lingered ſong in my memory, for in a<br />
measure it typified the creed shaping each<br />
novel and story, long after it ceased to be her<br />
personal one, remaining the much more widely<br />
diffused faith she chose to give to the world in<br />
her books. When a child at school, an essay was<br />
given her to write, and the subject set was God,<br />
little Marian Evans drew upon her paper, for sole<br />
essay, a large eye.<br />
And does not each novel and poem inclose<br />
the awful eye of unsleeping, unforgetting fate P<br />
For no single character is ever allowed “to fly<br />
responsibility.”<br />
Her mind hardly seems to have been wrought<br />
into creative sympathy with the thought of the<br />
nineteenth century; although her youth witnessed<br />
an era of great political reform, and her middle and<br />
later life was surrounded by the most advanced<br />
literary and philosophic thoughts of this century.<br />
Notwithstanding all these stirring influences at<br />
work around her, to a large extent her imaginative<br />
and constructive force remained alien to the<br />
“march of events,” political and social, which<br />
swept past her, and left her, the dispassionate his-<br />
torian of the provincial scenes of her early youth,<br />
and of fifty years earlier. Her creed at times<br />
discloses a tendency to an almost barren fatalism,<br />
her characters invariably creating an adverse<br />
destiny for themselves, woven out of their<br />
early follies and failures. Like the cruel god-<br />
mother of a fairy tale, George Eliot possesses<br />
the fearful and mysterious gift of dowering<br />
her dramatis personae with some one fatal, irradi-<br />
cable weakness, which the reader foresees from<br />
the beginning of their history pre-destines them<br />
to certain failure and disaster; the retributive<br />
justice of inexorable consequences frustrating<br />
their every effort to right themselves or retrace<br />
their hapless steps through the labyrinths of<br />
early sins and errors, a creeping Nemesis being<br />
evolved at each step, to hunt them down till they<br />
sink into the slow torture of their moral and<br />
social death. Maggie Tulliver, the slave of<br />
generous impulse, is doomed to high failure, with<br />
her gift of feeling and thinking nobly, yet of<br />
acting impulsively in crucial moments; from the<br />
early days of childhood, when on a visit to a<br />
severe aunt she upsets brother Tom's tea by the<br />
bestowal of a too impulsive caress, given at an<br />
inauspicious moment, down to the time when, a<br />
beautiful young woman, she runs away with<br />
Stephen, gliding, indeed, but a small way down<br />
the stream of temptation, but awaking to a sense<br />
of duty too late to save appearances or irreme-<br />
diable grief to those she best loved. So that<br />
when the choice of utter renunciation of personal<br />
happiness is made, her initial error has robbed<br />
self-sacrifice of the first bloom of dignified<br />
heroism, and her life has turned to the dull ache<br />
of failure and inadequate retrieval; but this is<br />
finely transmuted into the heroism of her death.<br />
Running up and down the gamut of George<br />
Eliot's creations, each one is the sport of some<br />
apparently wilfully self-created destiny; a Jugger-<br />
naut car of untoward consequences set loose upon<br />
the victim of circumstances; heredity and free<br />
will engaged in ceaseless warfare for the possession<br />
of the human soul.<br />
Lydgate, the lowable doctor in “Middlemarch,”<br />
full of enthusiasm for his profession and a great<br />
tenderness for the suffering—has not the author<br />
chosen that fate should use him too grievously<br />
ill, when she gave him a lovely, heartless,<br />
shallow wife, whom he had chosen to wed, partly<br />
from the fact that, with all his brilliant gifts<br />
and winning traits, there is in his character just<br />
a tinge of intellectual egoism which made him<br />
count brains superfluous in the woman he<br />
married; that lack of finer judgment making<br />
him lose his hold on the ennobling ideals of life.<br />
Yet these little flaws in Lydgate's character<br />
doom him to be another soul's tragedy of<br />
baulked achievement, and he tells his wife in<br />
late years, with sad irony, that she is like a<br />
certain plant which is known to flourish best on<br />
dead men's brains. Perhaps a less inexorable<br />
moralist than George Eliot would have con-<br />
ferred happiness upon him, later in his life, by<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 50 (#64) ##############################################<br />
<br />
so<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
the bestowal of Dorothea's love, but so stern a<br />
moralist is seldom happy in the contemplation of<br />
too much unaccounted for happiness, unrelated<br />
to moral sequence—unweighed in the judicial<br />
moral scales.<br />
At times, one half suspects, the force of these<br />
ethical strictures arose from a lack of ideality,<br />
for an idealist abhors the fixity of moral judg-<br />
ments. George Sand, her French prototype, who<br />
suffered from an excess of luminous ideality,<br />
seldom or never passed moral judgment on her<br />
creations, for with her was the large tolerance of<br />
the humanist, and the love which says, com-<br />
prendre, c'est pardoner.<br />
In the “Spanish Gipsy” is worked out the<br />
modern conception of the forces of heredity,<br />
playing through the woof and warp of indivi-<br />
dual character, which she thus defines: “I saw it<br />
might be taken (the drama of the ‘Spanish<br />
Gypsy”) as a symbol of the part which is played<br />
in the general human lot by hereditary conditions<br />
in the largest sense, and of the fact that what<br />
we call duty is entirely made up of such condi-<br />
tions, for even in cases of just antagonism to the<br />
narrow view of hereditary claims the whole back-<br />
ground of the particular struggle is made up of<br />
our inherited nature. Suppose for a moment<br />
that our conduct at great epochs was determined<br />
entirely by reflection, without the immediate<br />
intervention of feeling which supersedes reflec-<br />
tion, our determination as to the right would<br />
consist in an adjustment of our individual needs<br />
to the dire necessities of our lot, partly as to<br />
natural constitution, partly as sharers of life<br />
with fellow beings. Tragedy consists in the<br />
terrible difficulty of this adjustment, ‘the dire<br />
strife of poor humanity’s afflicted will struggling<br />
in vain with ruthless destiny.’”<br />
“The collision of Greek tragedy is often that<br />
between hereditary entailed Nemesis and the<br />
peculiar individual lot, awakening our sympathy<br />
for the particular manor woman whom the Nemesis<br />
is shown to grasp with terrific force. . . .”<br />
IHence sprang the abiding sadness of George<br />
Eliot's creed, the insistent sombre criticism of<br />
life and human effort. Her private letters to her<br />
personal friends are melancholy reading, so often<br />
do her words limp between headache and peren-<br />
nial pessimism. Her literary career, however,<br />
was a smooth one, she served no long probation<br />
to the muse, her genius burst full blown upon a<br />
world which received it with unqualified praise,<br />
and she won success without ever experiencing that<br />
“grace of discouragement” by which Browning<br />
climbed to the bracing heights of his rare<br />
optimism.<br />
Did the gloom of her moral dynamics crush<br />
out of her the capacity for being happy?. She<br />
did not labour under the bane of being in too<br />
great advance of her time, nor of heralding<br />
unpopular truths; for her genius lay rather in<br />
presenting the old truths with matchless wit and<br />
pathos, than in lending that great genius to light<br />
the birth of the new. GRACE GILCHRIST.<br />
*~ * ~ *<br />
BOOK TALK,<br />
R. EDMUNID GOSSE has admitted into<br />
M the International Library, of which he<br />
is the editor, two novels by authors<br />
who have been previously represented in the<br />
series. The novels are “Farewell Love,” from<br />
the Italian of Matilde Serao, the author of<br />
“Fantasy,” and “The Grandee,” from the<br />
Spanish of Armando Palacio Valdés, the author<br />
of “Froth.” Whether it was the great success<br />
which attended the publication of “Fantasy.”<br />
in English, or whether the Editor considers<br />
“Farewell Love" to be the superior novel, does<br />
not appear from his introduction. Though perhaps<br />
the fact that it is a most enjoyable book would be<br />
reason enough for publication. Mr. Gosse lays<br />
great stress on the fact that the author is a jour-<br />
malist, and “all her life has been spent in minis-<br />
tering to appetites of the vast rough crowd that<br />
buys cheap Italian newspapers.” The story is<br />
true to its title; it tells of love and jealousy, of<br />
a baulked elopement, an unfortunate marriage,<br />
and self-destruction. One passionate scene<br />
follows another so quickly that the reader is<br />
surprised by the skill with which the real<br />
wickedness of the characters is concealed. There<br />
is a husband—one Cesare Dias—who is extremely<br />
like “Grandcourt,” cold, cynical, and “not<br />
a wordy thinker.” Except that he is Italian,<br />
he has a thoroughly English hatred for scenes,<br />
and finds his romantic young wife Anna Dias<br />
— née Aquaviva — a bore, and tells her so.<br />
In fact, previous to their engagement we are<br />
told she had taken the humiliating step of<br />
declaring her love; and here are three charac-<br />
teristic letters showing what happened : “Dear<br />
Anna, All that you say is very well; but I don’t<br />
know yet who the man is that you love.—Very<br />
cordially, Cesare Dias.” She read it, and<br />
answered with one line : “I love you.-Anna<br />
Aquaviva.” Cesare Dias waited a day before he<br />
replied: “I)ear Anna, Very well. And what<br />
then P-Cesare Dias.”—The translation is by<br />
Mrs. Harland, and reads very smoothly, though<br />
there is one odd phrase on p. 63: “‘Would you<br />
like a rose?” She asked to placate him.”<br />
Quite recently Mr. Grant Allen, in the West-<br />
minster Gazette, told us Londoners to go to Italy<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 51 (#65) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 5 I<br />
and revel in beauty denied us here. One would<br />
think that in default we could not do better than<br />
read the novels of Matilde Serao.<br />
“The Grandee” is a powerful story, turning on<br />
the horrible subject of cruelty to children, or in<br />
this case rather to one particular child. The<br />
author describes the state of society in a Spanish<br />
town called Lancia, thirty or forty years ago,<br />
which is identified for us by the editor as Oviedo,<br />
a place of about Io,000 inhabitants, the capital of<br />
Asturias. It is with the private life of a few of the<br />
leading families in this town that the reader has<br />
to make himself acquainted, and, though he must<br />
not expect anything much more than the visits<br />
of friends, the description of At-homes and<br />
marriage fêtes, there is, in spite of some Sameness,<br />
hardly a dull page in the book. It is most inte-<br />
resting to note how, in spite of the narrowness<br />
of life which is generally found in provincial<br />
towns, the Spaniards here described never seem<br />
to be at a loss for an enlivening incident. The<br />
stock-in-trade of their amusement is, it is true,<br />
the eternal subject of match-making, which is<br />
described as being carried on with great vigour<br />
by the elders, in spite of their constant mistakes.<br />
We are uncertain whether the author intends to<br />
reprove this custom or not, for indirectly he cer-<br />
tainly brings out that it shielded the hero in his<br />
adultery, enabling him to appear in public as the<br />
accepted suitor of one lady while he is the lover<br />
of another. This is the more amusing side of the<br />
book; but, as we have said, there is another aspect<br />
which is not only extremely serious, but is of<br />
such a nature that we cannot help wondering<br />
what moral conclusion different readers will draw<br />
from it. That well-to-do people have been known<br />
to treat young children with cruelty cannot be<br />
denied, and Mr. Gosse writes: “Nor do the<br />
reports of Mr. Benjamin Waugh permit us to<br />
question that such horrors are daily committed<br />
at our own doors.” This brings the matter so<br />
directly into the sphere of practice that we may<br />
look to the pages of this novel for light on the<br />
question of child protection, actually under dis-<br />
cussion by those who are not simply interested<br />
out of curiosity, but deeply moved by the subject.<br />
We may suppose that, in spite of its danger to<br />
liberty, some people would ask for increased<br />
powers of obtaining evidence, when they were<br />
reasonably certain cruelty was being practised.<br />
The lesson we draw from this work is of a diffe-<br />
rent nature. We must remember that to abuse<br />
the parent is part of the bias of some professional<br />
men, notably the pedagogue and the cleric, and<br />
therefore in any case of alleged cruelty it is well to<br />
try and discover what the actual parentage of the<br />
child is, otherwise there is a danger of legislation<br />
being based on false information. The point<br />
that comes out most clearly in “The Grandee”<br />
is that where the victim is illegitimate as much<br />
would be gained by altering the position of such<br />
children, and so stopping the temptation to cruel<br />
treatment, as can possibly be gained by legisla-<br />
tion, which would also interfere with the well-<br />
established duties of lawfully married parents<br />
towards their children. Mr. Gosse also raises<br />
another nice point, “Whether these maladies of<br />
the soul are or are not fit subjects for the art of<br />
the novelist is a question which every reader<br />
must answer for himself.” To which it may be<br />
suggested, by way of reply, that as long as there<br />
are customs which shield gross immorality, the<br />
art of the novelist is well employed in laying<br />
bare the evil, lest these matters should fall into<br />
the hands not of the novelist, but of the sensation-<br />
monger, and become the cause of hurried and<br />
ill-considered legislation. The translation of<br />
“The Grandee’’ is by Miss Rachel Challis, and<br />
it seems to read quite as easily as many English<br />
novels; but we should like to know what authority<br />
the translator has for making the word “lover”<br />
feminine.<br />
Mr. Gilbert Parker's latest story, “The Trans-<br />
lation of a Savage,” is one which must come as a<br />
happy surprise to the most persistent novel<br />
reader. Whether the main idea is really possible<br />
we do not care to ask, because the author has<br />
used it so well that any carping criticism tending<br />
to spoil the illusion, when we have been given so<br />
much pleasure, would be entirely out of place.<br />
We are to take it for granted that an American<br />
Indian, the daughter of the chief of her tribe,<br />
being sent on her marriage with an English<br />
General’s son to his family in England, could be<br />
translated, as Mr. Parker calls it, into a refined<br />
member of English society. Once grant this<br />
difficulty, and then the amusement which arises<br />
out of the process of “translation” meets us at<br />
every page. We are not bored with details as to<br />
how the transformation is brought about, but the<br />
force of example and surroundings do much, and<br />
personal devotion does the rest. Only once does<br />
the young lady, as we may call her, really forget<br />
to be English, and then she takes to riding madly<br />
across her father-in-law's property in the dress<br />
and style of her tribe. A child is born to her in<br />
England, but her husband remains in Canada,<br />
and she has learnt to hate him. The reason of<br />
all this it is not our business to tell. The matter-<br />
of-fact reader who could find fault with Mr.<br />
Parker for his choice of incident would be very<br />
foolish indeed, for we have here a story in which<br />
the author has been able to depict malice and<br />
revenge, as well as true love and friendship, in a<br />
compass long enough to make one good volume,<br />
but with such a charming narrative style that<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 52 (#66) ##############################################<br />
<br />
52<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
nearly every reader will make a point of finishing<br />
it at a single sitting. +<br />
Mr. Austin’s new volume, “The Garden that I<br />
Love,” has much in it to awaken the envy of his<br />
fellow poets. He obtained the lease of an old<br />
manor house, and the reader will learn how he<br />
converted it to suit the author-gardener's taste<br />
and his sister Weronica's sense of comfort and<br />
house room. It will be seen that, though the<br />
|book is properly enough named, it is more the<br />
garden-lover's leisure and his talks with his two<br />
guests rather than the garden apart that we have<br />
to hear about. Of the guests one is a poet, who<br />
is not only so in name but recites his own poetry,<br />
the other a young lady called Lamia. The garden<br />
becomes the happily suggestive subject for con-<br />
versation which takes a wide range from the<br />
almost frivolous to the lofty and serious. Of the<br />
two women “Veronica ’’ and “Lamia,” we prefer<br />
the latter, though poetic justice is done by<br />
making Veronica, the housekeeping lady, who<br />
has a sweet sense of tidiness, marry the poet.<br />
Her redeeming quality is a love for old-fashioned<br />
goods, especially if she can purchase them cheap.<br />
As to Tamia, with one’s recollection of Keat's,<br />
her name would suggest, not a reptile itself, for,<br />
though there four persons in this garden—two<br />
pairs—it is not the serpent of Eden she suggests,<br />
but the power of sudden transformation, always<br />
seeming to be possessed by a demon of contra-<br />
diction. Paying due attention to the large<br />
number of flowers, shrubs, and trees which are<br />
here given, some under their popular, others<br />
under their Latin names, we have allowed our-<br />
selves to imagine the author doing the honours<br />
of “The Garden that he Loves” to Lady<br />
Corisande, to Dr. Rappacini and his lovely<br />
daughter, and with almost equal pleasure to<br />
Mrs. Gardiner—Gardiner by name and gardener<br />
by nature as Tom Hood describes her. Lady<br />
Corisande would find much that is old fashioned<br />
and sweet smelling—just her garden in favoured<br />
spots, over which to grow enthusiastic. Dr.<br />
Rappacini would be able to ponder over the<br />
contrast between his own—the garden of an<br />
herbalist—and the garden that the poet loves.<br />
Mrs. Gardiner would find a friend who would<br />
understand at once why, in spite of her widow’s<br />
weeds she should still say of herself “I am<br />
single and white ” and of her maiden neighbour<br />
“she is double and bloody.” But we think these<br />
three visitors would each have asked how the<br />
Ampelopsis Veitchii got there, which belongs not<br />
to manor-houses and poets, but to the jerry-<br />
builder of the suburb. In the manor-house, if<br />
anywhere, the old Virginia creeper should hold<br />
its own.<br />
The Tennyson memorial, which is to be erected<br />
tion of a work by Wilhelm Joseph<br />
on “the ridge of the noble down '' at Freshwater,<br />
will be an international and not a local under-<br />
taking. The Americans are showing an active<br />
interest in the project. Mr. Arthur Warren, the<br />
London correspondent of the Boston Herald,<br />
who resides during a portion of each year in the<br />
Isle of Wight, is a member of the committee<br />
having the memorial in charge, and his recent<br />
appeal to his countrymen has resulted in the<br />
organisation of an American committee, which<br />
has among its members Dr. Oliver Wendell<br />
Holmes, Miss Alice Longfellow, a daughter of<br />
the poet, Mrs. Burnett, daughter of the late<br />
James Russell Lowell, President Eliot of Harvard<br />
University, Mrs. Agassiz, the widow of the great<br />
naturalist, Professor Charles Eliot, Norton, T. B.<br />
Aldrich, Margaret Deland, the author of “John<br />
Ward, Preacher,” Professor Shaler, Mrs. James<br />
T. Melds, the widow of the publisher who intro-<br />
duced Tennyson, as well as Carlyle, to American<br />
readers, Dana Estes, the head of the publishing<br />
house of Estes and Lauriat, Mrs. Julia Ward<br />
Howe, Miss Sarah Orne Jewett, the Hon. Robert<br />
C. Winthrop, Mr. Martin Brimmer, and Mr.<br />
PIowells. The English committee met at Fresh-<br />
water on Monday, June 5, and accepted the<br />
design which Mr. Pearson, R.A., has submitted<br />
for the memorial. The design is an Iona cross,<br />
34 feet high, graceful in proportions, and beauti-<br />
fully ornamented. By an arrangement with the<br />
Masters of Trinity House the cross will super-<br />
sede the present Nodes Beacon, a wooden struc-<br />
ture, and will be known as the Tennyson Beacon.<br />
On one face of the base will be carved in bold<br />
1etters the name “Tennyson,” and on another<br />
face these words: “Erected by friends in Eng-<br />
land and America.” The cross will stand near<br />
the seaward edge of the great down, 716 feet<br />
above high water mark, and will be visible for<br />
many miles by sea and land.<br />
“The Violoncello and its History” is a transla-<br />
Won<br />
Wasielewski. The translation is executed by<br />
Miss Isabella E. Stigand, and the publishers are<br />
Messrs. Novello, Ewer, and Co. There is no other<br />
history of the instrument at all.<br />
“Mr. John Lee Warden Page is of medium<br />
height, his face tanned, and his moustache<br />
bleached in quite an Australian manner by expo-<br />
sure to sun and storm. Mr. Page lives just out-<br />
side Ilfracombe, and only pays flying visits to<br />
London now, though he was once a lawyer in<br />
London.” This notice was intended to be compli-<br />
mentary, and it is therefore unfortunate that it<br />
should contain so many mistakes. Mr. Page's<br />
second name is Lloyd, not Lee; he is not of<br />
“medium height,” unless six feet is medium ; his<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 53 (#67) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
53<br />
moustache is not bleached at all, either by sun or<br />
by storm; and he has never practised as a lawyer<br />
in London. Still, it might have been much<br />
WOTSé,<br />
We recently mentioned the publication of Mr.<br />
Joseph Hatton's early novel of “Clytie ’’ as being<br />
published in Swedish, following the success of<br />
his “By Order of the Czar” in that language. It<br />
is interesting to learn that an edition of the<br />
latter sent into Finland has been confiscated by<br />
the Russian authorities. The Swedish Press<br />
appears to be unanimous in its commendation of<br />
“By Order of the Czar,” and in most cases the<br />
criticism is couched in a high spirit of literary<br />
appreciation. The Smaalandposten says: “Of<br />
all the pictures of life in the great Eastern<br />
Empire of Europe which have appeared during<br />
recent years not one, probably, can bear com-<br />
parison with Joseph Hatton's novelin its startling<br />
vigour of delineation.” The Gothenburg Post<br />
describes the book as “No average commercial<br />
novel, but a literary work of enduring worth; ”<br />
and the Helsingborg Dagblad speaks of “The<br />
epic calm’’ with which the author describes the<br />
many horrors of Russian despotism.<br />
Messrs. Sampson Low announce in their<br />
2s. 6d. series of novels uniform with Black,<br />
Blackmore, and other popular writers, two novels<br />
of Joseph Hatton previously in their 6s. library,<br />
namely, “The Old House at Sandwich’” and<br />
“Three Recruits and the Girls they Left Behind<br />
Them.” The locality of “The Old House at<br />
Sandwich * is no fiction; the house a reality and<br />
a very interesting one.<br />
“Patient Grizzle,” who was with us a popular<br />
figure till about two centuries ago, would pro-<br />
bably have been quite forgotten by this time if<br />
it were not for Chaucer's admirable “Clerke's<br />
Tale,” which still finds numerous readers and<br />
admirers. In Germany the memory of the<br />
heroine of patience has been kept up by Halm's<br />
famous drama, “Griseldis,” of which Professor<br />
Benbheim has just issued an edition at the<br />
Clarendon Press. The introduction contains,<br />
besides a short “Life " of the author, the<br />
Griselda legend as told by Petrarch and<br />
Boccaccio, and an account of its subsequent<br />
literary treatment in and out of Italy. The<br />
true gist of the drama, with its picturesque<br />
Arthurian background, is shown in the critical<br />
analysis.<br />
Rürschner’s “Deutscher Litteratur Kalendar ”<br />
which, thanks to the full notices, brought on<br />
this valuable literary annual by the Spectator<br />
and the Literary World, is now fairly well<br />
known in this country, has made its sixteenth<br />
appearance both enlarged and improved. Every<br />
information as regards living German authors<br />
and literary institutions now flourishing in<br />
Germany, may be found in this publication in<br />
a condensed form, so that it is not to be<br />
wondered at that the Litteratur-Kalendar was<br />
honoured two years ago, together with the same<br />
editor's highly useful Staatshandbuch, with a<br />
prize at Chicago. We have yet to add that<br />
the publication of the annual has been trans-<br />
ferred to the well-known firm of G. J. Göschen<br />
at Stuttgart.<br />
A story entitled “Phil Hawcroft's Son,”<br />
by Gerda Grass, will run in serial form<br />
through the Newcastle Weekly Chronicle from<br />
July 14.<br />
Mr. L. J. Nicholson, who is known among his<br />
friends as “The Bard of Thule,” is about to pub-<br />
lish, by Mr. Gardner, Paisley and London, a<br />
volume of his poems, which will be entitled<br />
“Songs of Thule.”<br />
Mr. Bloundelle-Burton’s first novel, “The<br />
Silent Shore,” is about to reverse the ordinary<br />
method of procedure adopted by romances, viz.,<br />
having originally appeared in volume form, it is<br />
now going to be run as a serial in several country<br />
papers. It has already been dramatised—at the<br />
Olympic—it was reprinted in the United States,<br />
and it has had the somewhat unusual experience<br />
of running as a serial in the Spanish language in<br />
South America.<br />
A new edition (being the fifth) of “Chitty's<br />
Statutes of Practical Utility” is just being<br />
brought out by Mr. J. M. Lely, assisted by col-<br />
leagues at the Bar, in about twelve volumes<br />
(Sweet and Maxwell Timited; Stevens and Sons<br />
Limited). It is intended to contain all public<br />
general Acts of Parliament, except those repealed<br />
or obsolete, or applying to Scotland or Ireland<br />
only, or to limited areas only in England, or those<br />
which are of little or no interest to the lawyer or<br />
the general public. The Acts will be fully anno-<br />
tated and indexed. The first volume will appear<br />
in the present month. The publishers are issu-<br />
ing a circular stating that the price of the work<br />
when completed, will be a guinea a volume, but<br />
that a subscription of 6 guineas, prepaid before<br />
Aug. I next, will entitle the subscribers to the<br />
complete work. This is being done in order that<br />
the publishers may ascertain in advance the<br />
approximate number to print. In an editorial<br />
announcement which accompanies the circular,<br />
Mr. Lely states that the Acts comprised will<br />
number some 23OO, and enumerates the titles<br />
under which they will be grouped in alpha-<br />
betical order. The first volume is expected<br />
to contain the titles “Act of Parliament” to<br />
“Charities.”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 54 (#68) ##############################################<br />
<br />
54<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
“From Manuscript to Bookstall” ” is the title<br />
of a book on publishing by Mr. A. D. Southam,<br />
It professes to give information on the cost of<br />
production and on the various methods of pub-<br />
lishing. As regards the former, we have to<br />
notice that the charges for composition are in<br />
some cases higher than those in the Society’s<br />
book called the “Cost of Production.” We do<br />
not attach much importance to this discrepancy,<br />
because a printer's bill is always an elastic thing.<br />
Moreover, it is certainly not the desire of the<br />
Society to cut down the pay of printers and book-<br />
binders, but rather the reverse; therefore, we<br />
welcome the book, so far, and without accepting<br />
its figures, as a step in the right direction.<br />
Above all things, and as the preliminary to<br />
future and better arrangements, we must know<br />
what things mean, what printing and paper cost,<br />
and the rest of it. One notices a curious discre-<br />
pancy repeated in every page of the “Cost of<br />
Production.” It is that for an edition of 500<br />
copies paper is reckoned by the ream, and for a<br />
thousand copies it is reckoned by the sheet, the<br />
ream in the first instance standing for the sheet.<br />
One would advise the compiler of the book to lay<br />
his prices before two or three other firms of<br />
printers when he produces another edition. Some-<br />
thing, too, is desired on the subject of discounts;<br />
the prices given in the Society’s estimates do not<br />
contemplate discounts.<br />
The part of the book devoted to the different<br />
methods of publishing is neither exhaustive nor<br />
satisfactory. For instance, the word royalty is a<br />
very vague expression. We want to know what,<br />
given certain conditions, should be accepted as a<br />
fair royalty; we want to know the meaning of a<br />
deferred royalty,<br />
The thanks of authors are, however, due to the<br />
writer for his recognition of the principles always<br />
advocated by the Society, viz: :<br />
I. The audit of the accounts.<br />
2. The understanding at the outset of all the<br />
clauses in the agreement.<br />
3. A voice as to the advertisements where there<br />
is division of profits.<br />
The real “intention” of the book, however, is<br />
to advocate a system of seals or stamps by which<br />
the author shall always know how many copies of<br />
his books have gone into circulation. The method<br />
seems to us cumbrous. It would certainly be<br />
difficult to get publishers to accept the system.<br />
The reader, however, is referred to the book for<br />
the arguments in favour of it.<br />
-*<br />
* “From Manuscript to Bookstall.” By A. D. Southam.<br />
London: Southam and Co., St. Paul’s-buildings, Paternoster-<br />
row. 58.<br />
Mr. Isidore G. Ascher, the author of “An Odd<br />
Man's Story,” and a Canadian volume of poems,<br />
“Voices from the Hearth,” has just sold Messrs.<br />
Diprose, Bateman, and Co., a one-volume novel,<br />
which will appear in the autumn. It is sensa-<br />
tional and physiological, a somewhat rare com<br />
bination. -<br />
*—- ~ 2--"<br />
r- - -,<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—GRAMMATICAL : USE of “No R.”<br />
Grammar depends upon usage rather than<br />
logic. Usage depends partly upon logic and<br />
partly on euphony, or upon what is most<br />
readily intelligible when uttered.<br />
The best guide, in questions such as the<br />
present one is neither Murray nor Mason, but<br />
Mätzner, who gives a large number of examples<br />
from standard authors. Those who cannot read<br />
German may consult Grice's Translation, vol. iii.,<br />
p. 355, &c. -<br />
“It did not rain nor blow" is logically correct.<br />
“It did not rain or blow ’’ is colloquially permis-<br />
sible, chiefly because the sentence is short.<br />
Lengthen it, and observe the difference. We<br />
could hardly say, “It did not rain any longer, or<br />
did it blow at all.” Mätzner shows that even<br />
good authors occasionally use neither—or instead<br />
of neither—nor. But much depends upon the<br />
length and general form of the sentence. I<br />
should advise every author to judge for himself.<br />
To doubt whether the word nor has a right to<br />
exist is needless. Of course it will exist as long<br />
as our language, because in many collocations it<br />
is indispensable. WALTER W. SKEAT.<br />
II.-KICKED OUT.<br />
I sent in the MS. of a short story to a well-<br />
known firm of publishers last February. Ten<br />
weeks afterwards it was returned to me as<br />
unsuitable. I then inquired whether the deci-<br />
sion was final, or if Messrs. So-and-So might<br />
be disposed to divide the risk. They wrote in<br />
reply: “We could not undertake the publication<br />
of the story even if you took the whole of the<br />
risk.”<br />
This struck me as quite a superfluous, un-<br />
friendly sting to add to a rejection.<br />
A SENSITIVE BookMAKER.<br />
Authors’ Club, Whitehall Court, S.W.<br />
III.-REPORTER’s HARD EARNINGs.<br />
. An occasional paragrapher for Le Figaro fell<br />
in debt to a money-lender, who, two years ago<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 55 (#69) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. - 55<br />
(April 25, 1892), served upon that journal an<br />
attachment of all moneys due or payable to the<br />
said journalist. The newspaper rejoined that<br />
there was nothing owing to the reporter, who<br />
received no salary, and was not regularly<br />
employed; but was always paid by the line, day<br />
by day, for every accepted paragraph, “echo,”<br />
or news-item he chanced to supply.<br />
The case was, however, pursued at law by<br />
the money-lender, who alleged the habitual<br />
employment of the journalist by the paper, and<br />
brought his action against the Figaro; but it<br />
dragged on, and it was only on May 3 I last that<br />
the matter was decided.<br />
The 6th Civil Court, having examined a file of<br />
the journal for two months prior to the date of<br />
the attempted setting up of a lien, was of opinion<br />
that the services rendered could not be called<br />
habitual ; but, on the contrary, that the para-<br />
graphs offered and accepted were of an “acci-<br />
dental” type, and showed no such regularity as<br />
would indicate an established engagement. The<br />
court thereupon held that the sale by a contri-<br />
butor of single articles for a sum there and then<br />
paid (which was the case before them) is mere<br />
buying and selling for ready money; that there<br />
existed no inherent right in the journalist's<br />
relations with this journal which could be con-<br />
strued into matter for seizure or attachment;<br />
and that thus the money-lender had shown the<br />
court nothing which legal process could lay hold<br />
of as attachable. The court therefore decided<br />
for the Figaro, and cast the money-lender in costs.<br />
Outside the court (and inside the journal)<br />
there is a prevalent opinion that if reporters'<br />
scant chance earnings were interceptable in this<br />
fashion, newspapers would very soon be short of<br />
Copy. J. O’N.<br />
IV.-SERIAL RIGHTS ONLY.<br />
“A Journalist” writes informing us that,<br />
“despite the very proper and energetic action of<br />
the Authors' Society in the interest of young<br />
authors, there are still proprietors of publications<br />
who send to contributors with their not too<br />
liberal cheques, formal documents in which the<br />
author is called upon to sign away to them all<br />
rights whatsoever in his work. It cannot be too<br />
frequently impressed upon authors that a contri-<br />
bution to a periodical is for the use of the said<br />
periodical and that only, the copyright for re-<br />
publication remaining with the writer. Further-<br />
more, I see that there is a question as to the<br />
time when payment should be made for contribu-<br />
tions. The money is due and payable when the<br />
accepted MS. is in the hands of the editor. I<br />
know several popular authors, and that is their<br />
ruling. Harper's, The Century, Scribner's, The<br />
Idler, The Ludgate Monthly, Macmillan's, and<br />
The English Illustrated, to which a friend of<br />
mine has contributed, always paid him on the<br />
delivery of his MS. ; then it must, of course, not<br />
be forgotten that the editors wanted his matter.<br />
The very severest terms as to payment from the<br />
honest publishers’ point of view does not go over<br />
a week after publication.”<br />
W.—AN AUTHOR’s GUIDE.<br />
Correspondents in the columns of the Author<br />
have from time to time expressed a wish to see<br />
produced an Authors’ Guide, having for its main<br />
object to give writers some practical and useful<br />
information about the various periodicals, news-<br />
papers, and publishing houses. It is a matter of<br />
complaint that, as things now are, the in-<br />
experienced author is quite unable to form an<br />
opinion for which of the numerous periodicals<br />
and newspapers his articles are most suitable,<br />
upon what terms editors would be willing to<br />
receive them, and also which of the publishing<br />
houses would be most likely to undertake the<br />
publication of any work which he may have<br />
written. It is said that the ignorance which<br />
prevails upon these points is the cause of much<br />
loss of time, unnecessary trouble, and not seldom<br />
of misunderstanding and irritation, and it is<br />
believed that a guide which would help to dispel<br />
this ignorance, and prevent these annoyances<br />
would be welcome to authors, editors, and pub-<br />
lishers alike.<br />
I am now enabled to state that Messrs.<br />
Southam and Co., of St. Paul’s-buildings, 29,<br />
Paternoster-row, have undertaken the publication<br />
of an Annual Authors’ Guide and Directory of<br />
Publishers, Periodicals, and Newspapers, in order<br />
to supply this want, and that they will gratefully<br />
receive any information or suggestions from<br />
members of the Society of Authors, with the view<br />
of making a good start in what it is hoped will<br />
be an annual publication. There is, of course, no<br />
royal road or short cut to literature, and Messrs.<br />
Southam and Co. do not intend to undertake the<br />
impossible task of trying to make one, but they<br />
hope that the book will be of real use to those<br />
who intend to apply themselves seriously to the<br />
profession of letters.<br />
All communications will be treated in con-<br />
fidence. C. B. ROYLANCE KENT.<br />
VI.-QUESTIONS FOR EDITORs.<br />
A circular to the same effect has reached us<br />
from Messrs. Southam and Co.<br />
It is accompanied by a list of questions sub-<br />
mitted to editors. They are as follows:<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 56 (#70) ##############################################<br />
<br />
56<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I. What class of contributions do you consider<br />
the most suitable for your paper ?<br />
2. What length of contribution do you<br />
prefer?<br />
3. What is your scale rate of remuneration for<br />
accepted articles?<br />
4. What are the conditions to be observed by<br />
authors in sending their contributions and upon<br />
which you are willing to receive and consider<br />
them P -<br />
5. Then give any information which you think<br />
may be of use to authors in connection with your<br />
publication. -<br />
Please send rates for advertising publications<br />
with the discount for a series and the approxi-<br />
mate circulation.<br />
VII.-“THAMES RIGHTS AND THAMES WRONGs.”<br />
“I4, Parliament-street, S.W., June 1st, 1894.<br />
Sir, Sir Gilbert East has drawn our attention<br />
to a mistake in “Thames Rights and Thames<br />
Wrongs” which we have just published. Sir<br />
Gilbert East was not a conservator at the<br />
time he gave evidence before the Select Com-<br />
mittee of the House of Commons on Thames<br />
Preservation. He was elected on Nov. 23, 1885.<br />
Your insertion of this would greatly oblige,_Your<br />
obedient servants, ARCH. ConstABLE AND Co.”<br />
*- 2-#<br />
g- * ~ *<br />
M. ZoDA’s “Lou RDES.”<br />
Paris, June Io.<br />
A telegram from Rome, published in Paris<br />
this morning, stated that the Congregation of<br />
Rites had put its ban upon M. Emile Zola's<br />
romance of “Lourdes,” which is being published<br />
by a Roman firm simultaneously with its issue in<br />
Paris. M. Emile Zola was interviewed upon the<br />
subject to-night, and said it was the first time<br />
that such an honour had been conferred upon<br />
him. He was all the more surprised, because<br />
“Lourdes” was not in any sense an attack upon<br />
religion, but simply a perfectly human picture of<br />
what would take place at the famous place of<br />
pilgrimage. One could, he added, be a very good<br />
Catholic, and yet not believe in the miracles of<br />
Lourdes.—Standard, June I I.<br />
*-- * ~ *<br />
a- - --><br />
NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS,<br />
Theology.<br />
ALEXANDER, REv. S. A. Christ and Scepticism. Isbister.<br />
ANDERSON, ROBERT. A Doubter's Doubts about Science<br />
and Religion. Second edition. Kegan Paul. 3s. 6d.<br />
BENNETT, PROFESSOR. W. H. The Expositor's Bible : The<br />
Books of Chronicles. Hodder and Stoughton. 7s.6d.<br />
BUCKHOUSE, EDWARD, AND TYLOR, CHARLEs. Witnesses<br />
for Christ. Second edition, revised and somewhat<br />
abridged. Simpkin, Marshall.<br />
DIDON, REv. FATHER. Belief in the Divinity of Jesus<br />
Christ. " Kegan Paul. 58.<br />
DISCIPLESHIP : THE SCHEME of CHRISTIANITY.<br />
author of “The King and the Kingdom.”<br />
and Norgate.<br />
GOUGH, E. J. Preachers of the Age. The Religion of the<br />
Son of Man. Sampson Low. 3s.6d.<br />
HALL, REv. H. E. Manual of Christian Doctrine, chiefly<br />
intended for confirmation classes. With a preface by<br />
the Rev. W. H. Hutchings. Longmans.<br />
MALDONATUS, JOHN. A. Commentary on the Holy Gospels:<br />
St. Matthew's Gospel. Part I. Translated and edited<br />
By the<br />
Williams<br />
from the original Latin by George J. Davie. John<br />
Hodges. Is.<br />
MAx MüLLER, F. The Sacred Books of the East. Edited<br />
by. Wol. XLIX. Buddhist Mahāyāna Sūtras. Trans-<br />
lated by E. B. Cowell, F. Max Müller, and J.<br />
Takakusu. Oxford : At the Clarendon Press. Henry<br />
Frowde. I2s. 6d.<br />
MEUGENs, REv. A. M. The Lord’s Prayer, illustrated by<br />
the Lord's Life. By A. T. M. S.P.C.K. 6d.<br />
PALMER, JOHN. Catechisms for the Young. Second<br />
Series: Teachings from Old Testament History.<br />
Church of England Sunday School Institute. 2s.<br />
Power, REv. P. B. The Husbandry of the Soul.<br />
S.P.C.K.<br />
PRESTON, REv. DR. Anti-Ritualism. With a preface by<br />
the late Rev. Dr. Blakeney. Twelfth thousand, with<br />
appendices. Protestant Reformation Society. 2d.<br />
ROBson, WILLIAM. The Lord’s Supper : Its Form, Meaning,<br />
and Purpose, according to the Apostle Paul. Second<br />
edition, with additions. Elliot Stock.<br />
SINCLAIR, VEN. ARCHDEACON. The English Church and<br />
the Canon Law. The Fourth Charge. Elliot Stock. 6d.<br />
STRONG, JAMEs. The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.<br />
Published by subscription. Hodder and Stoughton. 2 Is.<br />
WEDGwooD, JULIA. The Message of Israel, in the Light<br />
of Modern Criticism. Isbister. 7s. 6d. -<br />
WELSH PULPIT, THE. By a Scribe, a Pharisee, and a<br />
Lawyer. Fisher Unwin. Is.<br />
WILLIAMs, F. J. The Charm of the Presence of Christ.<br />
Partridge. Is.<br />
History and Biography.<br />
BELL, MACKENZIE. Charles Whitehead : A Forgotten<br />
Genius. New ediition, with an appreciation of White-<br />
head by Hall Cane. Ward, Lock. 3s. 6d.<br />
BELL, NANCY. Heroes of North African Discovery.<br />
Fourth edition. Marcus Ward. 3s.6d.<br />
BRITTEN, F. J. Former Clock and Watch Makers and<br />
their Work. Spon. 5s.<br />
CALENDAR of THE PATENT ROLLs preserved in the<br />
Public Record Office, Edward II. 1307-1313. Pre-<br />
pared under the superintendence of the Deputy Keeper<br />
of the Records. Eyre and Spottiswoode.<br />
CAMERON, WILLIAM E. History of the World’s Columbian<br />
Exposition. Edited under the personal supervision of.<br />
Second edition. Chicago: Columbian History Company.<br />
Four parts. 3 dollars each.<br />
CHRISTOPHER, CoLUMBUs. His own Book of Privileges,<br />
*…* 1502. Facsimile of the manuscript in the Archives of<br />
the Foreign Office in Paris, now for the first time<br />
published. Translated by George F. Barwick, with an<br />
historical introduction by Henry Harrisse. The whole<br />
edited, with preface, by Benjamin Franklin Stevens, 4,<br />
Trafalgar-square.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 57 (#71) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 57<br />
CLIMENSON, EMILY J. The History of Shiplake, Oxon.<br />
For subscribers only. Eyre and Spottiswoode.<br />
CUPPLEs, GEORGE. Scotch Deer-Hounds and their<br />
Masters. With a biographical sketch of the author<br />
by James Hutchison Stirling. Blackwood.<br />
DUNN, WALTER T. Records of Transactions of the Junior<br />
Engineering Society. Wol. III.; 1892-3. Edited by.<br />
Published by the Society. -<br />
EHRLICH, A. Celebrated Pianists of the Past and Present<br />
Time. A Collection of 116 Biographies and I 14 Por-<br />
traits. Authorised English edition. H. Grevel. 7s.6d.<br />
FERGUson, RICHARD S. A. History of Westmoreland.<br />
Elliot Stock. 7s.6d.<br />
FISKE, JoHN. Life and Letters of Edward Livingston<br />
Youmans. Comprising correspondence with Spencer,<br />
Huxley, Tindall, and others. Chapman. 8s.<br />
HENDERSON, ERNEST. A. History of Germany in the<br />
Middle Ages. Bell and Sons.<br />
HoPE, MRs. The First Divorce of Henry VIII. Edited,<br />
with Notes and Introduction, by Francis Aidan<br />
Gasquet, Kegan Paul. 6s.<br />
LUDLOW, EDMUND. Memoirs, Lieutenant-General of the<br />
Horse in the Army of the Commonwealth of England,<br />
I625-1672. Edited, with appendices of letters and<br />
illustrated documents, by C. H. Firth. 2 vols. Oxford,<br />
at the Clarendon Press; Henry Frowde. 36s.<br />
LYALL, SIR ALFRED. The Rise and Expansion of the<br />
British Dominion in India. Third and enlarged<br />
edition, with maps. Murray.<br />
MACLAY, EDGAR STANTON. A History of the United<br />
States Navy from 1775 to 1893. With technical re-<br />
vision by Lieutenant Roy C. Smith, U.S.N. 2 vols.<br />
Vol. I. Bliss, Sands.<br />
MÉNEVAL, BARON CLAUDE DE. Memoirs to Serve for the<br />
History of Napoleon I., from 1802 to 1815. The work<br />
completed by the addition of unpublished documents,<br />
and arranged and edited by his grandson, Baron<br />
Napoleon Joseph de Méneval. Translated and anno-<br />
tated by Robert H. Sherard. Photogravure portraits<br />
and autograph letters. Wol. II. Hutchinson.<br />
PITMAN, SIR ISAAC. Life and Work. Illustrated. Pitman. Is.<br />
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267 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/267 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 03 (August 1894) | <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.+05+Issue+03+%28August+1894%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 03 (August 1894)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1894-08-01-The-Author-5-3 | | | | | 61–88 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1894-08-01">1894-08-01</a> | | | | | | | 3 | | | 18940801 | C be El u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.)<br />
CON DU CTED BY WALTER BES.A.N.T.<br />
Vol. v.–No. 3]<br />
AUGUST 1, 1894.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
For the Opinions eaſpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as earpressing the<br />
collective opinions of the committee unless<br />
they are officially signed by G. Herbert<br />
Thring, Sec.<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by returm of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
important communications within two days will write to him<br />
without delay. All remittances showld be crossed Union<br />
Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered<br />
letter only.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on<br />
all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub-<br />
jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
WARNINGS AND ADVICE,<br />
I. T is not generally understood that the author, as<br />
the vendor, has the absolute right of drafting the<br />
agreement upon whatever terms the transaction<br />
is to be carried out. - Authors are strongly advised to<br />
exercise that right. In every form of business, this among<br />
others, the right of drawing the agreement rests with him<br />
who sells, leases, or has the control of the property.<br />
2. SERIAL RIGHTS.–In selling Serial Rights remember<br />
that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that<br />
is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you<br />
object to this, insert a clause to that effect.<br />
3. STAMP YOUR AGREEMENTS. – Readers are most<br />
URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements<br />
immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected<br />
for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree-<br />
ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every<br />
case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter<br />
which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at no ea pense to themselves<br />
eacept the cost of the stamp.<br />
4. ASCERTAIN WHAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVEs To<br />
BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
WOL. W.<br />
" . ;<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself. -<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTs.-Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom you appoint as yowr<br />
agent. Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone.<br />
6. COST OF PRODUCTION.——Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures.<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.–Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society.<br />
8. FuTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice. +. • ‘<br />
Io. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a MS. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work. *<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Reep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration. a<br />
12. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTs. --Reep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<br />
I4. 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. g<br />
Society’s Offices :- *<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
*~ * –”<br />
z- - -<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
& .<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub.<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel's opinion is desirable, the Comº<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. . . All this<br />
without any cost to the member. - - . . . ;<br />
. . . . . . . . - G 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 62 (#76) ##############################################<br />
<br />
62<br />
TILE AUTIIOR.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
*-- - -*<br />
,- w -s.<br />
THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE,<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
- I. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. With, when<br />
necessary, the assistance of the legal advisers of the Symdi-<br />
cate, it concludes agreements, collects royalties, examines<br />
and passes accounts, and generally relieves members of the<br />
trouble of managing business details.<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors' Syndicate are<br />
defrayed solely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. Notice is, however, hereby<br />
given that in all cases where there is no current account, a<br />
booking fee is charged to cover postage and porterage.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
. . 4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiation<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least four days’<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. 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. 4.<br />
7. 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 />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department’’ for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted * has been opened. Members anxious<br />
to obtain literary or artistic work are invited to com-<br />
municate with the Manager. -<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 />
NOTICES,<br />
Tº: 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 />
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 P -<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest ? Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 binder's, bill is so<br />
clastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 />
<br />
<br />
## p. 63 (#77) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIIE AUTIIOIP.<br />
63<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 call it.<br />
*-* * *-*.<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—THE THREE-VoI,UME Nov FL.<br />
T a meeting of the Council of the Authors’<br />
Society it was Resolved that: “The<br />
Council, after taking the opinion of<br />
several prominent novelists and other members of<br />
the Society, and, finding them almost unani-<br />
mously opposed to the continuance of the three<br />
volume system, considers that the disadvantages<br />
of that system to authors and to the public far<br />
outweigh its advantages; that for the convenience<br />
of the public, as well as for the widest possible<br />
circulation of a novel, it is desirable that the<br />
artificial form of edition produced for a small<br />
body of readers only be now abandoned; and<br />
that the whole of the reading public should be<br />
placed at the outset in possession of the work at<br />
a moderate price.”<br />
A very large majority of the opinions received,<br />
including those of the leading novelists, was<br />
in favour of the resolution. Only one opinion<br />
was opposed to it, and desired to support the<br />
three volume system.<br />
By order,<br />
G. HERBERT TIIRING.<br />
The Resolution passed at the meeting of the<br />
council on Monday, July 23, was, so to speak,<br />
dictated by the novelists who are members of the<br />
Society. A “private and confidential” circular<br />
setting forth the main facts of the case and the<br />
principal points open to discussion, was sent by<br />
order of the Chairman to all novelists on the<br />
roll of the Society, asking for an opinion. The<br />
answers received gave the opinions of most<br />
leading novelists, together with those of many<br />
others likely to be affected by the action of the<br />
libraries. One or two left the matter open; one,<br />
especially, pointed out—which is perfectly true—<br />
that the abolition of the three-volume form would<br />
make a beginning more difficult than ever for<br />
a young writer. One desired the continuance of<br />
the present plan; the rest were all against it,<br />
and wrote in support of the one-volume form. So<br />
that the persons most concerned in the matter<br />
have pronounced almost unanimously in favour<br />
of the one-volume and against the three-volume<br />
form. -<br />
Several points of interest have been raised, not<br />
only in these replies, but also in the discussions<br />
on the subject which have been carried on in the<br />
newspapers. For instance, more than one critic<br />
has advocated the one-volume form simply<br />
because it will make the novel shorter. But it<br />
has not yet produced that effect. There is no<br />
rule as to 1-ngth; novels in one volume are very<br />
often as long as novels in three. Moreover, it is<br />
possible for a novel to be quite short, and yet<br />
very ill-constructed. Again, it has been pointed<br />
out that the large type and lightness of the<br />
book make the three-volume form useful for<br />
invalids, but then many books in one volume are<br />
also in large type, and light to hold. -<br />
The point concerning the beginner is strong<br />
and interesting. At first sight one asks why a<br />
beginner has a better chance under the old<br />
system. The reason will be seen by a little<br />
study of figures. Without advertising, a small<br />
edition of a three-volume novel can be produced<br />
for something less than £90, those copies only<br />
being bound that are wanted. If the libraries<br />
take I 30 copies only at 14s. the cost is more than<br />
covered: anything over is profit. A single volume,<br />
half the length of the above, costs, without<br />
mºulding, stereotyping, or advertising, about<br />
£7O for an edition of IOOO. Now a beginner's<br />
three-volume novel is sometimes considered to be<br />
sufficiently advertised by being placed in the<br />
boxes and on the lists of the libraries. As a<br />
rule the houses which produce these works find<br />
it to their interest to expend very little money<br />
in advertising them. But a single volume wants to<br />
be advertised. Suppose only £20 spent in adver-<br />
tising such a book. Over 500 copies must be taken<br />
before the cost is covered. If the work is moulded<br />
and stereotyped at a cost of £12 more, 600 copies<br />
will be wanted to clear the cost. Who will take<br />
these copies of a book by an unknown writer,<br />
unless he happens to be very good indeed P And<br />
of course a publisher does not publish in the hope<br />
of merely paying his expenses. Now a book by a<br />
new writer which exhausts the first edition does<br />
exceptionally well. These figures show, therefore,<br />
that it is easier to enter by the old way than by<br />
the new.<br />
The strongest point brought out is the strange<br />
fact, which so few have understood, that under the<br />
old system novelists positively do not offer their<br />
books to the world at all, but only to the limited<br />
number of those who subscribe to the libraries—<br />
perhaps 60,000 in all—say, 240,000 readers. The<br />
rest of the world must wait—the whole vast army<br />
of those who read in this country and in India<br />
and in Australia and the colonies, must wait—<br />
until the cheap edition appears. This is an<br />
enormous privilege to the libraries. What cor-<br />
responding advantage does it give to the author P<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 64 (#78) ##############################################<br />
<br />
64<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Noue, apparently. What to the publisher ?<br />
None, apparently.<br />
There is another point still. The best chance<br />
for the beginner has hitherto been with one or<br />
two houses which have been privileged to send a<br />
certain number of any novel issued by them to<br />
one of the libraries. This was clearly a privilege<br />
—it is understood to be now at an end—which<br />
might be abused in two ways; first, to the detri-<br />
ment of literature by the production of rubbish;<br />
next, to the detriment of the author, for it was<br />
not necessary to advertise him, or to take any<br />
steps to make him known, or to give him a cheap<br />
edition. Both these things have, in fact, happened.<br />
There are a certain number of novelists wholly<br />
unknown to the world at large, whose works, good<br />
or bad, appear only in a very limited three-<br />
volume edition and are heard of only by a brief<br />
notice in the Athenæum. Will these authors<br />
vanish P Since the privilege has ceased it is<br />
probable that the demand for them by the<br />
libraries will also cease or be reduced to such<br />
narrow limits as to make the vanishing not only<br />
of the author, but of the publisher, a certainty.<br />
In the long run it will be better for everybody,<br />
because the author, if only for self-preservation,<br />
will become far more careful over his work, and<br />
there will be a survival of the fittest.<br />
Yet the three-volume novel will not suddenly<br />
disappear. There will still be a demand,<br />
especially among sick people, for that form of<br />
reading which demands no thought and not much<br />
attention; which diverts the mind without<br />
fatigue; which transports the reader to another<br />
and a more pleasant atmosphere, with a book<br />
easy to hold, light, and in large print. It is not<br />
a highly dignified function to amuse the weakened<br />
in mind and body by illness, but it is at all events<br />
useful, and so long as libraries give enough to<br />
the publisher to make it worth his while to<br />
continue, and the publisher gives the author<br />
enough to make it worth his while to continue,<br />
the old system will probably be carried on.<br />
The appeal to the whole world of readers opens<br />
up a great field for speculation. Will the world<br />
of readers respond? Remember that it is not a<br />
sudden and an unexpected appeal. We have<br />
experience: we can answer confidently that in the<br />
case of favourite authors readers certainly will<br />
respond. And an author can now create his<br />
reputation so rapidly—one could point to many<br />
reputations made within the last year or two—that<br />
there seems to be no fear about the future of the<br />
better class of writers. Unknown authors, and<br />
those who have their reputation still to make,<br />
will certainly not leap into popularity by the mere<br />
fact of being issued in one volume; nor will the<br />
public buy a book by an unknown writer at<br />
six shillings any more readily than at thirty<br />
shillings.<br />
Objection has been taken to the Resolution on<br />
the ground that publishers, since they buy the<br />
books, have the sole right to manage their own<br />
property. Quite true, if they buy the books.<br />
But they do not. Except in a very few cases they<br />
issue the books on a royalty system. There are two<br />
or three publishers who buy, and these will doubt-<br />
less continue to manage their own property in their<br />
own way; it is a good plan—in some cases the best<br />
plan—for the author to sell his book, provided<br />
he knows what he is about, or works by means of<br />
a man of business who knows the meaning of<br />
literary property. But in most cases the royalty<br />
is the system, and on this system, which is one of<br />
joint adventure, with a fiduciary obligation on<br />
the publisher, the author has undoubtedly the<br />
right to consider the administration of his own<br />
property. What certain papers do not realise is<br />
the change that has of late come upon the whole<br />
business of publishing—the greater independence<br />
of the author, his claims to open partnership, his<br />
knowledge of a business which has hitherto been<br />
kept profoundly secret, the rush of new pub-<br />
lishers, and the increased competition. -<br />
The last point to consider is the price of the<br />
future. Since below a certain level nobody<br />
buys books at all, it would be absurd to make<br />
books too cheap. Besides, a thing of little price is<br />
apt to be lightly regarded. We must, however,<br />
remember that for most people six shillings is a<br />
good deal to pay, even reduced to 4s. 6d., for an<br />
author unless one greatly desires to possess him.<br />
We may also remember that the area of readers<br />
extends every year by hundreds of thousands; that<br />
the free libraries as well as the schools are doing<br />
us an immense service in continually enlarging<br />
this field, and that the taste for reading brings<br />
with it the desire for possession. It seems, there-<br />
fore, safe to predict that books desirous of speak-<br />
ing to many—what book is not so desirous P-<br />
will be issued at such a price as to be within the<br />
reach of many; that the six-shilling book will<br />
before long become the three-shilling book ; that<br />
where a popular writer is now advertised to be in<br />
his sixtieth edition he will then be in his six<br />
hundredth. There is absolutely no limit to the<br />
enlargement of the vast circle of readers who, in<br />
fifty years will be calling for the work of a<br />
popular writer, living or dead. It is ten years<br />
since some of us recognised this truth and pro-<br />
claimed it. During these ten years we have again<br />
and again proclaimed it. Those who cannot get<br />
outside of London; those who know nothing about<br />
the extent and the needs of the Empire, or even<br />
of this little island; those who are still governed<br />
by the prejudice of believing that below a certain<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 65 (#79) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
65<br />
line everybody reads “slush ’’ if he reads any-<br />
thing; cannot be made to understand this fact.<br />
How the literature of the future will be affected by<br />
this increased demand is another question. Mean-<br />
time, we have to deal with the wants of the present,<br />
which seems to ask for a book which costs four<br />
and sixpence, while the circle is being enlarged.<br />
As for the circulating libraries, they must con-<br />
tinue in some form or other, because reading is<br />
now a habit, a recognised way, in country places,<br />
at least, of spending part of the day; and all the<br />
popular writers together cannot produce enough<br />
material to fill up that part of the day all the<br />
year round.<br />
II.-Ass IGNMENT OF CONTRACT.<br />
The following is a case submitted to counsel as<br />
to the right of assigning an agreement to pub-<br />
lish : -<br />
Instructions from Solicitor to Counsel.<br />
Counsel will see from the agreement, that the<br />
author agreed to grant the right of publication of<br />
a work to the publishers until the number of copies<br />
sold should have reached 6ooo, all details of the<br />
publishing—as to size, price, and advertising, &c.<br />
—being left to the publishers, who agreed to<br />
publish a cheap edition of the said work at their<br />
own expense and risk, and to pay to the author<br />
one-half of the net profits arising from sales, the<br />
author reserving to himself the right of publish-<br />
ing an édition de luate of the work. And counsel<br />
will observe that there are provisions in the<br />
contract as to rendering of accounts, &c.<br />
Subsequent to the date of the contract the<br />
publishers, formerly a private firm, were formed<br />
into a limited company under a name corre-<br />
sponding with the name of the private firm, with<br />
the addition of the word “Limited.” All the<br />
business, goodwill, &c., was taken over by the<br />
limited company, but no express notice of this<br />
appears to have been given to the authors of<br />
books which the old firm were publishing, or, at<br />
any rate, no such notice was received by the<br />
author in question. After the date of the transfer<br />
of the business to a limited company, however,<br />
the author received from the company a letter<br />
inclosing account of sales, &c., up to date, and<br />
signed by the name of the firm, with the addition<br />
of the word “limited,” one of the former partners<br />
signing the letter as “Managing Director.” This<br />
appears to have been the first opportunity given to<br />
the author of ascertaining that the publishers had<br />
become a limited company, as he states that he<br />
had heard nothing of the matter previously: but<br />
even on the receipt of the accounts he did not<br />
observe the alteration in the firm, and therefore<br />
took no objection to his book being continued to<br />
be published by the limited company. Counsel<br />
will consider whether the fact of this letter<br />
having been received must be taken to be notice<br />
to the author of the change in the firm, and, if so,<br />
whether the author must be taken to have<br />
acquiesced in the publication of his book by the<br />
limited company, and is so estopped from taking<br />
objection to the book having been assigned to<br />
the limited company without his consent, and to<br />
its being published by them.<br />
From the time of receiving the accounts a year<br />
or two passed, and then the limited company got<br />
into difficulties. A receiver and manager was<br />
appointed by the Chancery Division in an action<br />
commenced by debenture-holders, and later on a<br />
resolution was passed for voluntary winding-up,<br />
and the same gentleman was appointed liquidator<br />
as had been appointed receiver.<br />
On hearing of this the author wrote to the<br />
receiver and manager protesting against his<br />
book having been assigned to the limited com-<br />
pany without his consent.<br />
According to an account rendered to the<br />
author by the receiver there was up to the date<br />
of his appointment a loss on the book.<br />
Counsel will please advise :<br />
I. Assuming the author is not to be taken to<br />
have acquiesced in the transaction, and to be<br />
estopped from objecting, whether he had the<br />
right to object to his book having been assigned<br />
to a limited company, and if he is estopped from<br />
making this objection ?<br />
2. Can he object to the liquidator and<br />
receiver of the company continuing to sell the<br />
book P *-<br />
3. Whether the liquidator and receiver is<br />
liable to pay the share of profits in full from the<br />
date of his appointment P<br />
4. Would the parties be entitled to go on<br />
selling for an unlimited time in the present state<br />
of affairs, i.e., while the business of the company<br />
is being carried on by a receiver ?<br />
5. If the company were reconstructed, would<br />
they be entitled to go on selling P -<br />
6. Would the liquidator and receiver be<br />
entitled to make over the book to another<br />
publishing firm without the consent of the<br />
author P w<br />
Counsel's Opinion.<br />
I. Whenever the due execution of a contract<br />
involves the personal skill and ability of one con-<br />
tracting party, he cannot assign the contract to a<br />
stranger without the consent of the other con-<br />
tracting party. In this case the author bargained<br />
for the personal skill and attention of the pub-<br />
lishers whom he selected ; and he cannot be com-<br />
pelled to accept the skill and attention of some<br />
substitute whom they select.<br />
But as, in all probability, some, if not all, the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 66 (#80) ##############################################<br />
<br />
66<br />
THE AUTIIOR.<br />
members of the original firm entered into the<br />
employ of the new company, and some, if not all.<br />
of the persons employed by the former firm<br />
continued to do for the company precisely the<br />
same work as they had done previously for the<br />
firm, the court will presume on very slight<br />
evidence that the author assented to, or acquiesced<br />
in, the assignment of his contract to the limited<br />
company. Such an assignment would not<br />
appreciably affect the prospects of a profit being<br />
earned. In this case I think it would be held<br />
that the author did so acquiesce, or that, at all<br />
events, he is estopped by his conduct from denying<br />
that he acquiesced.<br />
2. Assuming, then, that the author acquiesced<br />
in the assignment of the contract to the new<br />
company, it follows that he cannot object to the<br />
liquidator and receiver doing any act reasonably<br />
necessary for proper realisation of the assets of<br />
the company in liquidation. The receiver has, in<br />
my opinion, the right to sell any copies of the book<br />
which were in stock at the date of the petition,<br />
and probably also to bind up any quires printed<br />
at that date: but he may not, in my opinion, create<br />
any new copies by printing a fresh edition from<br />
stereos.<br />
3. If any profit were made by the receiver<br />
selling the copies which were in type at the date<br />
of the petition, I incline to think that the author<br />
would be entitled to receive his share of the<br />
profits in full from that date; but I express no<br />
confident opinion on this. I fear the point will<br />
not arise. Should the receiver publish a fresh<br />
edition with the author's consent, then I am clear<br />
that the author would be entitled to receive his<br />
half of the profits of that edition in full.<br />
4. The receiver is entitled, in my opinion, to<br />
go on selling the copies which were in type at the<br />
date of the petition, for such period as is properly<br />
occupied by the winding-up of the affairs of the<br />
company.<br />
5. If the company were reconstructed, the new<br />
company thus constructed would, in my opinion,<br />
have no right to print any further copies of the<br />
book. The new company could buy the stock of<br />
the old company, and sell it to the public ; but<br />
could create no fresh copies without the permis-<br />
sion of the author.<br />
6. The liquidator can sell the stock of the old<br />
company to anyone he pleases; he cannot convey<br />
to anyone any right to create new copies of the<br />
book.<br />
(Signed) W. BLAKE ODGERs, Q.C.<br />
4, Elm-court, Temple, E.C.<br />
July, 3, 1894.<br />
s-ºr-º- ºr-<br />
III.—CANADIAN CoPYRIGHT.<br />
The following is a copy of counsel’s opinion on<br />
Canadian copyright from the fresh papers put<br />
before him.<br />
It will be seen that the position of affairs is<br />
very little altered from the English author's<br />
standpoint, as he is the person, coupled, perhaps,<br />
with the Canadian public generally, who will<br />
suffer most by the proposed change of law in<br />
Canada. •<br />
Counsel's Opinion.<br />
The new documents before me consist of<br />
(I.) A copy of a memorandum by Sir John<br />
Thompson dealing with the report of the Depart-<br />
mental Committee on Canadian Copyright, and<br />
(2.) A clause in the Canadian Tariff Bill which<br />
proposes, after March 27, 1895, to remove the<br />
ad valorem duty payable on foreign reprints<br />
payable under the Canadian Act of 1868.<br />
Sir John Thompson's memorandum does not<br />
deal with the details of the Canadian Act of<br />
1889, but is an attempt to answer some of the<br />
objections to the principle of that Bill set forth<br />
in the departmental committee report, and to<br />
show that the Canadian Legislature ought to be<br />
allowed to repeal the Copyright Act of 1842 so<br />
far as regards Canada, and to deprive the British<br />
author of his rights in order to foster the<br />
Canadian printing and publishing interests.<br />
It does not appear to me that I can usefully<br />
follow all the arguments contained in the memo.<br />
randum on the above question, or that it is<br />
within the scope of my instructions to do so.<br />
They are all based on the fallacy that the<br />
Canadian publishers and printers have some<br />
inherent right to have the profit of publishing<br />
and printing the works of British authors, and<br />
that if the latter do not find it necessary or<br />
convenient to publish or print in Canada the<br />
Canadian Legislature has a right to make them<br />
do so, and that to deny them this right is to<br />
deprive them of the benefit of self-government.<br />
Such arguments (even when supported appa-<br />
rently by a threat of separation in case they are<br />
not yielded to, as stated in page 12 of the report)<br />
do not appear to require to be answered at<br />
length. The argument which does, perhaps,<br />
require special notice, is that drawn from the<br />
example of the United States. With regard to<br />
this it is to be observed that in the case of the<br />
United States the British author had under the<br />
circumstances to accept such terms as were<br />
offered, but that such acceptance did not in any<br />
way involve a recognition of the justice of these<br />
terms, and it would be most unfortunate if this<br />
exceptional case were to be drawn into a prece-<br />
dent. If it were, it might become necessary for a<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 67 (#81) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIII,<br />
67<br />
A UTIIOIR.<br />
work to be reprinted and published separately in<br />
every British colony. The Society will no doubt<br />
itself consider the memorandum, and will have<br />
no difficulty in drawing up a full reply if thought<br />
desirable, but I cannot see that the arguments<br />
contained in it were such as to require a detailed<br />
reply. All that it seems to me to be necessary<br />
for the Society to do at present is to submit to the<br />
Home Government that Sir John Thompson's<br />
memorandum affords no answer whatever to the<br />
reasons given in the report of the Departmental<br />
Committee against the passing of an Act to con-<br />
firm the Canadian Act, pointing out that the<br />
demand for legislation appears to come solely<br />
from the Canadian printer and publisher, and<br />
that it would be most unfair that their industries<br />
should be fostered and protected at the expense<br />
of the rights of authors as established by Impe-<br />
rial legislation and the Berne Convention. A<br />
protest should also be added against the case of<br />
the United States being turned into a precedent<br />
for Imperial or Colonial legislation ; the result of<br />
the system of protection insisted on there is no<br />
doubt unfortunate for the Canadian printer and<br />
publisher, but that is not, or ought not to be, a<br />
reason for extending it to Canada or elsewhere.<br />
The endeavour should rather be to induce the<br />
United States to abandon its present policy.<br />
There is no sign in the memorandum that<br />
Canada would be prepared to accept any such<br />
licensing system as that suggested in pars. 55<br />
and 56 of the departmental report, and it there-<br />
fore does not seem necessary to deal with it at<br />
present. The objections to it would appear to<br />
be the difficulty in fixing the amount of the<br />
royalty, and in securing its collection when fixed;<br />
but if it would solve the present difficulty it<br />
might be worth acceptance.<br />
If the memorandum is dealt with shortly, as I<br />
have suggested, the Society should of course<br />
intimate that if there are any particular points<br />
on which further information is desired, or which<br />
are thought to require a further answer, it would<br />
be glad of an opportunity of considering them.<br />
With regard to the proposed repeal of the ad<br />
valorem duty on foreign reprints, it appears that<br />
the Colonial Office has already pointed out that<br />
repeal would or might be invalid as repugnant<br />
to the Order made under the Foreign Reprints<br />
Act, on the faith of such duty being imposed.<br />
The Society should, I think, consider whether<br />
there is any objection to that Order, so far as it<br />
affects Canada, being repealed, if the Canadian<br />
Government should insist on doing away with<br />
the duty. So far as I can see there is none; the<br />
only person who would have any reason to com-<br />
plain would be the Canadian reader, for whose<br />
especial benefit the Foreign Reprints Act was<br />
WOL. W.<br />
passed. I ought perhaps to point out that it is<br />
not at all clear that the repeal of the ad valorem<br />
duty would be invalid. -<br />
|Under the Foreign Reprints Act the Order in<br />
Council only authorises the admission of reprints<br />
so long as the Colonial Act affording protection<br />
to British authors is in force, from which it<br />
would seem that the colony is at liberty to repeal<br />
this protection if it is prepared to give up the<br />
benefit of the Order in Council. I think it would<br />
be as well for the Society to endeavour to find<br />
out what is the object of the Canadian Legislation<br />
in repealing a duty they do not appear to have even<br />
collected, except in very few cases, and in thereby<br />
depriving Canadian readers of the benefit of an<br />
Act supposed to have been passed for their<br />
special advantage. J. Rolt.<br />
4, New-square, Lincoln’s-inn,<br />
June 18, 1894.<br />
On Monday, June 25, a meeting of the special<br />
committee on Canadian copyright was called at<br />
Mr. John Murray's offices, 50, Albemarle-street.<br />
The following is a list of the names of the<br />
committee, and the interests represented:—<br />
Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P. -<br />
Edward Ashdown, H. R. Clayton, Music Pub-<br />
lishers. s<br />
Frank Bishop, H. S. Mendelssohn, Photo-<br />
graphers.<br />
F. R. Daldy, T. N. Longman, the Copyright<br />
Association. -<br />
H. O. Arnold Foster, Edward Marston, Pub-<br />
lishers' sub-section of Chamber of Commerce.<br />
H. Rider Haggard, W. E. H. Lecky, Authors.<br />
Arthur Lucas, Alex. Tooth, Fine Arts.<br />
John Murray, Publisher.<br />
G. Herbert Thring, W. Oliver Hodges (Barris-<br />
ter-at-Law), Society of Authors. *<br />
W. Agnew, D. C. Thompson, Printsellers'<br />
Association.<br />
The business before the committee was “To<br />
consider the proposals received from Canada,<br />
respecting Anglo-Canadian copyright, and to<br />
agree as to what action should be taken thereon.”<br />
Mr. John Murray was voted into the chair. ..<br />
After some discussion, and considering the<br />
unwieldy size of the committee, it was decided to<br />
appoint a sub-committee as representative of the<br />
different sections as possible to consider carefully,<br />
and in detail, the Canadian proposals, and to<br />
draft an answer to lay before the Colonial Office,<br />
which answer would first, however, be submitted<br />
to the general committee for its approval. --<br />
The members of the sub-committee elected for<br />
that purpose were: H. R. Clayton, Musical<br />
Publishers; F. R. Daldy, Copyright Association;<br />
EI<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 68 (#82) ##############################################<br />
<br />
68 TIIE<br />
A UTIIOIP.<br />
Arthur Lucas, Fine Arts; G. Herbert Thring,<br />
the Authors’ Society.<br />
The sub-committee was subsequently called<br />
together, and met on Monday, July 2, at 4, Portu-<br />
gal-street, the offices of the Society of Authors.<br />
Mr. Daldy took the chair, and before opening the<br />
discussion stated that he thought the plans of<br />
the sub-committee must be slightly altered, as he<br />
saw from the Times that the question of Canadian<br />
copyright was being brought before the meeting<br />
of colonial delegates at Ottawa. He proceeded<br />
to inform the sub-committee that he had con-<br />
sented, with the approval of Her Majesty’s<br />
Government, to attend the Canadian meeting,<br />
both to hear what the Canadians had to say and<br />
to keep the English authors' point of view pro-<br />
minently before the meeting.<br />
The sub-committee accordingly determined to<br />
adjourn its meeting until Mr. Daldy's return, but<br />
read through provisionally the Canadian sugges-<br />
tions, in order to put before Mr. Daldy the salient<br />
points of objection to the proposed legislation.<br />
IV.-Con TRIBUTORS AND CoPYRIGHT.<br />
A form of receipt issued by the Religious<br />
Tract Society is thus headed:<br />
COPYRIGHT.<br />
This receipt conveys the copyright to the trustees of<br />
the Religious Tract Society with liberty for them, at their<br />
discretion, to republish in any form. Republication by<br />
authors on their own account must be the subject of special<br />
arrangement.<br />
If this receipt is sent to the contributor with-<br />
out previous special agreement conveying not only<br />
the serial right, but also the copyright to the<br />
Society for the consideration of a certain sum<br />
paid, the contributor should refuse signature or<br />
he should strike his pen through the above words.<br />
If the Religious Tract Society refuses to pay<br />
without these words, he should then, unless his<br />
necessities compel him to endure everything,<br />
lace the business in the hands of the secretary<br />
of the Authors' Society. Nothing is more certain<br />
than that a paper offered to any magazine is<br />
offered, unless the contrary is stated, on the<br />
usual terms, under Section XVIII. of the Act,<br />
viz., the right for separate publication to be<br />
matter of separate agreement between author and<br />
proprietor of the magazine during the period<br />
prescribed by law of twenty-eight years, when the<br />
right to publish separately again reverts to the<br />
author. Unless, therefore, the copyright and the<br />
right to republish without the author's sanction<br />
are bought by special agreement, the author has<br />
the right to veto the republication by any other<br />
person during the term aforesaid. Observe that<br />
the condition above quoted indicates that the<br />
copyright may be valuable, and therefore the<br />
author should keep all his rights or make a sepa-<br />
rate contract. If it is valuable it must be bought,<br />
and not taken. -<br />
[The following is Section XVIII. of the Act<br />
above referred to :—“XVIII. And be it enacted,<br />
That when any publisher or other person shall,<br />
before or at the time of the passing of this Act,<br />
have projected, conducted, and carried on, or shall<br />
hereafter project, conduct, and carry on, or be the<br />
proprietor of any encyclopædia, review, magazine,<br />
periodical work, or work published in a series of<br />
books or parts, or any book whatsoever, and<br />
shall have employed or shall employ any persons<br />
to compose the same, or any volumes, parts,<br />
essays, articles, or portions thereof, for publica-<br />
tion in or as part of the same, and such work,<br />
Volumes, parts, essays, articles, or portions shall<br />
have been or shall hereafter be composed under<br />
such employment, on the terms that the copy-<br />
right therein shall belong to such proprietor, pro-<br />
jector, publisher, or conductor, and paid for by<br />
such proprietor, projector, publisher, or con-<br />
ductor, the copyright in every such encyclopædia,<br />
review, magazine, periodical work, and work<br />
published in a series of books or parts, and in<br />
every volume, part, essay, article, and portion so<br />
composed and paid for, shall be the property of<br />
Such proprietor, projector, publisher, or other<br />
conductor, who shall enjoy the same rights as if<br />
he were the actual author thereof, and shall have<br />
such term of copyright therein as is given to the<br />
authors of books by this Act; except only that<br />
in the case of essays, articles, or portions forming<br />
part of and first published in reviews, magazines,<br />
or other periodical works of a like nature, after<br />
the term of twenty-eight years from the first<br />
publication thereof respectively the right of pub-<br />
lishing the same in a separate form shall revert<br />
to the author for the remainder of the term given<br />
by this Act: Provided always, that during the<br />
term of twenty-eight years the said proprietor,<br />
projector, publisher, or conductor, shall not.<br />
publish any such essay, article, or portion<br />
separately or singly, without the consent<br />
previously obtained, of the author thereof, or his<br />
assigns: Provided, also, that nothing herein con-<br />
tained shall alter or affect the right of any person<br />
who shall have been or who shall be so employed.<br />
as aforesaid to publish any such his composition<br />
in a separate form who by any contract, express<br />
or implied, may have reserved or may hereafter<br />
reserve to himself such right; but every author<br />
reserving, retaining, or having such right shall be<br />
entitled to the copyright in such composition<br />
when published in a separate form, according to<br />
this Act, without prejudice to the right of such<br />
proprietor, projector, publisher, or conductor as<br />
aforesaid.] -<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 69 (#83) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIII. A UTIIOIR.<br />
69<br />
THE LAUREATESHIP.<br />
HERE seems an inclination, perhaps an in-<br />
tention, on the part of the Government to<br />
allow the office of Poet Laureate to fall<br />
into abeyance.<br />
This abeyance, if it continues, will certainly end<br />
in abolition, because an ancient thing may easily<br />
be destroyed, but is with great difficulty created<br />
alléW.<br />
Why should it be left in abeyance P There are<br />
two reasons which may influence the Premier :<br />
First, the impossibility of finding a successor to<br />
Tennyson of equal weight; and, next, the diffi-<br />
culty of selection, with the certainty of hostile<br />
criticism whatever appointment be made.<br />
It seems to some, however, highly desirable<br />
that the appointment should be filled up. Among<br />
other considerations the following are advanced :<br />
I. It is an office of considerable antiquity,<br />
honoured by the names of Spenser, Ben Jonson,<br />
Dryden, Southey, Wordsworth, and Tennyson.<br />
It has been continued and recognised as an office<br />
of the State for 300 years.<br />
2. It is the only recognition of literature offered<br />
by the State. By no other office, appointment, or<br />
distinction, does the State take the least notice of<br />
literature.<br />
The question of the national distinctions in<br />
relation to literature has been frequently discussed<br />
in these columns. It is true that there are members<br />
of this Society whose position in the world of letters<br />
entitles them to the highest consideration, who do<br />
not think that the interests of literature would be<br />
advanced by the creation of distinctive honours or<br />
the granting to men of letters those distinctions<br />
and orders now reserved for the Services. But it is<br />
also true that there are other men of letters, also<br />
of position, who hold that for a State not to<br />
recognise literature is to teach the people that<br />
literature is not worthy of honour. Now the<br />
office of Poet Laureate is, to repeat, the only<br />
attempt made by the State to show that poetry<br />
is deserving the honour and recognition of the<br />
people.<br />
3. The argument that, because Tennyson stood<br />
higher than his confrères there is to be no<br />
successor, if applied to other offices and titles of<br />
distinction would very soon lead to the abolition<br />
of all such offices. There would be left, in short,<br />
no distinctions at all.<br />
4. The argument that hostile criticism would<br />
follow any appointment would, if applied to<br />
other distinctions, equally lead to their abolition.<br />
The king is dead; another king must follow. It<br />
is not at all a question whether the choice will<br />
please every one. Again, hostile criticism would<br />
WOL. W. -<br />
die away as quickly as it arose. However hostile,'<br />
it would hurt nobody; on the supposition that.<br />
the Premier had made the appointment without<br />
regard to Party, and with the sole object of<br />
nominating the man he considered best, he could<br />
suffer no possible harm; nor could the newly<br />
appointed Laureate, whose name and reputation<br />
must be already before us, suffer any harm.<br />
After all, the worst that can be said in such a<br />
case is that an anonymous critic considers A. a.<br />
very much better poet than B. Besides, it is<br />
surely unworthy of a Prime Minister to fear<br />
hostile criticism in matters of literature when he<br />
cannot escape it in politics.<br />
5. The fact that such an appointment gives.<br />
great importance to a poet in the eyes of the<br />
world may also be considered. When a Regius<br />
Professor of Greek is appointed, the new Pro-<br />
fessor is lifted at once far above his fellow<br />
scholars. Yet there may be among these as good<br />
Greek scholars. Nobody doubts this. But nobody,<br />
in consequence, proposes that the Regius Pro-<br />
fessorship of Greek should be abolished for fear<br />
of giving him an importance above his fellow<br />
scholars. w<br />
6. In such a case as this, public opinion— .<br />
meaning the opinion of the cultivated public—<br />
points out a certain number of living poets as the<br />
fittest for the appointment. It is not a question<br />
whether there are men of Tennyson’s stature, but<br />
solely who are the available men in poetry with-<br />
out reference to opinion, Party, or any other<br />
point whatever ?<br />
7. There are, in the opinion of most literary<br />
men, whose opinion is not likely to be asked,<br />
poets who are entirely worthy to fill a post<br />
occupied by the Poets Laureate of the past;<br />
and there is so much promise in the work of the<br />
younger men, that, in their interests alone, the<br />
distinction ought to be preserved. -<br />
8. There is no question of expense. It must be .<br />
allowed by all that this meagre national recogni-<br />
tion of Literature is made on the cheapest possible<br />
terms. If it be thought that the very modest<br />
income attached to the distinction has anything to<br />
do with the desire to retain this solitary honour,<br />
bestowed upon Poetry among those distributed on<br />
the Services and Law, not to speak of Physic and<br />
Art, it might be found desirable to deprive the<br />
Laureateship of its income.<br />
These considerations are advanced as a few of<br />
those which influence many of this body in their<br />
desire to maintain the office and to see it filled<br />
again as soon as possible.<br />
On the eve of the general holidays nothing can<br />
be done except to place on record these few notes.<br />
It may be added, however, that some of the<br />
members are desirous of bringing the matter<br />
- H 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 70 (#84) ##############################################<br />
<br />
70 TIII. A UTII.O.IP.<br />
before the council with an invitation to some<br />
public expression of opinion, if that should seem<br />
good to the collective wisdom of the Society.<br />
*-- * ~ *<br />
z-- ~s<br />
CIVIL LIST PENSIONS.<br />
I.<br />
HE list of pensions granted during the year<br />
ended June 20, 1894, and charged upon the<br />
Civil List, is as follows: Miss Adeline Amy<br />
Leech, only surviving sister of the late Mr. John<br />
Leech, in addition to pensions of £25 and £IO<br />
already granted to her, 335; Professor T. W. Rhys<br />
Davids, in recognition of his merits as a student<br />
of Oriental literature, 32do; Mrs. Sophia Eder-<br />
sheim, in recognition of the merits of her late<br />
husband, Dr. Edersheim, as a writer on theology<br />
and Biblical criticism, 375; Mrs. Elizabeth<br />
Baker Mozley, in recognition of the merits of her<br />
late husband, the Rev. Thomas Mozley, 375; the<br />
Rev. Wentworth Webster, in consideration of his<br />
researches into the language, literature, and<br />
archaeology, of the Basques, 3150 ; the Lady<br />
Alice Portal, in recognition of the distinguished<br />
services of her late husband, Sir Gerald Herbert<br />
Portal, 3150; Mr. T. H. S. Escott, in considera-<br />
tion of his merits as an author and journalist,<br />
281 oo; Mr. John Beattie Crozier, in consideration<br />
of his philosophical writings and researches, 250;<br />
Dr. Thomas Gordon Hake, in recognition of his<br />
merits as a poet, 365; Mr. Samuel Alfred Warley,<br />
in consideration of his services to electrical<br />
science, 3850; Mrs. Amy Cameron, in considera-<br />
tion of the services rendered to geographical<br />
science by her late husband, Captain Werney<br />
Lovett Cameron, £50; Mrs. Ellis Margaret<br />
Hassall, in consideration of the services of<br />
her late husband, Dr. Arthur Hill Hassall,<br />
3850; Miss Matilda Betham-Edwards, in con-<br />
sideration of her literary merits, £50; Mrs.<br />
Ratharine S. Macquoid, in consideration of<br />
her contributions to literature, 35o ; Miss<br />
Rosalind Hawker and Miss Juliet Hawker in<br />
consideration of the literary merits of their late<br />
father, the Rev. Stephen Hawker, 325 each. The<br />
total of the pensions amounts to £12Oo.<br />
II.<br />
“Mr. Bartley asked the Chancellor of the<br />
Exchequer a question concerning one of the<br />
names in this List.<br />
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer: Civil Lis;<br />
pensions are not intended, as the hon. Imember<br />
appears to suppose, for ‘literary men and women<br />
in necessitous circumstances.’ The sixth section<br />
of the Civil Trist Act (I Wict. cap. 2) provides that<br />
they may be granted to ‘such persons only as<br />
have just claims on the Royal beneficence, or<br />
who, by their personal services to the Crown, by<br />
the performance of duties to the public, or by<br />
their useful discoveries in science and attain-<br />
ments in literature and the arts, have merited the<br />
gracious consideration of their Sovereign and the<br />
gratitude of their country.”<br />
“Mr. Bartley asked whether it was a fact that<br />
practically this bounty had always been given to<br />
reward those who were in necessitous circum-<br />
stances; whether it had ever yet been given to<br />
persons who were fairly well off and did not<br />
require it ; and whether there were not a great<br />
number of necessitous persons in literature and<br />
science to whom this grant would have been of<br />
much greater service.<br />
“The Chancellor of the Exchequer: I must<br />
answer in the negative every one of these<br />
questions. I have never yet heard that the late<br />
Lord Tennyson was in necessitous circumstances.”<br />
— Times.<br />
*—- - -º<br />
* * *—s<br />
THE AMERICAN MEMORIAL TO KEATS,<br />
N Monday, July 17, the bust of Keats,<br />
executed by Miss Anne Whitney, of<br />
Boston, Mass., and given to the English<br />
nation by a small body of Americans, lovers of<br />
the poet, was unveiled at Hampstead parish<br />
church, in the presence of a very large assem-<br />
blage. The memorial was received by Mr.<br />
Edmund Gosse, on behalf of English men and<br />
women of letters.<br />
The bust was presented by Mr. J. Holland<br />
Day, the secretary of the American Memorial<br />
Committee. He stated in a brief address that<br />
it was by the wish of his committee that the<br />
monument should be erected in the church of the<br />
place where Keats spent his few happy days. The<br />
memorial itself was highly approved by the late<br />
Mr. Lowell. The bust was modelled twenty years<br />
ago by Miss Whitney, and the bracket supporting<br />
it was designed by Mr. Bertram Goodhue.<br />
Mr. Edmund Gosse replied as follows:<br />
It is with no small emotion that we receive<br />
to-day, from the hands of his American admirers,<br />
a monument inscribed to the memory of Keats.<br />
Those of us who may be best acquainted with<br />
the history of the poet will not be surprised that<br />
you have convened us to the church of Hamp-<br />
stead, although it was not here that he was born<br />
nor here that he died. Yet some who are present.<br />
to-day may desire to be reminded why it is that<br />
when we think of Keats we think of Hampstead.<br />
It is in his twenty-first year, in 1816, that we<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 71 (#85) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIII)<br />
A UTIIOIR. 7 I<br />
find the frst record of his ascent of this historic<br />
eminence. He appears, then, on the brow of<br />
Hampstead Hill as the visitor, as the disciple of<br />
Leigh Hunt, in his cottage in the Vale of Health.<br />
He comes, an ardent lad, with great flashing eyes<br />
and heavy auburn curls, carrying in his hand a<br />
wreath of ivy for the brows of Mr. Hunt.<br />
Nearly eighty years ago—this pilgrimage of<br />
boyish enthusiasm—but a few months after<br />
Waterloo. The last rumblings of the long<br />
European wars were dying away in the distance.<br />
Our unhappy contest with that great young<br />
republic which you, Sir, so gracefully represent<br />
to-day, just over and done with. How long ago<br />
it seems, this page of history, how dusty and<br />
shadowy ; and how fresh and near across the face<br />
of it the visit of the boyish poet to his friend<br />
and master on the hill of Hampstead | Such at<br />
all events was the earliest appearance of Keats in<br />
this place, and here the “prosperous opening” of<br />
his poetical career was made. Here he first met<br />
Shelley, Haydon, and perhaps Wordsworth ;<br />
hence in 1817, from under these “pleasant trees”<br />
and the “leafy luxury" of the Vale of Health,<br />
his earliest volume was sent forth to the world;<br />
here, in lodgings of his own at Well-walk, he<br />
settled in that same summer that he might<br />
devote himself to the composition of “Endymion.”<br />
Here his best friends clustered round him—<br />
Bailey find Cowden Clarke, Dilke and Armitage,<br />
Brown and Reynolds. Here it was that, in the<br />
autumn of 1818, he met, at Wentworth-place,<br />
that brisk and shapely lady whose fascination<br />
was to make the cup of his sorrows overflow ;<br />
hence it was that, on Sept. 18, 1820, he started<br />
for Italy, a dying man. All of Keats that is<br />
vivid and intelligent, all that is truly characteristic<br />
of his genius and his vitality, is centred around<br />
Hampstead, and you, his latest western friends,<br />
have shown a fine instinct in bringing here, and<br />
not elsewhere, the gifts and tributes of your love.<br />
If we find it easy to justify the locality which<br />
you have chosen for your monument to Keats, it<br />
is surely not less easy, although more serious and<br />
more elaborate, to bring forward reasons for the<br />
existence of that monument itself. In the first<br />
place, that you should so piously have prepaled,<br />
and that we so eagerly and so unanimously<br />
accept, a marble effigy of Keats, what does it<br />
signify, if not that we and you alike acknowledge<br />
the fame that it represents to be durable, stimulat-<br />
ing, and exalted P For, consider with me for a<br />
moment, how singularly unattached is the repu-<br />
tation of this our Hampstead poet. It rests upon<br />
no privilege of birth, no “stake in the country,”<br />
as we say ; it is fostered by no alliance of powerful<br />
friends or wide circle of personal influences; no<br />
one living to-day has seen Keats, or artificially<br />
preserves his memory for any private purpose.<br />
In all but verse, his name was, as he said, “writ<br />
on water.” He is identified with no progression<br />
of ideas, no religious or political or social propa-<br />
ganda. He is either a poet or absolutely<br />
nothing—we withdraw the poetical elements<br />
from our conception of him, and what is left P<br />
The palestphantom of a livery-stable-keeper's son,<br />
an unsuccessful medical student, an ineffectual<br />
consumptive lad who died in obscurity more than<br />
seventy years ago. .<br />
You will forgive me for reminding you of<br />
this absence of all secondary qualities, of all<br />
outer accomplishments of life in the career of<br />
that great man whom we celebrate to-day,<br />
because in so doing I exalt the one primary<br />
quality which raises him among the principali-<br />
ties and powers of the human race, and makes<br />
our celebration of him to-day perfectly rational<br />
and explicable to all instructed men and women.<br />
It is not every one who appreciates poetry; it<br />
may be that such appreciation is really a some-<br />
what rare and sequestered gift. But all practical<br />
men can understand that honour is due to those<br />
who have performed a difficult and noble task<br />
with superlative distinction. We may be no<br />
politicians, but we can comprehend the enthu-<br />
siasm excited by a consummate statesman. Be<br />
it a sport or a profession, an art or a discovery,<br />
all men and women can acquiesce in the praise<br />
which is due to him who has exercised it the<br />
best out of a thousand who have attempted it.<br />
This, then, would be your answer to any who<br />
should question the propriety of your zeal or of<br />
our gratitude to day. We are honouring John<br />
Reats—we should reply in unison—because he<br />
did with superlative charm and skill a thing<br />
which mankind has agreed to include among the<br />
noblest and most elevated occupations of the<br />
human intelligence. We honour in the lad who<br />
passed so long unobserved among the inhabitants<br />
of Hampstead, a poet, and nothing but a poet,<br />
but one of the very greatest poets that the<br />
modern world bas seen.<br />
The Professor of Poetry at Oxford reminds me<br />
that Tennyson was more than once heard to<br />
assert that Keats, had his life been prolonged,<br />
would have been our greatest poet since Milton.<br />
This conviction is one now open to discussion, of<br />
course, but fit to be propounded in any assem-<br />
'blage of competent judges. It may be stated, at<br />
least, and yet the skies not fall upon our heads.<br />
Fifty years ago to have made such a proposition<br />
in public would have been thought ridiculous,<br />
and sixty years ago almost wicked. When I was<br />
myself a child, I remember that I met with the<br />
name of Keats for the first time in conjunction<br />
with that of Kirke White, an insipid poetaster<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 72 (#86) ##############################################<br />
<br />
72 - TIIE<br />
A UTIIOIP.<br />
whose almost only merit was his early death. When<br />
the late Lord Houghton—a name so dear to many<br />
present, a name never to be mentioned without<br />
sympathy in any collection of literary persons—<br />
when Monckton Milnes—as in 1848 he still was—<br />
published his delightful life of Keats, it was<br />
widely looked upon as a rash and fantastic act to<br />
concentrate so much attention on so imperfect a<br />
‘Career.<br />
But all that is over now. Keats lives, as he<br />
modestly assured his friends would be the case,<br />
among the English poets. Nor among them<br />
merely, but in the first rank of them—among the<br />
very few of whom we instinctively think when-<br />
ever the characteristic versemen of our race are<br />
spoken of. To what does he owe this pre-<br />
eminence—he, the boy in this assemblage of<br />
strong men and venerable greybeards, he who had<br />
ceased to sing at an age when most of them were<br />
still practising their prosodical scales? To<br />
answer this adequately would take us much too far<br />
afield for a short address, the object of which is<br />
simply to acknowledge with decency your amiable<br />
gift. But some brief answer we must essay to<br />
make. -<br />
Originality of poetic style was not, it seems to<br />
me, the predominant characteristic of Keats. It<br />
might have come with ripening years, but it<br />
cannot be at all certain that it would. It never<br />
came to Pope or to Lamartine, to Virgil, or to<br />
Tennyson. It has come to poets infinitely the<br />
inferiors of these, infinitely the inferiors of Keats.<br />
They who strive after direct originality forget<br />
that to be unlike those who have preceded us, in<br />
all the forms and methods of expression, is not<br />
by any means certainly to be either felicitous or<br />
distinguished. There is hardly any excellent<br />
feature in the poetry of I(eats which is not super-<br />
ficially the feature of some well-recognised master<br />
of an age precedent to his own. He boldly takes<br />
down, as from some wardrobe of beautiful and<br />
diverse raiment, the dress of Spenser, of Milton,<br />
of Homer, of Ariosto, of Fletcher, and wears each<br />
in turn, thrown over shoulders which completely<br />
change its whole appearance and lºroportion.<br />
But, if he makes use of modes which are already<br />
familiar to us, in their broad outlines, as the<br />
modes invented by earlier masters, it is mainly<br />
because his temperament was one which impera-<br />
tively led him to select the best of all possible<br />
forms of expression. His excursions into other<br />
people's provinces were always undertaken with<br />
a view to the annexation of the richest and most<br />
fertile acres. It is comparatively vain to specu-<br />
late as to the future of a man whose work was<br />
all done between the ages of nineteen and four-<br />
and-twenty. Yet I think we may see that what<br />
Keats was rapidly progressing towards, until the<br />
moment when his health gave way, was a crystal-<br />
lisation into one fused and perfect style of all the<br />
best elements of the poetry of the ages. When<br />
we think of Byron, we see that he would pro-<br />
bably have become absorbed in the duties of the<br />
ruler of a nation ; in Shelley we conjecture that<br />
all was being merged in the politician and the<br />
humanitarian, but in Keats poetry was ever<br />
steadily and exclusively ascendant. Shall I say<br />
what will startle you if I confess that I sometimes<br />
fancy that we lost in the author of the five great<br />
odes the most masterly capacity for poetic expres-<br />
sion which the world has ever seen P<br />
|Be this as it may, without vain speculation we<br />
may agree that we possess even in this fragment<br />
of work, in this truncated performance, one of the<br />
most splendid inheritances of English literature.<br />
“I have loved the principle of beauty in all<br />
things,” Keats most truly said, “the mighty<br />
abstract idea of beauty in all things.” It is this<br />
passion for intellectual beauty—less disturbed,<br />
perhaps, by distracting aims in him than in any<br />
other writer of all time—that sets the crown on<br />
our conception of his poetry. When he set out<br />
upon his mission, as a boy of twenty, he entered<br />
that “Chamber of Maiden Thought” of which he<br />
speaks to Reynolds, where he became intoxicated<br />
with the light and the atmosphere. Many of his<br />
warmest admirers seem to have gone with him no<br />
further, to have stayed there among the rich<br />
colours and the Lydian melodies and the enchant-<br />
ing fresh perfumes. But the real Keats evades<br />
them if they pass no further. He had already<br />
risen to graver and austerer things, he had<br />
already bowed his shoulders under the Burden of<br />
the Mystery. But even in those darker galleries<br />
and up those harsher stairs he took one lamp with<br />
him, the light of harmonious thought. The pro-<br />
found and exquisite melancholy of his latest verse<br />
is permeated with this conception of the loftiest<br />
beauty as the only consolation in our jarring and<br />
bewildered world : -<br />
Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all<br />
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.<br />
And now, Sir, we turn again to you and to the<br />
gracious gift you bring us. In one of his gay<br />
moods, Keats wrote to his brother George in<br />
Rentucky, “If I had a prayer to make, it should<br />
be that one of your children should be the first<br />
American poet.” That wish was not realised;<br />
the “little child o' the western wild” remained,<br />
I believe, resolutely neglectful of the lyre its<br />
uncle offered to it. But the prophecies of<br />
great poets are fulfilled in divers ways, and in<br />
a broader sense all the recent poets of America.<br />
are of Keats' kith and kin. Not one but has<br />
felt his influence; not one but has been swayed<br />
by his passion for the ethereal beauty; not one<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 73 (#87) ##############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTIIOI8. 73<br />
but is proud to recognise his authority and<br />
dignity.<br />
The ceremony of to-day, so touching and so<br />
significant, is really, therefore, the pilgrimage of<br />
long-exiled children to what was once the home<br />
of their father.”<br />
Mr. Gosse then read the following sonnet by<br />
Mr. Theodore Watts, which appeared in the<br />
Athenæum of July 14:<br />
Thy gardens bright with limbs of gods at play—<br />
Those bowers whose flowers are fruits, Hesperian sweets<br />
That light with heaven the soul of him who eats,<br />
And lend his veins Olympian blood of day—<br />
Were only lent, and, since thou couldst not stay,<br />
Better to die than wake in sorrow, Keats,<br />
Where even the Sirens' song no longer cheats—<br />
Where Love's long “Street of Tombs' still lengthens grey.<br />
IBotter to nestle there in arms of Flora,<br />
Ere Youth, the king of Earth and Beauty's heir,<br />
Drinking such breath in meadows of Aurora<br />
As bards of morning drank, AEgean air,<br />
Woke in Eld’s lonely caverns of Ellora,<br />
Carven with visions dead and sights that were !<br />
Lord Houghton (Lord Lieutenant of Ireland)<br />
then addressed the meeting.” His Lordship<br />
remarked that it was as the son of Richard<br />
Monckton Milnes that he was present that day.<br />
He wished his father could have been spared to<br />
see that ceremony. The last occasion on which<br />
his father appeared in public was at the unveiling<br />
of the memorial to the poet Gray. He could not<br />
conceive anything which would have moved his<br />
father more profoundly than this graceful recog-<br />
nition of a poet of whose life and work he was so<br />
affectionate a student, by a number of dis-<br />
tinguished citizens of that great American Union<br />
which he so loved and honoured, and throughout<br />
the long breadth of which he owned so many<br />
valued friends. It was a most cherished belief<br />
of his that, in spite of the political separation<br />
which he supposed must be for ever, the unity<br />
between the two great countries should be, and<br />
was, preserved in the brotherhood of letters on<br />
the basis of a common great poetical ancestry.<br />
He (Lord Houghton) trusted that he might be<br />
allowed to express his own appreciation of the<br />
honour which was done to the English world of<br />
letters by the graceful homage of so many<br />
American ladies and gentlemen to the poet<br />
Reats, of whom in his day the world was not<br />
worthy, but who was uow regarded as one of the<br />
most beloved of English writers.<br />
Mr. Sidney Colvin said that these memorials<br />
of great men were none too frequent in this<br />
country. Here in Hampstead there were two sites<br />
especially connected with the memory of Keats,<br />
the beloved poet. One was Well-walk, which<br />
* The report which follows is taken from the Hampstead<br />
and Highgate Ea'press of July 21.<br />
still partly retained its ancient features. He<br />
believed that the house in which Keats lived<br />
with Bentley the postman no longer existed—that<br />
Well-walk had been shortened. The bench was<br />
pointed out where he sat, but that was not<br />
altogether satisfactory. However, lower down, in<br />
what was the village of Hampstead, but was now<br />
a town, in John-street, there was remarkably<br />
little change. The house in which he lived, the<br />
garden in which he wrote the famous “Address<br />
to the Nightingale,” still existed. He (Mr.<br />
Colvin) remembered going there, now ten years<br />
ago, with one who had looked upon the features of<br />
Adonaïs—a brother of Charles Wentworth Dilke<br />
—who showed him what the changes were, so<br />
that one could see at Lawn Bank what exactly<br />
were the two houses, in one of which Keats<br />
lived with the Browns. It had often occurred to<br />
him that a benefactor or benefactors might secure<br />
that house and make it a memorial to the poet<br />
who lived and wrote and suffered there. Perhaps<br />
that dream may be realised—perhaps not. In<br />
any case they could not be too grateful to those<br />
American friends who had brought this memorial<br />
now set up in that old parish church of Hamp-<br />
stead. Keats was bound to the American people<br />
by special ties. Several of his collateral descen-<br />
dants were citizens of the United States, and a<br />
great deal of what was warmest in his nature<br />
flowed out to that country in that invaluable<br />
series of charming, enthusiastic letters which he<br />
wrote to his brother and sister-in-law at Touis-<br />
ville. There could be no question that, of all<br />
places to choose for a memorial to Keats, Hamp-<br />
stead was the proper place. The best and almost<br />
the worst of his life were passed here; and it was<br />
in what was then Wentworth House that the first<br />
pangs of the illness from which he was never to<br />
recover laid him low. He (Mr. Colvin) hoped<br />
that here, in the enormously enlarged Hampstead<br />
of to-day, would be found, with its increase of<br />
homes, a proportionate increase of the readers<br />
and lovers of poetry, and that amongst the popu-<br />
lation of this place, as well as amongst the<br />
larger populations represented in that assembly,<br />
there would be found a unanimous sense and<br />
voice of gratitude to the English women and<br />
Englishmen from over the seas who had brought<br />
them that gift.<br />
Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave, Professor of<br />
Poetry at the University of Oxford, said that<br />
Rome, that city wherein were buried three<br />
illustrious, unhappy poets—Tasso, Shelley, and<br />
Keats, and he the youngest—already held two<br />
records of his memory; one the tablet on the<br />
house where he died, the other his gravestone in<br />
the cemetery where he was buried beneath the<br />
wall of Aurelian. Keats' short wandering life<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 74 (#88) ##############################################<br />
<br />
74 - THE AUTHOIR.<br />
made it difficult to find a decisively fit place for<br />
a memorial in his own country. But he thought<br />
it would be agreed that none better could have<br />
been chosen than Hampstead, where between<br />
1816 and 1820, many of his brightest and also<br />
his saddest days were spent, where in early youth<br />
he met Hunt and Haydon, and Shelley, where<br />
afterwards, when just seemingly in sight of home<br />
and happiness the fatal signals of consumption<br />
constrained him to confess the terrible Lasciate<br />
ogni speranza, and bid farewell to her who was<br />
never to be his bride. In Hampstead also were<br />
partly written the poems published (1817) in the<br />
first of his three precious volumes, full of un-<br />
tutored fresh delight in nature and friendship<br />
and art, and here, but three years later, some of<br />
those splendid lyrical tales and odes which, as<br />
Alfred Tennyson more than once said to him<br />
(Mr. Palgrave), gave a secure promise that had<br />
life been spared Keats would have proved<br />
our greatest in poetry since Milton. “ By<br />
nothing,” said Matthew Arnold, “is England<br />
so glorious as by her poetry.” The place of<br />
Keats in that sphere was now established,<br />
and needed no words from him. They could<br />
read how this “half-schooled ” youth, the<br />
stablekeeper's son, the surgeon’s apprentice,<br />
not only by native force and inspiration, but by<br />
most careful devotion to his art, in some four<br />
years' work made himself worthy of the praise<br />
bestowed on him by Tennyson, while he also<br />
gave clear proof that human life in its deepest<br />
and highest sense, yet always under the law of<br />
beauty, would have been the subject of his<br />
maturer verse. Even more than is the usual fate<br />
of high genius, Keats, from his own day onwards,<br />
had been misunderstood. He was held sensuous in<br />
his life and in his poetry, a second Agathon,<br />
wanting in manliness and spirit, a feeble being<br />
in all ways. Yet, on the strength of his own<br />
Writings, his verse and his letters, and also of all<br />
trustworthy records, he ventured to call Keats<br />
not only one of the most profoundly interesting,<br />
but one of the most attractive and most lovable<br />
figures in literature. Manliness, magnanimity,<br />
unselfish devotedness, deep love of friends and<br />
family, chivalry to woman, sensitiveness too<br />
intense for peace of mind, were the dominant<br />
notes of his nature. Whilst wholly free from<br />
Vanity, Keats was personally self-respecting, and,<br />
in that laudable sense, proud, but as to his<br />
abilities and his own work almost pathetically<br />
humble-minded. Young as he was, he bore what<br />
Charles Lamb so truly defined as the surest sign<br />
of the highest genius—sanity. In all that there<br />
was even more promise of life than in his poetry<br />
itself. Thus “lovable and considerate to the last,”<br />
humbly after his wont, not (as misinterpreted)<br />
bitterly, he spoke of his work and name as “writ<br />
in water.” This was a noble soul, strangely and<br />
sorely tried, and let them only add there, Re-<br />
quiescat in pace.<br />
Mr. J. Willis Clark, Registrar of the University<br />
of Cambridge, observed that we were apt to<br />
accept our historic past too passively, and needed<br />
from time to time a gentle awakening by friendly<br />
hands to the duties which it entailed. The bust<br />
they had received that day would not only remind<br />
them of the past, but of those who remembered<br />
that Keats had been left without visible memorial<br />
in his own country. “A thing of beauty is a joy<br />
for ever,” and they rejoiced not only over their<br />
beautiful new possession, but over the graceful<br />
Kindness of those who had given it to them.<br />
Mr. F. H. Day then conducted Mr. Gosse to the<br />
bust, and the latter unveiled it. The “bust '' is<br />
placed on a square base or bracket, like the bust<br />
itself of white marble, against the right-hand<br />
side of the chancel, facing the congregation. A<br />
portrait of the poet, wrought fortunately in his<br />
life-time, has served and, perhaps, inspired the<br />
sculptor. On the bracket is inscribed, in gilt<br />
letters, “To the ever-living memory of John<br />
Reats this monument is erected by Americans,<br />
MDCCCXCIV.”<br />
Mendelssohn’s anthem, “Then shall the<br />
righteous shine forth in their heavenly Father's<br />
home,” was then sung, with the chorus, “He<br />
that shall endure to the end,” by the choir. A<br />
shortened form of evening prayer concluded the<br />
ceremony.<br />
*- ~ 2-’<br />
,-- * ~ *<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
S the three volume novel really ended ? I<br />
think not. A large number of popular<br />
novelists will in future publish in the single<br />
volume first ; a certain number of novels which<br />
have hitherto brought the authors a small sum<br />
will cease to appear, because it will not be worth<br />
the publisher’s trouble to go on producing them<br />
for his share, nor for the author to write them for<br />
his share, which we may be quite certain will in<br />
many cases be made to bear the whole loss.<br />
There will remain a remnant; it will consist<br />
chiefly of those books which, if 200 or so are taken<br />
by the libraries at I Is. a copy, will pay th ir<br />
expenses and something over for the publisher.<br />
The author will receive the glory which awaits<br />
the writer of such a work. One or two writers of<br />
repute will perhaps remain, but not many; the<br />
three volume novel will not be ended all at once,<br />
but it is doomed; it will die, but perhaps more<br />
slowly than we think.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 75 (#89) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIIE<br />
A UTIIOR. 75<br />
Should the three-volume novel perish without<br />
its farewell hymn P Should there be found no<br />
bard in all this land who would be moved to<br />
say a word of praise and lamentation ? Not so,<br />
The Saturday Review has produced its poet.<br />
The old Three-Decker will not vanish without its<br />
funeral hymn. He is a worthy poet; his numbers<br />
are worthy of the subject. Every writer of three-<br />
volume novels should cut out the poem and frame<br />
it and hang it up. Anonymous (P) singer, we<br />
thank thee! For those who have not read that<br />
dirge here is a sample of its quality.<br />
Rair held the Trade behind us; ’twas warm with lovers'<br />
prayers ;<br />
We’d stolen wills for ballast and a crew of missing heirs.<br />
They shipped as Able Bastards till the Wicked Nurse con-<br />
fessed.<br />
And they worked the old Three-Decker to the Islands of<br />
the Blest.<br />
We asked no social questions, we pumped no hidden<br />
shame; -<br />
We never talked obstetrics when the Little Stranger came ;<br />
We left the Lord in Heaven ; we left the fiends in Hell;<br />
We weren't exactly Yusufs but—Zuleika didn’t tell!<br />
And through the maddest welter and 'neath the wildest<br />
skies,<br />
We'd pipe all hands to listen to the skipper's homilies;<br />
For oft he’d back his topsle or moor in open Sea.<br />
To draw a just reflextion from a pirate on the lee.<br />
No moral doubt assailed us, so when the port we neared<br />
The Villain took his flogging at the gangway, and we<br />
cheered.<br />
'Twas fiddle on the foc'sle—’twas garlands at the mast,<br />
For every one got married, and I went ashore at last.<br />
I left 'em all in couples a-kissing on the decks;<br />
I left the lovers loving and the parents signing cheques—<br />
In endless English comfort, by county-folk caressed,<br />
I left the old Three-Decker at the Islands of the Blest.<br />
IN our notice on the Three Volume Nove]<br />
of last number it was assumed that the Cost of<br />
Production of a small edition was about £I2O.<br />
It is, however, well to consider that there are<br />
cheaper methods. Those novels which are issued<br />
with a view to a short run in the circulating<br />
libraries only, and are not, practically, offered to<br />
the public at all, require little or no advertising.<br />
Agreat saving is therefore effected under that head.<br />
But they are also printed at a much cheaper rate<br />
than that contemplated in the Society’s pamphlet.<br />
The page is smaller, to begin with ; it contains,<br />
as a general rule, about twenty-two lines and<br />
17O words to a page. There are generally 900<br />
pages in the three volumes, or fifty-six sheets,<br />
as in our estimate. The work is given out to a<br />
cheap printer, who does not employ union men,<br />
and pays his compositors less than 9s. a sheet<br />
for setting up. It will be understood that with<br />
such wages our estimate of 19s. 6d. a sheet for com-<br />
position may be very considerably reduced. If the<br />
work is also given out by a yearly contract, still<br />
further reductions may be made on every item.<br />
In fact such a novel can be produced in this<br />
manner for something like 38o, or even less.<br />
If, therefore, only 250 copies are taken by the<br />
libraries—it is a very common thing for a novel<br />
not to exceed this circulation—we have at I4S., a<br />
return of £175 on an expenditure of £80. It is<br />
clearly therefore in the interests of those who have<br />
hitherto produced these three volume novels to<br />
continue them as long as they possibly cun.<br />
Even with the reduction to IIs. a copy will yield a<br />
return of £1 17 against an expenditure of £80.<br />
The bistory of the novel, when it comes to be<br />
written, will show how it has been issued, at<br />
different times, in three volumes, four volumes,<br />
and even more, for the convenience of the reader,<br />
and to avoid holding a heavy volume; the price<br />
varied in amount, but was always high ; the<br />
people who read them were a small minority,<br />
but they bought books. There was no cheap<br />
edition thought of, because there was no public<br />
outside this small circle of readers. Gradually<br />
the circle widened ; there grew up in many<br />
places, such as Norwich, Lichfield, and other<br />
cathedral towns, circles of readers who wanted<br />
to read more than they could afford to buy.<br />
Already in London the circulating library had<br />
been started. In the country towns book clubs<br />
were established—in many respects much more<br />
convenient than the circulating library. There<br />
were so many book clubs in the country sixty<br />
years ago that any publisher of repute could<br />
place at once a thousand copies of a new work.<br />
This fact explains the great output of nove's<br />
about that time; it was s) easy to place them<br />
that publishers very naturally thought little<br />
of the quality, and sent out so much rubbish<br />
that the book clubs refused to take them, and<br />
preferred extinction. The English novel during<br />
the Thirties and Forties fell into profound dis-<br />
repute except for one or two writers—Dickens,<br />
Lytton, Ainsworth, for example—who kept the<br />
lamp from extinguishing. The cheap edition<br />
was introduced about thirty years ago. It was<br />
not customary until twenty-five years ago to<br />
reprint a serial novel from a magazine. The<br />
critics in those days used to be very angry with<br />
one who did not acknowledge that his book<br />
had appeared in a serial form ; they spoke of<br />
it as a deception played upon the public. The<br />
appearance of the cheap form began with the two<br />
shilling or railway novel; it was at first called<br />
contemptuously the “sensation ” novel; people<br />
were a little ashamed of liking a good story:<br />
the rest we know. Knight, Chambers, Bohn,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 76 (#90) ##############################################<br />
<br />
76 THE AUTHOR.<br />
began and carried on the issue of cheap literature;<br />
but I believe the only form which proved very<br />
successful was that of the novel. The form and<br />
price of the novel, as it has varied during the<br />
last century, could easily be learned by following<br />
the advertisements in the Gentleman’s Magazine,<br />
Blackwood’s, the Quarterly, the Edinburgh, and<br />
the Athenæum. The last named paper did not<br />
begin till, I believe, 1834, but sixty years carries<br />
one back a long way in the history of a novel.<br />
The advertisement sheets in books would also be<br />
of some use.<br />
Here is a difficulty not uncommon with us.<br />
The young aspirant sends a MS. to the Society<br />
to be read. He receives a critical opinion, in<br />
which the faults of construction, of style, and<br />
everything else are pointed out and explained.<br />
His manner of receiving this opinion varies;<br />
in many cases he acknowledges the justice of<br />
the opinion and the value of the advice; in<br />
other cases he falls into wrath. Sometimes he<br />
returns his MS. after an interval, saying<br />
that he has now altered everything in obedi-<br />
ence to his critic, and asks where his work<br />
can be placed. Altered the MS. has been,<br />
and yet it will not do. How can one make the<br />
young aspirant understand that a mere alteration<br />
here and there is not enough; that he must change<br />
himself so that such defects are impossible P<br />
How, again, can one make a young man learn<br />
that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he<br />
who succeeds has to work his way upwards P<br />
Here and there a Keats blazes out in poetry;<br />
here and there a Kipling strikes the right note in<br />
early manhood; here and there a Dickens; more<br />
often it is the slow growth and the continued<br />
work which produced a Fielding, a Thackeray, a<br />
Balzac.<br />
The mention in Mr. Gosse's address of Henry<br />
Kirke White was doubtless suggested by Byron's<br />
exaggerated praise and regret for that now<br />
neglected and forgotten poet. His early promise,<br />
his untimely death, his gallant struggle with<br />
adverse fortune, his sincere piety, his simple and<br />
beautiful letters procured for him a far greater<br />
name than his poetical achievement deserved.<br />
He wrote verses with ease, sometimes with grace,<br />
and never with any real power or originality. He<br />
was born in the greatest poverty, he taught<br />
himself, he published a volume of verse in his<br />
eighteenth year, he was sent to Cambridge by<br />
the Rev. Dr. Simeon, he showed great mathe-<br />
matical ability, and would certainly have dis-<br />
tinguished himself very highly in mathematical<br />
honours; he published another volume of verse<br />
—or was it posthumous P-and he died of con-<br />
sumption at the age of twenty-one. Had he<br />
lived he would have been, probably, Senior<br />
Wrangler, First Smith's Prizeman, Fellow of St.<br />
John's, lecturer, tutor, leader in the evangelical<br />
world, and successor in that position to Dr.<br />
Simeon ; Master of his college, and, in due course,<br />
perhaps a Bishop. He would also, most certainly,<br />
have indited many hymns, some of which we<br />
should now be singing out of “Hymns Ancient and<br />
Modern,” and there would have been portraits of<br />
Him in steel engravings, with a light not of this<br />
world in his eyes, sleek and wavy hair, straight<br />
whiskers, a silk gown, and Geneva bands. Forty<br />
or fifty years ago it was the custom to present<br />
boys with an edition of Henry Kirke White, con-<br />
taining his poems, a memoir, and selections from<br />
his letters. There is a tablet to his memory in<br />
one of the Cambridge churches, placed there by<br />
an American, like that of Keats at Hampstead,<br />
with some memorial lines by Professor Smyth.<br />
The Professor meant well, and, indeed, in such<br />
verse one cannot very well explain that “un-<br />
conquered powers” must be taken poetically.<br />
Warm with fond hope and learning's sacred fame,<br />
To Granta's bowers the youthful poet came,<br />
TJnconquered powers th’ immortal mind displayed;<br />
But, worn with anxious thought, the frame decayed.<br />
Bale o'er his lamp, and in his cell retired,<br />
The martyr student faded and expired—<br />
Oh! genius, taste, and piety sincere,<br />
Too early lost, 'midst studies too severe !<br />
A letter from Dr. C. J. Wills, on p. 81, calls<br />
attention to the use of books in the compilation<br />
of articles for the press. In an article to which<br />
he refers there were, in all, 759 words, of which<br />
577, or by far the greater part, were, word for<br />
word, taken from his book. The writer of the<br />
article, it appears—though he denied having seen<br />
the book—acknowledged his indebtedness to the<br />
“Encyclopædia Britannica,” in which Dr. Wills's<br />
book had been quoted, and properly acknowledged.<br />
To quote without acknowledgment is, however, a<br />
very different thing.<br />
Such a case as this is one which may happen to<br />
any editor. A contributor, believed to have special<br />
knowledge on a certain subject, is invited, or offers,<br />
to write upon that subject. Who can suppose that<br />
the man of special knowledge is going to consult<br />
the “Encyclopædia Britannica?” Why employ<br />
the specialist if the Encyclopædia will answer the<br />
purpose? An intelligent boy, to select and to<br />
copy, would do perfectly well, and be a good deal<br />
cheaper. One thing is quite certain, that when a<br />
man submits an article, it is understood that it<br />
is an original article, wholly written by him<br />
from knowledge specially obtained and possessed<br />
by him. Any one, for instance, with the aid of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 77 (#91) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TILE AUTIOR.<br />
.77<br />
“Cook's Voyages,” could write on the manners<br />
and customs of the natives of Terra Del Fuego.<br />
But only one who has been among this interesting<br />
people can write an account containing the results<br />
of personal observation.<br />
The custom of journalism is that he who com-<br />
ments on things—atticles, books, arguments<br />
speeches—that is, the leader writer—may use<br />
freely whatever he finds in the book or the speech<br />
which may assist or advance his own contention.<br />
Thus a leader writer on “Fashion among Persian<br />
Women’’ would naturally turn to Dr. Wills for<br />
the facts; he would freely use the book; but even<br />
then he would probably acknowledge his autho-<br />
rity. On the other hand, one who communicates<br />
a paper on “Fashion among Persian Women” is<br />
expected at least to write an original paper. It<br />
may be taken for granted that such was the<br />
expectation of the editor in this case when he<br />
accepted and published the paper on “Persian<br />
Women.”<br />
Dr. Wills asks how much of an article tendered<br />
and accepted as original can be copied, borrowed,<br />
or extracted from books or papers on the subject.<br />
The answer, of course, is plain—without acknow-<br />
ledgment, nothing. How much with acknow-<br />
ledgment P That depends upon the editor. It<br />
does seem, however, as if a special tariff might<br />
with advantage be adopted for such cases.<br />
Borrowed work Imight be paid for at the rate of,<br />
say, a penny a folio—the price given to a law<br />
st itioner for copying documents.<br />
The Westminster Budget has called attention<br />
to the great age often attained by literary men of<br />
distinction. Crébillon died at 88; Voltaire, at<br />
83, superintended the arrangements for the per-<br />
formance of “Irene”; Madame d’Arblay died at<br />
88; Herrick at 83; Izaak Walton at 90; John<br />
Evelyn at 83; Charles Macklin at 107; Colley<br />
Cibber at 86; Wordsworth and Tennyson at over<br />
80; Browning close on 8o; Victor Hugo over 80;<br />
Walter Savage Landor at 90. Activity of brain<br />
clearly does not hurt the body ; is it not<br />
generally attended with physical strength P. On<br />
the other hand, Shakespeare died comparatively<br />
oung; so did Spenser, Ben Jonson, Pope,<br />
Addison, Chatterton, Keats, Byron, and Shelley;<br />
a consumptive frame, a weakly constitution, a<br />
malarious fever, an accident, account for these<br />
early deaths. If we consider, again, the long lives<br />
of theologians, lawyers, and men of science, it<br />
certainly seems as if long life, as well as honour,<br />
success, and all the other things desired by men,<br />
was given with intellectual activity. Many years<br />
ago I made a table of comparative longevity,<br />
using Hole's little Biographical Dictionary, I<br />
forget how many names it contained, but there<br />
were many hundreds. The result was that<br />
divines live longest, then lawyers, then men of<br />
letters.<br />
The pensions of the year under the Civil List<br />
show a greater amount of conscience in the appoint-<br />
ment and the distributions than has ever before,<br />
any previous year, been exhibited. There is only<br />
one appointment which ought not to appear in the<br />
list. It is a national disgrace that there is no<br />
place for the widow of a distinguished officer<br />
except in a list devoted to literature, science, and<br />
art. One is far from grudging the meagre pen-<br />
sion granted to such a lady, but it is shameful to<br />
take it from the slender provision made to litera-<br />
ture, science, and art. Elsewhere will be found a<br />
question or two asked, and answered, in the<br />
House. Mr. Bartley was quite right, and the<br />
Chancellor of the Exchequer was quite wrong.<br />
The Resolution on which the grant is made,<br />
loosely worded as it is, has always been inter-<br />
preted to mean that the pensions shall be given<br />
to literature, science, and art; unfortunately,<br />
personal service to the Crown was included, and<br />
meant provision for Her Majesty's teachers and<br />
tutors, while “performance of duties to the<br />
public ’’ never did mean naval, military, or civil<br />
services. Further, though the resolution did not<br />
say that persons were to be in necessitous circum-<br />
stances, it implied that condition, because no one<br />
in affluent circumstances would accept a pension<br />
of £75 a year. Tennyson, when he received his<br />
pension, was certainly not in affluence. Lastly,<br />
the Resolution has been of late interpreted to in-<br />
clude widows and daughters of distinguished men<br />
which it did not at first contemplate. Thus, in<br />
the list before us, eight persons out of sixteen<br />
who are on the list, are widows, sisters, or<br />
daughters of distinguished men. It is greatly to<br />
be wished that Mr. Bartley will continue to watch<br />
over the distribution of this grant. But is it not<br />
time to alter the wording of the Resolution, and<br />
to restrict the grant expressly to persons, or to<br />
the widows, children, or sisters of persons, distin-<br />
guished in literature, science, and art, who are in<br />
distressed circumstances P<br />
The book of the month is Lord Dufferin's filial<br />
tribute to the memory of his mother. Is not the<br />
Sheridan family the only family on record which<br />
has continued to hand down its best charac-<br />
teristics from one generation to another P Wit,<br />
beauty, charm, grace, genius—all these gifts seem<br />
born with the descendants of Richard Brinsley<br />
Sheridan and Elizabeth Linley. Genius, at<br />
least, not to speak of the other qualities, has<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 78 (#92) ##############################################<br />
<br />
78 TIII)<br />
A UTHOR.<br />
never before shown itself to be hereditary.<br />
Which of the numerous descendants—nephews<br />
and cousins—of Milton, Shakespeare, Dryden,<br />
Addison, Swift—what other member of the family<br />
of Shelley, Byron, Keats, Wordsworth, Lamb,<br />
has shown in his own case that poetical genius<br />
may belong to a family P I know not one case at<br />
all resembling this of the continuance ºf genius in<br />
the children and grandchildren of Sheridan.<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
*- a -º<br />
4- ºr -º<br />
LONDON FREE LIBRARIES,<br />
E have already (June, 1894) referred to<br />
the Report on the Free Libraries of<br />
London contained in London, of April 19,<br />
1894. The subject is so important that I have<br />
made a more careful analysis of the report, and<br />
present here more detailed notes upon the books<br />
read and the people who read them. We cannot<br />
give too much information to our readers, who<br />
should be more interested than any other<br />
class in the success and the spread of the free<br />
library movement, upon the literary tastes of<br />
the people, their standards, the prospects of<br />
future advance. For my own part I see nothing<br />
to change the opinion I had already formed from<br />
independent research on a much more limited<br />
scale than that of London ; it is that the taste of<br />
the people in literature is sound ; that they do<br />
not willingly choose what is called by some<br />
“slush,” and by others “truck"—meaning low<br />
and worthless works. I am, indeed, persuaded<br />
that if a book becomes popular there must be in<br />
it some quality of strength, “grip,” or interest<br />
out of the common to account for its popularity.<br />
This does not mean that a book admirable for its<br />
style or for its matter will, on that account,<br />
become popular; but that style does not, as some<br />
would pretend, make popularity impossible. Thus,<br />
among the writers who are most frequently called<br />
for are—in history, Green, Froude, Macaulay,<br />
Carlyle, and Gardner; in addition to these are<br />
mentioned, as in continual demand, Gibbon’s<br />
“Decline and Fall,” McCarthy’s “History of our<br />
own Times,” Grant’s “British Battles,” Cassell’s<br />
“Franco-German War,” Kinglake, Hallam,<br />
Malleson, Thornbury, and Strickland. In theo-<br />
logy, Farrar, Drummond, Gore, Stanley, Liddon,<br />
Newman, Geikie, Milman, Martineau, and Stop-<br />
ford Brooke, are most in demand. In art, John<br />
Ruskin is easily first, and Miss Jane Harrison<br />
and Walter Crane are also wanted. In poetry,<br />
Shakespeare, Tennyson, Byron, Goethe, Long-<br />
fellow, Kipling, Browning, and Matthew Arnold<br />
are the favourites. In science, Darwin, Ball,<br />
demand.<br />
Huxley, Spencer, and Sir John Lubbock are in<br />
In sociology, Ruskin, again, Charles<br />
Booth, Thorold Rogers, Karl Marx, are favourites.<br />
To these must be added the current and contem-<br />
porary books on socialism. In biography, the<br />
favourites seem to be the reminiscences and<br />
autobiographies so much in vogue at the present.<br />
In travel, it is always the newest book that is in<br />
demand. We come next to fiction, which presents<br />
such an enormous demand as compared with other<br />
branches. And here let us consider the warning<br />
of the writer in London. He says:<br />
Reading the above tables one might come to the conclu-<br />
sion that the public libraries are mainly used for the dis-<br />
semination of fiction. But without some explanation, tables<br />
of percentages prove misleading, and deductions drawn<br />
from them entirely erroneous. The percentages of fiction<br />
read is artificially raised to the disadvantage of other<br />
works. The student of reading in public libraries should<br />
bear in mind the following points :—<br />
I. That libraries possess more novels than other works,<br />
quite as much because they are cheap as that they<br />
are often asked for.<br />
2. Novels take a much shorter time to read than serious<br />
works.<br />
3. Many novels borrowed and recorded in the percent-<br />
ages are not read at all. They are only dipped into<br />
—tasted—and returned unread as unsatisfactory.<br />
4. Juvenile literature which does not consist entirely of<br />
fiction is often included in that department, and in<br />
some cases other non-fictional works.<br />
5. Reading in reference libraries—where there is little or<br />
no fiction—is never included in the percentages.<br />
. A large number of new readers cultivate a taste for<br />
reading fiction, and graduate to more solid fare.<br />
N.B.-As only four of the London public libraries<br />
have been in full working order for more than two or<br />
three years, there has not yet been much time to<br />
elevate the taste of the readers.<br />
Bearing these guiding facts in mind, it will be seen that<br />
the high percentage of fiction is fallacious. In the private<br />
subscription libraries—Mudie’s, W. H. Smith and Sons, and<br />
the Grosvenor Library—patronised by the middle and upper<br />
classes, about 90 per cent. of fiction is read. They read tho<br />
latest topical favourite, follow the craze of Society, must<br />
be up to date with the latest neurotic story, simply because<br />
it is the fashion to read such books in such circles. The<br />
reading in the popular public libraries is not regulated<br />
by fashion. They are a much better test of the permanent<br />
literary qualities of a book.<br />
We must never forget that most readers,<br />
whether at the free libraries or at home, read for<br />
amusement; they therefore read fiction. And<br />
one would add that the great mass of people,<br />
leading dull and monotonous lives, and not parti-<br />
cularly anxious to advance their knowledge or<br />
cultivate their intellect, cannot do better than<br />
read fiction. It fills their minds with new<br />
thoughts; it introduces them to a society which<br />
they are not likely to enter; it widens their<br />
minds; it teaches them manners, ideas, history,<br />
everything. Let the majority read fiction by all<br />
IIlêa, Il S.<br />
Who are the most popular of novelists P<br />
6<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 79 (#93) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIII. A UTIIOIP. 79<br />
Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, Marryatt—among<br />
dead authors; and among living authors all<br />
those whom we recognise at Mudie's or Smith's<br />
as being the most popular. Since the taste of<br />
the masses at the free libraries exactly agrees as<br />
to fiction with that of the classes at Mudie’s and<br />
Smith's, the less we listen to talk about “slush ’’<br />
the better.<br />
Who are the people who use these libraries?<br />
Clerks head the list; then come governesses and<br />
teachers; then every kind of trade that can be<br />
enumerated. There are also representatives of<br />
every profession; but, of course, trades far out-<br />
number professions, and the readers, with the<br />
exception of clerks and teachers, are practically<br />
of the working class.<br />
In short, what is clearly demonstrated by this<br />
investigation are the broad facts that the popular<br />
taste in literature is sound and wholesome ; that<br />
the books read by the crafts are the same as<br />
those read by their “betters,” to use the old<br />
word, and that from 60 to 90 per cent., that is to<br />
say a proportion about the same for the free<br />
libraries as for Mudie’s, read for amusement, and<br />
therefore read fiction.<br />
For whom, then, are there printed the thou-<br />
sands upon thousands of penny novelettes, stories<br />
of highwaymen and bold defiers of the man in<br />
blue, the hero schoolboy, the romantic adventures<br />
of the young lady depicted outside P These<br />
things are not bought or read by those who<br />
frequent the libraries; they are read and bought<br />
by school-bows, school-girls, rough lads, who do<br />
the lowest kind of work, and servant girls, who<br />
have a good deal of time for reading. We do<br />
not think of these when we speak of the public<br />
or of the popular taste. Must we think of them P<br />
Then our conclusions must be taken with ex-<br />
ceptions and deductions.<br />
Meantime, there are not half enough libraries<br />
in London. Outside the city there are only<br />
thirty-one which have adopted the Act. Those<br />
who desire to know what the Act is, how it should<br />
be set in force, what arguments may be used to<br />
persuade the unwilling and the prejudiced voter,<br />
may consult Thomas Greenwood’s admirable<br />
work on “Public Libraries” (Cassell and Co.).<br />
There are those who think that the working man<br />
should be left to buy his own books, and to<br />
advance himself, teach himself, cultivate himself,<br />
if he likes. But, left to himself, the working<br />
man will not like.<br />
only because necessity, self-interest, prudence,<br />
self-preservation, desire for greater comfort,<br />
longer life, and other reasons of the kind, lead<br />
him, pull him, drag him, shove him, and flog him.<br />
Give the working man his library, by all means,<br />
Nothing is more certain than<br />
that the man achieves these fine things for himself<br />
but you must lead him into it. He acquires the<br />
taste for reading ; he returns; if he is intellectu-<br />
ally active he is stimulated to learn; if not he<br />
reads fiction, and finds what the world is like<br />
outside his own. Leave him quite alone and he<br />
will become—what the working man of London<br />
was a hundred years ago, when he had been left<br />
alone for two hundred years. You will find in<br />
the pages of the late Mr. Patrick Colquhoun,<br />
Magistrate, what was the consequence of leaving<br />
him alone. W. B.<br />
><br />
ºr:<br />
WANTED TO PUBLISH.<br />
T is suggested by a correspondent, that under<br />
this heading might be advertised MSS.<br />
ready for publication, or subjects on which<br />
it is proposed to write articles. It would be a<br />
new departure. Editors and publishers are<br />
accustomed to receive MSS., not to answer<br />
advertisements offering them. It might happen,<br />
however, that the subject or the name of the<br />
author, if that is advertised as well, might cause<br />
a desire to see the MS. We are quite ready to<br />
act upon the suggestion and to advertise for our<br />
members or others such particulars of their<br />
works as they may think enough to make known<br />
the scope and general contents. Our correspon-<br />
dent points out that if this plan were taken up it<br />
might save a great deal of worry and needless<br />
trouble in sending MSS. around. The secretary is<br />
constantly asked to suggest the most likely maga-<br />
zines for papers. He can only advise on this point<br />
in general terms, e.g., an anecdotal paper on some<br />
well-known literary person, especially if the stories<br />
are derived from letters unpublished, is welcome<br />
in most magazines. A popular paper on travel is<br />
also generally welcome. But each case stands by<br />
itself. It seems possible that a man who has<br />
written a paper of special interest might get an<br />
answer to his advertisement. However that may<br />
be, we are willing at least to try the experiment.<br />
For terms address the advertisement agent of<br />
the Author, 4, Portugal-street. Members of the<br />
Society will pay half the price charged to those,<br />
who are not members. - -<br />
* - a 2-º<br />
r = w -s<br />
CORRESPONDENCE<br />
T.—ENGLISII AND AMERICAN MAGAZINEs.<br />
HAVE long been thinking over the causes<br />
of the apparent decay of the English maga-<br />
zine and the undoubted prosperity of the<br />
American magazine. It is quite true, as was<br />
said in the article on the subject in last month's<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 80 (#94) ##############################################<br />
<br />
8O T/IE<br />
A UTII () [".<br />
Author, that one never sees English magazines<br />
in America, and that one does everywhere see<br />
American magazines in England. I believe the<br />
reasons of the decay of the one and the popu-<br />
larity of the other to be chiefly those pointed out<br />
in the article, viz., that the American magazine<br />
is carefully thought out and planned beforehand,<br />
while its English rival depends mainly on the<br />
casual contributor ; that the American editor<br />
gives to his journal all his time, all his thoughts,<br />
all his energies, while the English editor sits in<br />
his room, receives casual contributions, selects<br />
from them, and does his editing, say, while he<br />
takes his lunch. Again, there are four or five<br />
highly priced magazines which desire to be<br />
the recognised exponents of the best wisdom and<br />
experience of the time. Their high price keeps<br />
down their circulation, while the subjects of their<br />
papers are generally those of which people have<br />
been reading every day in the newspapers for the<br />
last month. Is it impossible for our magazines to<br />
learn a lesson from the Americans? Are we too<br />
proud to be taught that if we would lead the<br />
people, we must write on lines that please the<br />
people P This truth is understood by the daily<br />
papers: why not by the magazines P. One would<br />
not exclude the casual contributor, who is most<br />
useful in his way; but we must not absolutely<br />
depend upon him. Fiction is all very well, but<br />
we must not have too much of it. Laboured<br />
essays are all very well, but we do not want<br />
many of them. Literary papers, estimates of<br />
dead men, “slatings ’’ of living men, we do not<br />
want in any large quantities—“slatings,” not at<br />
all. Nothing damages a magazine or a journal<br />
more effectively than the bludgeon. Papers on<br />
art we want, if they are by artists; poetry we<br />
want, if it is good. I venture to submit a pro-<br />
gramme for the year 1895, which, I think, would<br />
raise even the decaying Cheapside, or the fallen<br />
Bungay’s, to a level with Harper, the Century,<br />
or the Cosmopolitan.<br />
(1) Recent British Conquest in Africa. By<br />
H. C. Selous.<br />
(2) Fleet Street Idylls.<br />
John Davidson.<br />
(3) Short Stories by various writers.<br />
two in each number.<br />
(4) Manners, Customs, and Religions in South<br />
India. By * * * * late judge in Muckampore.<br />
(5) A New and Original Play. By one of the<br />
half dozen who can write plays.<br />
(6) Proverbes. By Anthony Hope.<br />
(7) Acts unrepealed. By a Barrister.<br />
(8) Twelve Old Books. By Edmund Gosse. .<br />
(9) A new Novel. By any good writer.<br />
(10) The History of the Isle of Man. By<br />
Hall Caine.<br />
One or<br />
Second series. By<br />
(II) The Highlands as they are. By William<br />
Black.<br />
(I.2) Art of the Day, from month to month.<br />
By * * * (painter and writer).<br />
(13) The House of Commons : Its procedure,<br />
laws, and customs. By * * * M.P.<br />
This is a programme which I imagine would<br />
“catch on.” The magazine must be illustrated.<br />
Nearly all these things would be serials, running<br />
for six months or more, to be published by the<br />
house which owns the magazine after its run.<br />
I am not a philanthropist, nor do I desire very<br />
much to put money into the pockets of any<br />
London publisher. But I do desire to see our<br />
English magazines rise out of the slough into<br />
which they seem rapidly sinking, and take their<br />
place once more in the front, and this can only be<br />
effected by doing exactly what the American<br />
magazines are doing. I am quite convinced that<br />
the reign of the casual contributor is long since<br />
over and done, and that editing cannot be done<br />
while one eats his lunch, nor even over a cup of<br />
afternoon tea. CoNTRIBUTOR.<br />
II.-GRAMMATICAL USE OF “NOR.”<br />
Mr. Skeat's sentiments about grammar seem<br />
to me somewhat anarchical. No doubt grammar<br />
has grown up out of usage; but it has rules,<br />
which cannot be infringed with impunity. Good<br />
writers often permit themselves to fall into slip-<br />
shod English, but that does not make slipshod<br />
writing good style. I should like to know why<br />
it is logically correct to say, “It did not rain nor<br />
blow.” It seems to me to involve a double nega-<br />
tive. And the length of a sentence cannot,<br />
surely, make any difference. In the sentence<br />
given by Mr. Skeat as a lengthened one, there is<br />
another verb, which does make a difference. It<br />
would, I think, be quite correct to say, “It did<br />
not rain nor did it biow,” but it seems to me<br />
both more correct and more elegant to say, “It<br />
did not rain or blow,” than “It did not rain nor<br />
blow.” The sentence is equivalent to “It did.<br />
not either rain or blow.” If “Mätzner shows<br />
that even good authors occasionally use neither—<br />
or instead of neither—nor,” he shows, I think,<br />
simply that good authors are sometimes careless;<br />
no good author could intentionally write such<br />
abominable grammar. H. A. FEILDEN.<br />
Surely Professor Skeat's lengthened sentence<br />
has nothing to do with the first. He has<br />
lengthened “It did not rain nor did it blow,”<br />
where “or,” would be obviously wrong. The<br />
repetition of “did it’ disjoins rain and blow,<br />
connected in “It did not rain or blow.” If<br />
“did '' relates to “blow,” “nor’’ is a double<br />
negative. Every one who wishes to “appreciate’”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 81 (#95) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TILE AUTIIOR. 8 I<br />
mistakes should study the rather hypercritical,<br />
but invaluable, “Hodgson's Errors in the Use of<br />
English.” G.<br />
III–WHAT is PERMIssible?<br />
On reading an article in the Pall Mall<br />
Gazette, “The Wares of Autolycus,” on Persian<br />
Women, July 3, 1894, the language seemed<br />
strangely familiar to me. On comparing the<br />
article with my book, “The Land of the Lion and<br />
Sun” (Macmillan's 1883, p. 322), I discovered that<br />
out of 759 words of which the article was com-<br />
posed, 577 were mine, and 182 those of the inge-<br />
nious author.<br />
I saw the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, who<br />
expressed his surprise, and promised that I should<br />
hear from the author. I did so, and was some-<br />
what astonished to learn that the author had<br />
never read my book, though he had heard it<br />
quoted. But on turning to the “Encyclopædia<br />
Britannica,” article Persia, I find my description<br />
of costume given (and acknowledged), which<br />
might account for this statement.<br />
But what I want to know from you, Mr.<br />
Editor, is, what is the exact amount that can be<br />
“extracted” without acknowledgment, and how<br />
little can be added to constitute an original article?<br />
What must be the ratio of sack to the half-penny-<br />
worth of bread P Is it, as in the present case—<br />
sack, one part ; extract, three-fourth parts.<br />
C. J. WILLs, Author “Land of the<br />
Lion and Sun.”<br />
P.S.—Since writing the above I have again<br />
seen the editor P. M. G., who handed me a letter<br />
from the writer of the article, in which he acknow-<br />
ledges his indebtedness to the “Encyclopædia<br />
Britannica,” a foot-note in which would have told<br />
him that the information as to Persian costume was<br />
obtained from me. I inclose the article, and with<br />
the editor's P. M. G. consent I write you.<br />
IV.-CorrecTIONs.<br />
A correspondent writes: “In Professor Skeat's<br />
interesting grammatical note on the use of ‘nor,”<br />
in the last number of The Author, the name of<br />
the translator of Mätzner's ‘English Grammar’<br />
is given as Grice ; this is a misprint, it should be<br />
Grece. The learned work, published in 1874<br />
by Murray, has long been out of print, I believe,<br />
and a new revised edition, undertaken by Dr.<br />
Grece—who now practises as a lawyer—in conjunc-<br />
tion with a professed English philologist, would<br />
be of great advantage to students of English.<br />
“The second correction refers to the name of the<br />
editor of Halm’s ‘Griseldis,’ published at the<br />
Oxford University Press, which should read:<br />
Buchheim.” -<br />
W.—REMAINDERs. º<br />
With regard to par. 4, on pp. 429-30, concern-<br />
ing publishers' agreements and remainder sales,<br />
the following suggestion may be useful:<br />
A printed agreement form sent me by a pub-<br />
lishing firm contained this clause :<br />
“As to copies sold in the United Kingdom or<br />
elsewhere by auction or privately to a dealer at<br />
reduced prices, or by way of “remainder,” at the<br />
amounts actually received in respect thereof.”<br />
This clause I naturally objected to, since it left<br />
my affairs entirely to the publishers’ discretion,<br />
and abrogated entirely any claim of mine to have<br />
a voice in such sales at reduced prices. I there-<br />
fore struck out the whole clause, and inserted the<br />
following:} -<br />
“That no sale shall be made at reduced prices<br />
in any way unless by the author's written con-<br />
sent.”<br />
This alteration, which was at once accepted by<br />
the publishers without any demur or difficulty,<br />
appears to me to safeguard the author very<br />
effectually. - A FREE LANCE.<br />
*-* -º<br />
r- - -<br />
B00K TALK.<br />
M [* ULICK R. BURRE has written a life<br />
of Benito Juarez, which necessarily<br />
brings before us once more the modern<br />
history of Mexico and its relations with European<br />
policy. Juarez, it will be remembered, was the<br />
Constitutional President of the Mexican Republic,<br />
an office to which he properly passed from the post<br />
of Vice-President. This is a point which Mr.<br />
Burke considers of great importance, because it<br />
shows the strength of Juarez's position, and<br />
also the illegality of the attempts to remove<br />
him made by monarchical and other pretenders.<br />
Mr. Burke persists in calling Juarez an Indian,<br />
though he is careful to say that he was of<br />
the “pure blood of the Zapotecs; ” that is, he<br />
was not a Toltec, or a Chichinec, or even an<br />
Aztec. But when one has been at some pains<br />
carefully to distinguish these tribes, surely it<br />
is lost labour to put them altogether again and<br />
call one’s hero an Indian. Benito Juarez then,<br />
was a Zapotec, for his father and mother were<br />
of the pure blood of the Zapotecs; he was born<br />
in 1806, entered the Mexican Congress in 1832,<br />
and became President in 1857. The leading<br />
features of the new constitution chiefly due to<br />
him, and which was promulgated in that year,<br />
were, Mr. Burke says:<br />
A free press, freedom of meeting, equal civil rights, com-<br />
plete religious toleration, the abolition of special tribunals,<br />
of heriditary honours, of monopolies of all unjust privileges.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 82 (#96) ##############################################<br />
<br />
82 TIII)<br />
A UTIIOIR.<br />
By which it will appear that Juarez deserved to<br />
succeed—he represented the cause of freedom<br />
just as much as his opponents represented the<br />
cause of slavery. Mr. Burke retells the story of<br />
the ill-fated Maximilian—a prince who was never<br />
able to distinguish the regulation of a court and<br />
the duties of courtiers from the governing of a<br />
country and the duties of citizenship—and shows<br />
how he was the tool of the clerical and absolutist<br />
faction, and that between the schemes of the<br />
Jesuits and the schemes of Napoleon III., it is no<br />
wonder a weak man became a criminal. So that,<br />
apart from the interesting story Mr. Burke has to<br />
tell, his volume becomes one of general utility as a<br />
warning against the kind of Government or want<br />
of government which is sure to obtain where<br />
ministers of religion are permitted to influence<br />
ministers of State.<br />
Burke's book has received praise from the<br />
financial press, and those interested will find the<br />
history of the Mexican debt carefully told. It is<br />
not very long ago that an evening contemporary,<br />
interviewing the editor of the Intransigeant, drew<br />
from him the remark that la haute politique was<br />
becoming nothing more than la haute finance. If<br />
that be so, it is instructive to read in these pages<br />
how the worn-out Statecraft of Europe over-<br />
reached itself in its dreams of manipulating<br />
the supposed wealth of a comparatively new<br />
country. Indeed, there seems to have been no<br />
end to the attempts made to exploit Mexico<br />
for the benefit of the Emperor and the Church.<br />
Of the three, Napoleon III., Pius IX., and Maxi-<br />
milian, so far as Mexico is concerned, only one<br />
got his deserts. As for Juarez, he remains<br />
the “great President’’ in the memory of his<br />
people. -<br />
Mr. John Willis Clark, F.S.A., has published his<br />
Rede Lecture of this year, on Libraries in the<br />
Mediaeval and Renaissance Periods (Macmillan<br />
and Co.). He traces the growth of the library,<br />
especially, in churches and monasteries, from the<br />
earliest beginnings to the Renaissance. It does<br />
not appear that the custom of giving books to<br />
churches, which began the Christian Library, was<br />
long maintained. Augustine gave his books to<br />
the church of Hippo to form a library. Althousand<br />
years later Caxton bequeathed books to St. Mar-<br />
garet's, but to be sold. An occasional king, an<br />
occasional bishop, formed libraries, but the real<br />
home of the Mediaeval library was the monastery.<br />
his was not a stately room, but simply a wooden<br />
press set up in a recess in the cloisters in which<br />
the books were kept, vertical as well as horizontal<br />
partitions being set up, so that the books should<br />
not get damp or be packed close to each other.<br />
At Christ Church, Canterbury, at the beginning<br />
of the fourteenth century there were 698 volumes.<br />
We may also note that Mr.<br />
all kept in presses put up wherever room could be<br />
found for them. As the books increased in<br />
number, a room became necessary. The Canter-<br />
bury library was built between 1414 and 1443;<br />
that of Durham about the same time. The<br />
monks were enjoined to spend a part of their<br />
time in reading. Benedict's Rule orders that at<br />
the beginning of Lent every monk was to have<br />
a book given him, which he was to read through<br />
before the end of Lent. The nature of the work, or<br />
its length, seems to have been unconsidered. The<br />
arrangement of desks, seats, and books, the chain-<br />
ing of books, and the lending of books, are treated<br />
in this little volume, which is a valuable con-<br />
tribution to the history and the literature of<br />
the library, whether regarded as a museum, i.e.,<br />
the temple or haunt of the Muses, a place which<br />
is haunted by the men of the past, or as a modern<br />
workshop; a place where things are to be found<br />
and learned, or “as a gigantic mincing machine,<br />
into which the labours of the past are flung, to be<br />
turned out again in a slightly altered form as the<br />
literature of the present.”<br />
Mr. Mackenzie Bell’s monograph on “Charles<br />
Whitehead,” a forgotten genius, has been re-<br />
issued as a new edition, if edition it can properly<br />
be called. There is new matter in the volume<br />
in the shape of an appreciation of Whitehead<br />
by Mr. Hall Caine, and there is a new preface<br />
in which the author recounts certain circumstances<br />
which he writes “have rendered a re-issue of the<br />
unbound * remainder “ of my volume desirable.”<br />
Of the book itself it may be said that Mr. Bell<br />
has executed his task with excellent taste, for he<br />
has made it clear that the story of the author's<br />
life must not be taken into account in judging<br />
his literary merit. Note is taken of the high<br />
opinion in which Whitehead was held by Rossetti,<br />
Professor Wilson, Lord Lytton, and Douglas<br />
Jerrold, chiefly as the author of “Richard<br />
Savage.” -<br />
Miss Eleanor Tee has written a book for young<br />
women and girls entitled “This Everyday Life.”<br />
It has a preface by the Rev. C. Pickering Clarke,<br />
in which the object of the work is thus described:<br />
“The book is designed to give working women<br />
and girls a true insight into the meaning of that<br />
life here, which seems so heavily weighted by the<br />
obligation to work.” Miss Tee has set herself<br />
the difficult task of bringing home the idea of<br />
the “dignity of labour to some of the workers<br />
whose duties are styled service.”<br />
Mr. Thomas McCarthy, instructor in gymnas-<br />
tics, has written for the “use of public elementary<br />
schools,” in accordance with the new code, “An<br />
Easy System of Physical Exercises and Drill.”<br />
The directions given are intended for those other<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 83 (#97) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIIE. A UTIIOIR. 83<br />
than drill serjeants who wish to learn how to<br />
drill school boys and school girls. From the<br />
great number of the directions and their complex<br />
nature it is clear the new code must demand a<br />
very comprehensive system of muscular training.<br />
We are aware that many parents are not entirely<br />
satisfied with the reasons given for the compulsory<br />
drilling of their children, and, if they are at all in<br />
ignorance of what that system is, Mr. McCarthy’s<br />
book can teach them. English people other than<br />
yeomanry cavalry and militia have been drilled<br />
for years, but it is a common remark that if they<br />
have to march in procession—unfortunately a<br />
growing custom—they do it very badly. Perhaps<br />
Mr. McCarthy’s book will help to change that.<br />
It is published by W. H. Allen and Co.<br />
Mr. Robert Bingley’s “Borderlands,” a volume<br />
of poems, religious and secular, including some<br />
translations, has passed into a second edition.<br />
It is published by the Oxford University Press.<br />
Every Saturday evening for a good many weeks<br />
—or months—the readers of the JWestminster<br />
Gazette were invited to read a most charming<br />
little dialogue, full of cleverness, epigram.<br />
The epigrams were not barbed, nor were they<br />
intended to wound, nor was the cleverness<br />
obtruded. These delicate and sprightly things<br />
were signed A. H. They are now collected and<br />
published at the office of the JWestminster Gazette.<br />
And they are the work of Mr. Anthony Hope,<br />
author of the “Prisoner of Zenda.”<br />
Mr. Julian Sturgis has issued a volume of<br />
poems (Longman and Co.), in which he proves<br />
that his power as a writer of verse is equal to<br />
that of a writer of prose.<br />
Mr. R. E. Salwey has completed a new novel,<br />
called “Ventured in Wain,” which will be pub-<br />
lished in September by Messrs. Hurst and<br />
Blackett in two-volume form.<br />
Miss Frances Mary Peard's novel, “An<br />
Interloper,” which has been running as a serial<br />
in Temple Bar, will be published in two-volume<br />
form by Messrs. Bentley and Son, and simul-<br />
taneously by Messrs. Harpers in America.<br />
Mr. Anthony C. Deane will publish, in the<br />
early autumn, a volume of light verse, reprinted<br />
from the magazines and journals in which it<br />
first appeared. Among them are Punch, where<br />
the larger part was first produced, the Cornhill,<br />
Longman's, Temple Bar, St. James's Gazette, the<br />
Globe, the Westminster Gazette, the Pall Mall<br />
Gazette, the Granta, and Vanity Fair. The<br />
publishers are Messrs. Henry and Co.<br />
Mr. R. Thistlethwaite Casson, author of “Bonnie<br />
Mary,” “A Modern Ishmael,” “The Doctor's<br />
Doom,” and many other successful serials, has<br />
been commissioned by Mr. George Newnes, M.P.,<br />
to write a series of novelettes for the “Illustrated<br />
Penny Tales,” now being published by George<br />
Newnes Limited. - -<br />
Mrs. Preston has translated some of the poems<br />
of Friedrich von Bodenstedt, which will be pub-<br />
lished by the Roxburghe Press early in August<br />
under the title of “The Mountain Lake.”<br />
Mrs. Stevenson, the author of “Mrs. Severn,”<br />
published by Messrs. R. Bentley and Son, and<br />
which the Guardian compared for power with<br />
“Janet's Repentance,” has another story on<br />
intemperance now in the press. It is appearing<br />
first in the Temperance Chronicle, whose critic<br />
judged “Mrs. Severn " as “the most powerful<br />
temperance story that has ever been written,”<br />
and later it will form one of the C.E.T.S.<br />
Azalea series. Its title is “Helena Hadley.”<br />
Last year Messrs. R. Bentley and Son published<br />
“Mrs. Elphinstone of Drum ” for the same<br />
writer.<br />
A second edition of “A Girl’s Ride in Iceland,”<br />
by Mrs. Alec Tweedie, will appear in a few days.<br />
It will be published by Horace Cox.<br />
Mrs. James Suisted sends us a lively little<br />
volume, published at Dunedin (Otago Daily<br />
Times Office), New Zealand. It is a record of<br />
travel, and is called “From New Zealand to<br />
Norway.” It is, perhaps, useless to wish for a<br />
book published only in a colony success in the<br />
English book market.<br />
Mr. E. St. John Fairman, 66, Southampton-<br />
row, W.C., publishes his new book himself. It<br />
is called “An Electric Flash on the Egyptian<br />
Question.”<br />
A copy of Mrs. Dixon's book on “Columbia.”<br />
has been graciously accepted by the Queen. It<br />
was presented by Sir Henry Ponsonby.<br />
By the publication of “A Seventh Child” (F.<br />
W. White and Co.) in one volume instead of two,<br />
John Strange Winter has been the first among<br />
popular authors to adapt herself to the new state<br />
of things brought about by the circulars issued<br />
by Smith and Mudie on special library editions.<br />
“A Seventh Child” deals with the subject of<br />
clairvoyance, and derives its title from the super-<br />
stition that “the seventh child of a seventh<br />
child is gifted with the second sight.” The story,<br />
which records the experiences of such child, has<br />
been running as a serial in Mrs. Stannard's<br />
magazine Winter’s Weekly.<br />
Professor Raleigh has written a book for<br />
Murray’s “University Extension Manuals” on<br />
the history of the English novel, from its origin<br />
to Sir Walter Scott. Could not the history be<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 84 (#98) ##############################################<br />
<br />
84<br />
TIIE AUTHOR.<br />
extended, so as to include Thackeray, Dickens,<br />
Reade, Collins, Kingsley, George Eliot, the<br />
Brontës, and Mrs. Gaskell?<br />
... The papers have been full of discussions, letters,<br />
and leaders on the subject of the three-volume<br />
novel. A collection of cuttings has been made<br />
by Mr. Thring, on which we may find an<br />
opportunity of speaking in the next number.<br />
Some of the papers speak as if the novel must be<br />
killed when the three-volume form is abandoned.<br />
Will not the libraries, then, take any of the one-<br />
volume form P. The following remarks are taken<br />
from the St. James's Gazette. In the second<br />
line, for the “Incorporated Society of Authors”<br />
read “those who are novelists in the Society of<br />
Authors,” the resolution of the council having<br />
been adopted mainly in consequence of their<br />
singular unanimity. The novelists on our list<br />
form perhaps one-fourth of the whole number.<br />
Nor have the “Authors”—meaning the society<br />
—said a word in their resolution on the subject<br />
of the libraries.<br />
“The three-volume novel seems to be in the<br />
painful position of Mr. Pickwick in the Pound—<br />
of having no friends. The Incorporated Society<br />
of Authors has, with only a single dissentient,<br />
pronounced against it ; and that society has been<br />
generally regarded as having especially at heart<br />
the interests of young novelists, in whose favour<br />
chiefly the three-volume system has been supposed<br />
to operate. The Authors argue that the only<br />
possible persons to profit by the plan were the<br />
libraries, who under it became monopolist middle-<br />
men between the producers and consumers of all<br />
new novels for the most profitable period. Yet<br />
the late M. Mudie protested that he hated it;<br />
and it is the libraries whose present action has<br />
threatened its continued existence. The three-<br />
volume novel looks as if it were going to die<br />
without any mourner to drop the sympathetic tear<br />
—except, perhaps, the Bishop of London, who<br />
will be unable henceforward to begin his fiction<br />
with the third volume.<br />
“When it is gone we shall all begin to regret<br />
the easy print and ample margin; for, after all,<br />
for the really long novel it is the most agreeable<br />
form. ‘Middlemarch' and ‘Daniel Deronda,”<br />
are disagreeable enough in the single volumes, and<br />
without perseverance and good eyesight it needs<br />
faith or fashion to get one through the new<br />
‘Marcella.' But the price of the three volumes<br />
was prohibitive, and the generality of the old<br />
custom of a first appearance in this form not<br />
easily defensible.”<br />
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY.<br />
CERTAIN REMEDIES.<br />
R. JOHNSTON'S remark that ‘ the books<br />
& 4<br />
M of certain novelists had had a more<br />
potent effect on him than all the<br />
quinine and drugs he had introduced into Africa’<br />
suggests a new vein for publishers' advertise-<br />
ments. Why not work the hygienic motive on<br />
which so many other advertisements rely with<br />
such success? As thus:—<br />
BESANT's World-FAMED CURE.-Unrivalled for Head-<br />
ache, Lassitude, and a Sluggish Liver. Worth a Guinea.<br />
a Volume. A Circulating Librarian writes:– “I take<br />
them regularly, and am now sensible of a marked<br />
improvement in my whole system.’<br />
BLACK's Soot HING SYRUP (Highland Blend).-Indis-<br />
pensable when yachting. A sure preventive of mal de<br />
mer. Should be taken (on subscription) in all Climates.<br />
Put up in Uniform Doses; one quality throughout. An<br />
Analyst writes:—‘I have examined Mr. William Black's<br />
various Preparations. All the samples seem to be com-<br />
pounded of the same well-tried ingredients in various pro-<br />
portions, and can be warranted absolutely harmless, even<br />
for the most delicate. A Sound Family Medicine. Have<br />
you a nasty taste in your mouth on waking up in the<br />
morning (after reading Latter-day Fiction overnight) P<br />
Then TRY BLACK's Soo THING SYRUI”.<br />
For ANZEMIA : TRY RIDER HAGGARD.—From an African<br />
Recipe. Unrivalled for the Blood. The Young like it ;<br />
Children take it readily.<br />
PLAIN PILLS FROM THE HILLS.–(Registered Title.)<br />
Put up in Small Doses. An Anglo-Indian writes: “Please<br />
send me a fresh consignment.” Caution.—Insist on seeing<br />
R. Kipling’s Name on Label.<br />
DR. ConAN DOYLE's PRESCRIPTION.—A Certain Solu-<br />
tion. Equal to the most Obscure Cases. Does not fool<br />
about the place, but quickly finds out what is wrong, and<br />
puts it right. No Holmes without it.”<br />
JWestminster Gazette.<br />
Our Paris correspondent telegraphs: “M.<br />
Leconte de Lisle, Victor Hugo’s successor in the<br />
Academy, and since his death the chief French<br />
poet, died on Tuesday night from heart disease.<br />
He had an attack of pneumonia on Friday, from<br />
which he never rallied. He was born in 1820 in<br />
the island of Réunion, whither his parent had<br />
emigrated from Brittany. He was sent to Rennes<br />
to be educated, and in 1853 published “Poèmes<br />
Antiques.” A second volume, ‘Poèmes Bar-<br />
bares,” appeared in 1862, and in 1882 he issued<br />
* Poèmes Tragiques.’ These works made no bid<br />
for general popularity, but were addressed to the<br />
cultured few capable of appreciating artistic per-<br />
fection. He was, as it were, a sculptor in poetry.<br />
His love of the classics was shown by numerous<br />
translations, sometimes rugged, but admirably<br />
chiselled. In 1873 his tragedy “Les Erynnies’<br />
was played at the Odéon, and in 1888 he published<br />
a second tragedy, “L’Apollonide,” which was<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 85 (#99) ##############################################<br />
<br />
TIIE AUTIIOI?. 85<br />
never acted. M. Gaston Deschamps, in the<br />
Temps, after dwelling on his superiority to all<br />
vulgar ambitions and artifices, says:—" He closes,<br />
or nearly so, the series of great poets who have<br />
given a voice to our century. His verses will long<br />
resound in our charmed and faithful memory.<br />
But we also lose in him a consoling example, an<br />
intellectual and moral authority, not easily re-<br />
placed. Fate would almost seem bent on un-<br />
crowning France. To lose in two years Taine,<br />
Renan, Leconte de Lisle are too many bereave-<br />
ments at once. Who will console us P Who will<br />
guide us on the uncertain road to truth and<br />
beauty P I see, indeed, in the throng of young<br />
contemporaries, admirers, disciples, and especially<br />
detractors of these illustrious men. I do not see<br />
their successors.’”—Times, July 19.<br />
*~ * ~ *<br />
LITERATURE AT OXFORD,<br />
D" LENTZNER will deliver five Free Public<br />
Lectures in Comparative Literature at<br />
Oxford, during the Michaelmas Term,<br />
1894, viz., one in English, called “Some Aspects of<br />
Literature,” on Monday, Oct. 22, at noon ; two in<br />
English, on Björnstjerne Björnson, on Mondays,<br />
Oct. 29 and Nov. 5, at noon ; and two in German,<br />
on “Richard Wagner als Dichter,” on Mondays,<br />
Nov. I 2 and 19, at noon.<br />
>ec:<br />
NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS,<br />
Theology.<br />
BEECHING, REv. H. C. Seven Sermons to Schoolboys.<br />
With a Preface by Canon Scott Holland. Methuen.<br />
2s. 6d.<br />
CANTERBURY, ARCHBISHOP OF. Echoes from the Choir<br />
of Norwich Cathedral, being the sermons preached<br />
when it was reopened after reparation. With an<br />
Introduction by the Dean of Norwich. Jarrold. 2s. 6d.<br />
CUST, ROBERT N., LL.D. Essay on the Prevailing Methods<br />
of the Evangelisation of the non-Christian World.<br />
Luzac and Co.<br />
GRAY, REv. DR. H. B. Men of Like Passions. Being<br />
sermons preached to Bradfield Boys. Longmans. 5s.<br />
HARTE, RICHARD. The New Theology. E. W. Allen.<br />
2s. 6d.<br />
MACLAREN, A. Illustrations from Sermons of, edited and<br />
selected by J. H. Martyn. 3s. 6d.<br />
MALDONATUS, JoHN. A Commentary on the Holy Gospels<br />
—St. Matthew’s Gospel. Translated and edited from<br />
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John Hodges. Is.<br />
PRINCE, B. The World’s Malady: Its Root and Remedy.<br />
To which is added the Basis of Religion presented to us<br />
by the Parliament of Religions assembled at Chicago.<br />
Simpkin, Marshall. 38, 6d. -<br />
CAMPBELL, LORD ARCHIBAL.D.<br />
ScHoDEER, L. W. A Chapter of Church's History from<br />
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SINCLAIR, ARCHDEACON. The English Church and the<br />
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STRACEY, REv. W. J. Short Sermons on the Psalms.<br />
Fourth series, including Psalms lxxiii-cvi. Skeffingtons.<br />
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piled by Agnes Smith Lewis (Ios. 6d. net); STUDIA<br />
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part of the Epistle to the Ephesians, from a 19th<br />
century MS. in the Convent of St. Katharine on Mount<br />
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C. J. Clay.<br />
SweTE, PROFESSOR. The Apostle's Creed. C. J. Clay. 3s.<br />
TEE, ELEANOR. This Everyday Life. With a preface by<br />
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versions. Edited, with a translation, by E. A. Wallis<br />
Budge. Kegan Paul. I5s. net.<br />
History and Biography.<br />
BARBER, HENRY. British Family Names : their Origin and<br />
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History of the College and Illustrative Documents. A<br />
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Notes on Swords from the<br />
Battlefield of Culloden. With four autotype Illustra-<br />
tions. Charles J. Clark.<br />
CANNING, Hon. A. S. G. The Divided Irish. An Historical<br />
Sketch. W. H. Allen. 3s.6d.<br />
COGHLAN, T. A. The Wealth and Progress of New South<br />
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CONDER, MAJOR, R.E. Judas Maccabaeus. New edition.,<br />
Published for the Committee of the Palestine Explo-<br />
ration Fund by A. P. Watt.<br />
ELVEY, LADY. Life and Reminiscences of George J. Elvey,<br />
ICt. Sampson Low. 3s. 6d.<br />
FURNIVAL, FREDERICK J, Child-Marriages, Divorces, and<br />
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I588-1600. Edited from MSS. written in Court and<br />
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English Text Society by Kegan Paul. I58.<br />
GERARD, REv. JoHN. Stonyhurst College : Its Life beyond<br />
the Seas, 1592-1794, and on English soil, 1794-1894.<br />
Marcus Ward.<br />
GROVES, LIEUT.-Col. PERCY. History of the 91st Princess<br />
Louise's Argyllshire Highlanders, 1794-1894. Illus-<br />
trated by Harry Payne. W. and A. K. Johnston.<br />
7s. 6d.<br />
HENDERSON, ERNEST F. A. History of Germany in the<br />
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HILL, THOMAs S. The Registers of Bramfield, co. Suffolk,<br />
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HOGAN, REV. EDMUND. Distinguished Irishmen of the<br />
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HUNTER, SIR. W. W. Bengal MS. Records : A selected list<br />
of I4,136 Letters in the Board of Revenue. Calcutta,<br />
1782-1807, with an historical dissertation. 4 vols.<br />
W. H. Allen. 30s.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 86 (#100) #############################################<br />
<br />
86<br />
TIII)<br />
A UTIIOIP.<br />
Life of General Sir Hope Grant.<br />
KNoLLys, CoLoREL.<br />
Blackwood. 21s. -<br />
LEE, SIDNEY. Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 39.<br />
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LESLIE, RobHRT C. A. Waterbiography. Illustrated by<br />
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MALDEN, HENRY ELLIOT. English Records : A Companion<br />
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MAxwell, SIR HERBERT, M.P. Life of the Right Honour-<br />
able William Henry Smith, M.P. With a portrait and<br />
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advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<br />
I4. 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 />
Society's Offices :—<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
*—- - -º<br />
•- - -,<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
I 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 90 (#104) #############################################<br />
<br />
90<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
*~ * ~ *<br />
g- > ---,<br />
THE AUTHORS' SYNDICATE.<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
1. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. With, when<br />
necessary, the assistance of the legal advisers of the Syndi-<br />
cate, it concludes agreements, collects royalties, examines<br />
and passes accounts, and generally relieves members of the<br />
trouble of managing business details. -<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors' Syndicate are<br />
defrayed solely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. Notice is, however,<br />
hereby given that in all cases where there is no current<br />
account, a booking fee is charged to cover postage and<br />
porterage.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiation<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least four days’<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. 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 />
7. 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 />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department” for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted ” has been opened. Members anxious<br />
to obtain literary or artistic work are invited to com-<br />
municate with the Manager.<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 />
NOTICES,<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 />
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 Awthor 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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P. 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
489 48. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 91 (#105) #############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 9 I<br />
as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 call it.<br />
*-* -º<br />
* * *<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY,<br />
I.—Fox-Bourn E v. WERNoN AND Co.<br />
HIS case, finished on Aug. 3, heard before<br />
T the Lord Chief Justice and a special jury,<br />
was one in which an editor claimed twelve<br />
months' notice of dismissal, whereas he had only<br />
received six months' notice. The jury found a<br />
verdict for the defendants. The case would have<br />
little interest for this paper but for the words<br />
of the judge in defining what is meant by<br />
“custom '' (see the Times, Aug. 4, 1894).<br />
“Custom,” he said, “in its strict legal sense,<br />
was a uniform and universal practice so well<br />
defined and recognised that contracting parties<br />
must be assumed to have had it in their minds<br />
when they contracted.” Contracting parties,<br />
that is, on both sides. If, for instance, one side<br />
intends to falsify accounts, and excuses himself<br />
on the ground that it is a trade custom, while<br />
the other side know nothing of his intention, and<br />
had never heard of the alleged “custom,” the<br />
excuse, according to this judge's definition, would<br />
not be allowed. This definition agrees with the<br />
opinion of Mr. Cozens-Hardy, Q.C., and Mr.<br />
Rolt, published in the Author of March last. Of<br />
course the fact that such a practice was common,<br />
not to say universal, would have to be proved.<br />
The warning which the Lord Chief Justice<br />
addresses to journalists equally applies to writers<br />
of books, writers in magazines, dramatists, and<br />
every kind of literary worker. The following is<br />
the summing-up referred to (Times, Aug. 4):—<br />
The Lord Chief Justice, in summing-up, said the plaintiff<br />
was a journalist of good position and long experience,<br />
who had been employed by the defendants as their editor,<br />
and had received from them a six months' notice. The<br />
question for the jury was whether plaintiff was entitled to<br />
twelve months' notice or whether six months’ notice was<br />
such a notice as the defendants were legally entitled to<br />
give plaintiff. Although the case seemed to have excited a<br />
good deal of feeling between journalists and proprietors,<br />
it had no general importance, as in the future journalists<br />
would only have themselves to blame if they had not insisted<br />
upon having an agreement. The jury had no question of<br />
“custom" to consider, for “custom,” in its strict legal<br />
sense, was a uniform and universal practice, so well defined<br />
and recognised that contracting parties must be assumed<br />
to have had it in their minds when they contracted. The<br />
fact that in a large percentage of cases there were special<br />
agreements showed that no such universal custom existed.<br />
But on plaintiff's behalf it was sought to establish the<br />
existence of a “practice” regulating the relations between<br />
editors and proprietors. What that practice was would be<br />
some guide to the jury in coming to a conclusion as to what<br />
Was or was not a reasonable notice in this case. The case<br />
of Bremon v. Gilbart-Smith, which had been cited, was<br />
really not in point at all, for in that case no notice was<br />
given, and the question of twelve months' notice only arose<br />
incidentally with a view of fixing the amount of damages<br />
plaintiff was entitled to.<br />
II.-MUSICAL COPYRIGHT IN AMERICA.<br />
Mr. G. Dixey, secretary of the Music Pub-<br />
lishers' Association, writes from 9, Air-street,<br />
Regent-street, W., Aug. 4:—“I am instructed<br />
by this association to inform you that the plain-<br />
tiffs in the celebrated American test action of<br />
Novello and Co. v. The Oliver Ditson Company<br />
and others, have just received a telegram from<br />
their counsel, Mr. L. L. Scaife, of Boston, to the<br />
effect that the judge who tried the action has<br />
decided in the plaintiffs' favour on all points.<br />
The action, as you are aware, relates to the<br />
correct construction of what is known as the<br />
manufacturing clause in the American Copyright<br />
Act of 1891, and it was brought to test the ques-<br />
tion whether ‘a book' within the meaning of that<br />
clause includes “musical composition,’ which, in<br />
an earlier part of the Act is mentioned, together<br />
with “book’ and other subjects of copyright, as<br />
being entitled to protection under that Act. The<br />
judgment just delivered has settled the point for<br />
the present, and until that judgment is upset or<br />
varied it must be accepted that the law of the<br />
United States of America is, that the expression<br />
‘book’ in the Act of 1891 does not include<br />
‘musical composition,’ and that consequently it<br />
is not necessary that such compositions should<br />
be printed in America as a condition of obtaining<br />
copyright there.”—Times, Aug. 7.<br />
III.--ARTISTS PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT.<br />
(From an American Correspondent.)<br />
Boston, Mass., Aug. 8.-A decision by Judge<br />
Putnam in the United States Circuit Court, filed<br />
to-day, holds that an artist having copyrighted a<br />
painting may restrain reproductions of the paint-<br />
ing, and that a bill in equity for an injunction<br />
may be maintained by one to whom the artist has<br />
sold the right and who has taken out a copyright<br />
in his name. -<br />
The decision was given in the case of Emil<br />
Werckmeister v. The Pierce and Bushnell Manu-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 92 (#106) #############################################<br />
<br />
92 THE AUTHOR.<br />
facturing Company. G. Naujok, a resident of<br />
Germany, painted a picture called “Die Heilige<br />
Cecilia,” and later executed an instrument con-<br />
veying to the complainant the exclusive right of<br />
reproduction. The painting was publicly exhi-<br />
bited at Munich, and afterwards sold, and its<br />
present location is unknown. The complainant<br />
secured a copyright and filed a photograph of the<br />
painting at Washington. The defendant subse-<br />
quently sold in this country a photograph, which,<br />
it was claimed, is an infringement. The court<br />
ordered a decree for the complainant.<br />
IV.--THREE YEARS OF AMERICAN CoPYRIGHT.<br />
The Daily Chronicle (Aug. 14) publishes<br />
an instructive “interview º' with Professor<br />
Brander Matthews, of Columbia College, New<br />
York, on the result of three years' working<br />
of the American Copyright Act. In the first<br />
place, the pirates are nearly all “knocked out.”<br />
The pirate chief, Lovell, is bankrupt, and his<br />
stock of several millions is being sold at “dry<br />
good stores” at 4d. and 5d. a volume. When<br />
these have been worked through the book market<br />
will improve. Meantime, we must note the<br />
necessity of copyrighting everything. Mr.<br />
Matthews points out how three notable books<br />
of last season—“Dodo,” “The Yellow Aster,”<br />
and “Ships that Pass”— through neglect of this<br />
precaution were pirated and sold for 8 cents.<br />
Next, the effect on American literature is that<br />
American authors no longer have to compete<br />
with stolen goods.<br />
The publishers already show a very large<br />
increase of American books in proportion to<br />
British books. Harper Brothers show British<br />
books in their lists numbering 25 per cent. of<br />
the whole, as against 75 per cent. thirty<br />
years ago. Houghton, Mifflin, and Co. have<br />
reduced the percentage of British books to<br />
Io per cent. London houses in New York are<br />
putting out American books in excess of English<br />
books. -<br />
As to the price of books; novels, as a rule,<br />
appear in One volume, at four, five, or six<br />
shillings. The Americans are, as a rule, a book-<br />
buying, not a book-borrowing, people.<br />
The effect of free libraries tends in America,<br />
he thinks, first to beget and encourage the habit<br />
of reading, and next to develop the desire to<br />
possess books. They make people buyers of<br />
books.<br />
Mr. Matthews further gave his views as to the<br />
difference between the circulation of English and<br />
American magazines. He said:<br />
The main fact is, no doubt, that our reading public is so<br />
much larger than yours, and that for that very reason our<br />
I can learn,<br />
magazine proprietors are enabled to pursue a much more<br />
systematic and spirited policy than is possible with you.<br />
We have made magazine editing at once a fine art and a<br />
science. Each of our great magazines occupies the whole<br />
time and thoughts of a very large editorial staff, consisting<br />
in one case of an editor-in-chief, an associate editor, an<br />
assistant editor, two editorial assistants, and four or five<br />
editorial clerks, to say nothing of two or three art editors.<br />
Every manuscript that is sent in is examined, and articles<br />
and drawings are always paid for on acceptance, instead of,<br />
as with you, on publication. Harper's or the Century will<br />
often have £10,000 worth of stock in hand, paid for, and<br />
ready for use as occasion offers. The policy of these<br />
magazines is mapped out for years beforehand by experts in<br />
the art of meeting the public taste. But such a policy, it<br />
is clear, can be pursued only when a very large sale is<br />
assured. The circulation of the magazines I have named<br />
runs to something like 200,000 copies a month. From all<br />
no high-priced illustrated magazine on<br />
your side commands more than one-fourth of that<br />
sale. It is a noteworthy fact that not a single English<br />
magazine is to be seen on the American bookstalls, as our<br />
magazines are seen on yours. In the days of piracy your lead-<br />
ing reviews used to be reprinted every month and sold at<br />
low rates, but even before the passing of the Copyright<br />
Act that practice was found unremunerative, and was<br />
accordingly dropped. Now, a few sets of your leading<br />
reviews are sent over in sheets, stitched, and sold to<br />
clubs and libraries. They have practically no general sale<br />
whatever.<br />
“And our cheap magazines, such as the Strand—have<br />
you any periodicals of that class P” -<br />
“No,” replied Mr. Matthews, “and why P. Because<br />
their place is almost precisely occupied by the Sunday<br />
editions published by all our leading daily papers. These<br />
contain serial novels, short stories, and general articles, of<br />
exactly the same class as those which appear in your<br />
cheaper magazines, and illustrated in much the same style.<br />
In fact, the same stories and articles are often supplied by<br />
syndicates to your cheap magazines and to our Sunday<br />
papers.”<br />
W.—THE THREE-VoI,UME Nov EL.<br />
The fate of the three-volume novel still con-<br />
tinues to furnish matter for discussion. The<br />
Publisher's Circular naturally takes the keenest<br />
interest in the subject.<br />
The writer of an article in the August number<br />
on the Resolution of our council, puts forward<br />
certain statements and opinions which we can<br />
hardly accept. Thus he says:<br />
“We do not know how far this Resolution repre-<br />
sents, the mind of the great body of English<br />
novelists. . The opinion of writers in general, or<br />
even of the majority of the members of the<br />
Authors’ Society, was not, we believe, taken before<br />
the council passed its sweeping motion, and there<br />
are, we fancy, many writers of fiction who would<br />
repudiate this official declaration.”<br />
Now, the great body of English novelists are<br />
members of this Society. With a very few<br />
exceptions all novelists of standing are members.<br />
The Secretary received instructions to ask the<br />
opinions of all those members who are novelists,<br />
but not of other members. A “private and<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 93 (#107) #############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
93<br />
confidential” circular was drawn up giving<br />
the facts of the case : and the opinions which<br />
were sent in were practically unanimous. Of<br />
course there may be, as the writer of the article<br />
thinks, some who would not agree with the Reso-<br />
lution, but they did not come forward.<br />
He says, further, that the “mass of the people<br />
does not read fiction.” The general opinion is<br />
that fiction is all that the mass does read—<br />
that part of the mass which reads anything<br />
besides the daily paper.<br />
He goes on to say, “Possibly the Council did<br />
not see that its resolution, if carried into effect,<br />
would deprive three-fourths of the members of<br />
the Society of their occupation and means of<br />
living.” -<br />
Let us, once more, take refuge in those<br />
figures which do so seriously annoy those who<br />
love a good broad general statement. There are<br />
between 1300 and 1400 members of the Society.<br />
Three-fourths of this number means about a<br />
thousand. It has been pretty conclusively<br />
proved in back numbers of the Author that the<br />
number of novelists whose works possess any<br />
commercial value at all with Mudie and Smith is<br />
under 300, of whom about one hundred are<br />
likely to be affected by the abolition of the three-<br />
volume system. It is a great mistake to suppose<br />
that the members of the Society are nearly all<br />
novelists. Statements to this effect have been<br />
made, over and over again, with intent to injure,<br />
but not in the Publisher's Circular, whose<br />
attitude towards the Society is generally fair.<br />
The writer probably reveals the truth when he<br />
says that depression in trade has brought about<br />
the present crisis. It is certainly more than<br />
twenty years since the three-volume novel was<br />
fiercely denounced; but it survived. Times<br />
were good; libraries took large numbers; cheap<br />
editions could wait. Now, smaller numbers<br />
must be taken at a less price; that is what the<br />
libraries say. Let us, therefore, go straight to<br />
the general public. That is what the majority of<br />
novelists say ; that is what many of the best<br />
novelists have already begun to do; that is what<br />
many publishers have declared their intention to<br />
do for the future. It is a significant commen-<br />
tory on this article, written clearly in favour of<br />
the old system, that the back page of the<br />
JPublisher's Circular contains an announcement<br />
that Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co.<br />
will no longer issue three-volume novels, except<br />
under special circumstances.<br />
The three-volume novel, however, is not yet<br />
dead.<br />
WI.--THE COPYRIGHT Congress AT ANTWERP.<br />
The Association Littéraire et Artistique Inter-<br />
nationale informed us that a copyright congress<br />
would be held at Antwerp from the 18th to the<br />
25th of Aug., and invited this Society to send<br />
delegates. We regret extremely that the invita-<br />
tion should not have come into our hands until<br />
after the last committee meeting, so that, our<br />
members having dispersed, there was no oppor-<br />
tunity of arranging for the proper representation<br />
of the Society. We wait for a report of the<br />
proceedings. The following is the official pro-<br />
gramme :-<br />
PROGRAMME Gână RAL DEs TRAvAUx.<br />
Du contrat d'édition, en matières littéraires, artistiques et<br />
musicales.<br />
Rapportewrs: MM. Pouillet et Ocampo.<br />
De l'arbitrage en matière de contestation relative à la pro-<br />
priété intellectuelle.<br />
Rapportewr: M. Maunery.<br />
De la propriété littéraire en fait de noms individuels.<br />
Rapportewr: M. Georges Maillard.<br />
De la propriété littéraire en fait de titres.<br />
Rapportew": Dr. Max Nordau.<br />
De la collaboration.<br />
Rapporteur : M. Harmand.<br />
De la propriété artistique en matière de portrait.<br />
De la propriété des types (clichés) de reproduction.<br />
Rapportewr: M. Davaune. -<br />
De la création d'un répertoire universel au bureau inter-<br />
national de Berne.<br />
De l'obligation du dépôt.<br />
De l'enregistrement.<br />
Rapportewr: M. Jules Lermina.<br />
De la traduction.<br />
De la caution Judicatwm Solvi.<br />
De la photographie.<br />
Rapportewr: M. Eugène Pouillet.<br />
Des droits des auteurs en matière de représentation<br />
gratuite.<br />
Rapportewr: M. Wauwermans.<br />
De la clause de la nation la plus favorisée.<br />
Rapporteur: M. A. Darras.<br />
*- 2-º<br />
-- w -<br />
A POET'S LOWE,<br />
[Imitated from a poem by Felix d'Anvers, quoted by Ste. Beuve<br />
Nouv. Lundis. III., 351.]<br />
Love leaped like instant lightning to my breast<br />
And made himself therein a secret throne :<br />
The hopeless slavery I bear unknown,<br />
By her who caused it least of all is guessed.<br />
I pass her often, as in darkness dressed,<br />
And even when by her side am still alone;<br />
Nor when I lie beneath my burial-stone<br />
Will prayer of mine have ever marred her rest.<br />
She whom God made so tender and so kind<br />
Perceives not, bent upon her daily task,<br />
The sighs of love that round her presence go;<br />
But wrapped in duty, innocently blind, -<br />
Reading the words I write of her, will ask—<br />
“Who was the woman that he worshipped so<br />
H. G. R.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 94 (#108) #############################################<br />
<br />
94<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
THE PRICE OF THE NOVEL–1750-1894.<br />
HE following is a table of the prices at which<br />
the English novel has been issued from the<br />
year 1750 to the year 1860.<br />
It has been<br />
compiled from catalogues and lists published at<br />
the end of books, from magazines, and from<br />
advertisements. The compiler, Mr. R. English,<br />
of the British Museum, made no choice, but wrote<br />
down selections from the lists at random, three<br />
or four for each year. Some of the novels<br />
whose authorship was subsequently acknow-<br />
ledged appeared at first anonymously.<br />
Year. Author. Title, Vols. Price.<br />
I750 Fielding ........................ Tom Jones ...................................................... 4. 3o 12 O<br />
35 Paltock ........................ Peter Wilkins........... © tº 4 tº e s tº a 4 º' s s º is a t t e º e º tº e º a s - e s a e s is s a e s & 8 2 o 6 O<br />
I75I Smollett ........................ Peregrine Pickle ............................................. 4. O I2 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Adventures of Lucy Frail.................................... I O 3 O<br />
1760 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adventures of Sylvia Hughes .............................. I O 3 O<br />
1761 25 - - - - - - - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . Memoirs of Miss Sidney Biddulph ........................ 2 o 7 6<br />
1762 Author of Roderick Random Sir Launcelot Greaves ....................................... 2 O 6 O<br />
25 Anonymous..................... Longwood, Earl of Salisbury .............................. 2 o 6 o<br />
1770 3 * . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Adventures of a Bank Note ................................. 4 O I 2 O<br />
33 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Constantia ...................................................... I O 3 O<br />
1771 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Captive; or, the History of Mr. Clifford ......... 2 o 6 O<br />
1772 Author of Roderick Random Expedition of Humphrey Clinker................. ......... I O 3 O<br />
1780 Anonymous..................... Alwyn ; or, the Gentleman Comedian..................... 2 o 6 O<br />
1782 33 • - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - George Bateman ............................................. 3 o 7 6<br />
1784 23 - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barnham Downs ............................................. 2 o 7 o<br />
1789 L. Lewis ........................ Lord Walford................................................... 2 O 6 O<br />
I790 Mrs Bonhote .................. Darnley Wale; or, Emilia Fitzroy ........................ 3 o 7 6<br />
32 Anonymous..................... History of Miss Meredith.................................... 2 O 6 O<br />
35 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Man of Feeling .......................................... 2 O 5 O<br />
33 33 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Recluse ................................................... 2 O 5 O<br />
99 35 - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Maid of Kent ............................................. 3 O 9 O<br />
35 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Louisa Forester................................................ 3 7 6 o<br />
33 Charlotte Lennox ............ Euphemia. ...................................................... 4. O I 2 O<br />
I79I Jane Timbury.................. The Philanthropic Rambler ................................. I O 3 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... St. Julian's Abbey............................................. 2 O 5 O<br />
33 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Charles Henley ................................................ 2 O 5 O<br />
33 35 - - - - - - - - * * * * * * * * * * * * * Sempronia ...................................................... 3 O 9 O<br />
33 Clara Reeve .................. School for Widows............................................. 3 O 9 O<br />
33 J. White ........................ - The Adventures of Richard Coeur de Lion.............., 3 O 9 O<br />
I792 Anonymous..................... Dinabas ......................................................... I O 3 O<br />
33 By a Lady ..................... The Baroness of Beaumont ................................. 2 O 6 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Modern Miniature ............................................. 2 O 6 O<br />
33 33 • . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Delineations of the Heart.................................... 3 O 9 O<br />
33 Charlotte Smith ............... Desmond, a Novel............................................. 3 O 9 O<br />
I793 35 • * * * * * * * * * * * * Wanderings of Warwick .................................... I O 4 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Siavery; or, the Times....................................... 2 O 6 O<br />
33 23 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . History of Philip Waldegrave .............................. 2 O 6 O<br />
33 35 - " . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The Dupe ...................................................... 2 O 5 O<br />
33 33 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Selinor............................................................ 6 O 18 O<br />
I794 Geo. Hutton .................. Amantus and Elmore ....................................... I O 3 O<br />
35 Anonymous..................... Ivey Castle ...................................................... 2 O 6 O<br />
33 33 s = < * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Tales of Elam............................................. 2 o 6 o<br />
35 S. Pearson ..................... The Medallion ................................................ 3 O 9 O<br />
32 55 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Ellen, Countess of Castle Howell ........................ 4 O I 2 O<br />
I795 Anonymous..................... The Ghost-Seer ................................................ I O 3 O<br />
35 Geo. Brewer ... ............... The Motto ...................................................... 2 O 6 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Elisa Powell ................................................... 2 o 7 o<br />
33 Mary E. Parker ............... Orwell Manor................................................... 3 O 9 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Secrecy, a Novel ............................................. 3 O 9 O<br />
53 35 - . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Henry, a Novel ................................................ 4. O I 2 O<br />
1796 J. Palmer ..................... The Haunted Cavern.......................................... I O 3 O<br />
3? Anonymous..................... Arville Castle................................................... 2 O 6 O<br />
93 IRichard Hey .................. Edington, a Novel............................................. 2 o 6 o<br />
33 Mary Robinson ............... Angelina, a Novel ............................................. 3 O I3 O<br />
33 Mrs. Meeke..................... The Abbey of Clugny ....................................... 3 O 9 O<br />
35 Anonymous..................... Agatha, a Novel ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 O I 2 O<br />
1797 93 s = < * * * * * & 2 e º e º 'º e s tº a c is The Village Curate ...... a 2 & º º ſº tº is º f tº 6 s is tº 4 e º a tº 9 s s a s s a tº e s s s a s a I o 3 6<br />
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## p. 95 (#109) #############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Year. Author. Title. Wols. Price.<br />
1797 Anonymous..................... The Inquisition ................................................ 2 O 6 O<br />
25 23 ° e º • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Nun......................................................... 2 O 8 O<br />
35 M. G. Lewis .................. The Monk ...................................................... 3 o IO 6<br />
23 J. Fox ........................... Santa Maria ................................................... 3 O 1 o 6<br />
33 Anonymous..................... The Church of St. Sifford.................................... 4. O I4. O<br />
1798 33 s = * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Statira ; or, the Mother....................................... I o 3 6<br />
33 33 - " - e s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Henry Willoughby............................................. 2 o 7 o<br />
23 Anna Plumtree ............... The Rector's Son ............................................. 3 O IO 6<br />
35 Mrs. Tomlins ................. Rosalind de Tracy............................................. 3 O IO 6<br />
33 Geo. Walker .................. Cinthelia ...................................................... - - - 4. O I4. O<br />
I799 Anonymous.......... .* * * * * * * * * * * The Orphan Heiress of St. Gregory........................ I O 4 O<br />
23 33 - - - - - - - * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Helen Sinclair ................................................ 2 O 7 o<br />
25 3) - - - - - - - - - * * * * * * * * * * * * Sketches of Modern Life .................................... 2 O 7 o<br />
25 33 - " " " - s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Tale of the Times ............................................. 3 O I 2 O<br />
53 3 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Castle of St. Donats.......................................... 3 O IO 6<br />
33 E. Helme........................ Albert, a Novel ................................................ 4 O I4. O<br />
I8OO A. Thicknesse.................. The School of Fashion ....................................... 2 O I2 O<br />
33 Anonymous...................... A Northumbrian Tale ....................................... I o 4 6<br />
33 Mrs. Robinson ſº tº e s : s a The Natural Daughter ....................................... 2 O 7 O<br />
32 Anonymous..................... Selina, a Novel ................................................ 3 O IO 6<br />
33 Miss Gunning .................. The Gipsey Countess.......................................... 4. O I4. O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Exhibitions of the Heart .................................... 4 I I O<br />
33 C. Selden........................ Serena ............................................................ 3 o Io 6<br />
18OI Anonymous..................... The Castle of Eridan.......................................... I O 4 6<br />
23 33 - * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Picture of the Age ....................................... 2 o 6 O<br />
22 Mrs. Burke ..................... Elliot, a Novel ................................................ 2 o 8 O<br />
25 P. Littlejohn .................. The Mistake ................................................... 3 O I2 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Adonia, a Novel................................................ 4. o 18 O<br />
33 M. A. Hanway ............... Andrew Stuart ................................................ 4 O 18 O<br />
1802 Miss Hatfield .................. She Lives in Hopes, &c. .................................... 2 O 9 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Belmont, a Novel ............................................. 3 O IO 6<br />
39 Anne Plumtree ............... Something New ; or, Adventures at Campbell House... 3 O I5 O<br />
25 H. Ventum ..................... Justinia, a Novel ..... ... .................................... 4. O 18 O<br />
33 Mrs. Hunter .................. Letitia, a Novel ................................................ 4 I I O<br />
1803 Anonymous..................... Lucy Osmond................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I O 3 O<br />
33 Eliza N. Bromley ............ The Cave of Cosenza.................... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * , , , 2 O I2 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Lady Geraldine Beaufort .................................... 3 O IO 6<br />
35 Mrs. Hunter .................. Letters from Mrs. Palmerston, &c......................... 3 O I5 O<br />
: 3 Anonymous..................... Follies of Fashion ............................................. 3 o 13 6<br />
23 33 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Helen of Glenross ............................................. 4. O 16 o<br />
1804 25 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Leopold ; or, the Bastard.................................... 2 o 8 O<br />
33 25 - - - - - - - - - - - - - . . . . . . . . Letters of Mrs. Riversdale ........................ ... . . . . . . 3 o 13 6<br />
2 3 Eugenia de Acton ............ A Tale without a Title ....................................... 3 O I2 O<br />
23 Anonymous..................... Pride of Ancestry ............................................. 4. o 16 O<br />
33 Mrs. Thomson.................. St. Clair of the Isles .......................................... 4. O I4. O<br />
1805 Mrs. Hunter .................. The Unexpected Legacy .................................... 2 O 9 O<br />
33 Mary Goldsmith............... Casualities ............ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................. 2 O 6 O<br />
22 Mrs. Le Noir .................. Village Anecdotes ............................................. 3 O I2 O<br />
3) A. M. Porter .................. The Lake of Killarney ....................................... 3 o 13 6<br />
33 Anonymous..................... What You Please, &c. ......................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. o 16 o<br />
33 M. Malden ..................... Jessica Mandeville............................................. 5 o 17 6<br />
I806 Anonymous..................... - Belville House ............................................. ... 2 O 8 O<br />
23 35 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - A Sailor's Friendship ....................................... 2 O 8 O<br />
33 33 - - - - * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Flim Flams, &c................................................. 3 I I O<br />
35 Mrs. Opie ..................... Adeline Mowbray ............................................. 3 o 13 6<br />
33 Eliz. Helme..................... Pilgrim of the Cross.......................................... 4. O 18 O<br />
33 R. C. Dallas .................. The Morlands................................................... 4. I I O<br />
1807 F. Lathom ..................... The Impenetrable Secret .................................... 2 o 6 O<br />
33 Robert Semple ............... Charles Ellis ................................................... 2 O 9 O<br />
35 Mrs. Edgworth ............... Lenora...........• * * * g e s e e s tº e º e s - a • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 2 o IO 6.<br />
33 J. Mackintosh ............... Men and Women ............................................. 3 o 13 6<br />
93. Mrs. Opie ..................... Simple Tales .............................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 I I O<br />
33 M. A. Lewis .................. Feudal Tyrants ........................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 I 8 O<br />
1808 M. Rymer ..................... The Spaniard, &c. ........................... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I O 4 O<br />
92 Anonymous..................... Helen, a Novel ................................................ 2 o Io 6<br />
22 39 & B tº º e º 'º - e º a º - G tº a c e º e & George the Third ............................................. 3 o 13 6.<br />
WOL. W. K.<br />
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## p. 96 (#110) #############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Wear. Author, Title. Wols. Price.<br />
1808 Anonymous................ © e º e e Theodore; or, the Enthusiast .............................. 4. I I O<br />
3? Madame Genlis ............... Alphonsine, &c. ................................................ 4 I 8 O<br />
1809 || Anonymous..................... Theodore; or, the Peruvians .............................. I o 4 6<br />
22 F. Lathom ..................... The Fatal Wow ................................................ 2 O 9 O<br />
33 J. N. Brewer .................. Mountville Castle ............................................. 3 O I5 O<br />
33 G. Amphlett .................. Ned Bentley ................................................... 3 O I5 O<br />
33 Peter Peregrine ............... Matilda Montford ............................................. 4. I I O<br />
33 Miss M. Linwood ............ Leicestershire Tales .......................................... 4. I I O<br />
1810 Anonymous..................... Faulconstein Forest .......................................... I O 6 6<br />
25 92 - e s - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Calibia, Choosing a Husband .............................. 2 O IO O<br />
55 Miss Edgeworth............... Tales of Fashionable Life.................................... 3 O 18 O<br />
33 Anonymous.......... * . . . . . . . . . . The Acceptance................................................ 3 o 18 o<br />
33 Harriet Jones.................. The Family of Santraile ..................... .............. 4 I 4 O<br />
35 Alicia T. Palmer............... The Daughters of Isonberg ................................. 4 I 4 O<br />
33 F. Melville ..................... The Benevolent Monk ....................................... 3 o 13 6<br />
25 Anne Ormsby.................. The Soldier's Family... ...................................... 4 I 6 O<br />
35 Anonymous............... ..... “Frederick” ................................................... 2 O I 2 O<br />
181 I C. H. Wilson .................. The Irish Valet ....................................... ........ I O 5 O<br />
35 Anonymous..................... The Reformist ................................................ 2 O IO O<br />
33 23 ° - * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Self Control ................................................... 3 I 4 O<br />
33 Theodore Edgeworth ......... The Shipwreck ................................................ 3 O I5 O<br />
35 Emma Parker.................. Virginia, &c. ................................................... 4. I 4 O<br />
1812 Mrs. Roberts ................. Rose and Emily................................................ I o 5 6<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Things by their Right Names .............................. 2 O IO 6<br />
33 33 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Rhydisel; or, the Devil in Oxford ........................ 2 O Io 6<br />
32 23 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Adventures of Dick Distich ................................. 3 O 16 6<br />
33 Mrs. Opie ..................... Tempter ; or, Domestic Scenes ........................... 3 I I O<br />
35 Ann Plumtree.................. History of Myself and Friend .............................. 4 I 8 O<br />
1813 Anonymous .................... The Sisters, a Domestic Tale .............................. I O 5 O<br />
55 Miss Benger .................. The Heart and the Fancy........................... ........ 2 O I 2 O<br />
35 Anonymous..................... She Thinks for Herself ....................................... 3 o 16 6<br />
92 Mrs. Peck ..................... Waga ; or, View of Nature ................................. 3 O 18 O<br />
93 Miss Burney .................. Traits of Nature................................................ 4. I 8 O<br />
1814 Anonymous..................... Sara, a Tale ............... 6 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I o 5 6<br />
33 W. H. Hitchener ............ The Towers of Ravenswold ................................. 2 O IO O<br />
32 Anonymous..................... The Adventures of a Dramatist ........................... 2 O I 2 O<br />
33 Lady Morgan .................. O'Donnel, a National Tale ................................. 3 I I O<br />
33 Miss Houghton ...... ..... .. The Border Chieftain.......................................... 3 O 18 O<br />
95 Maria Edgeworth ............ Patronage, a Novel .......................................... 4. I 8 O<br />
1815 Maria Benson .................. System or no System.......................................... I O 6 O<br />
22 John Gamble .................. Howard, a Novel ............................................. 2 O 9 O<br />
35 Sir Walter Scott...... . . . . . . . . . Guy Mannering ................................................ 3 I I O<br />
23 Emma Parker.................. The Guerrilla Chief .............................. ........... 3 I I O<br />
25 Anonymous..................... History of John de Castro ................................. 4 I 4 O<br />
33 Ann M. Porter ............... The Recluse of Norway....................................... 4 I 4 O<br />
1816 Anonymous..................... A Tale for Gentle and Simple .............................. I o 7 o<br />
95 23 ° - * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Adventures of Peter Wilkins .............................. 2 o Io 6<br />
33 Mrs. Opie ..................... Valentine's Eve ................................................ 3 I I O<br />
35 T. S. Surr ..................... Magic of Wealth ............................................. 3 O 18 O<br />
32 Anonymous..................... Chronicles of an Illustrious House ........................ 5 I 7 6<br />
33 23 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * s Clara Albin........ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * , , , s a s 4. I 8 O<br />
1817 33 ° e º s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Headlong Hall ..................... ... ............. ......... I O 6 o<br />
93. Emma Parker.................. Self Deception .......................................... . ... 2 O I 2 O<br />
35 Anonymous..................... Melincourt, &c. ............ ............................. ..... 3 O 18 O<br />
53 3 x * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Six Weeks at Long's.................................... . ... 3 I I O<br />
35 Fanny Holcroft ............... Fortitude and Frailty * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * s g g a s e e 4. I 2 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... The Pastor's Fireside * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * . e. e. 4 I I I 6<br />
1818 Eliz. B. Lester ............... The Quakers ............... ....................... ... ........ I O 6 o<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Northern Irish Tales............... .. • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * e s e 2 O I 2 O<br />
2) }} • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Manners, a Novel .............................. ... ........... 3 O 18 O<br />
33 Anna M. Porter ............... The Knight of St. John ... ... ........... ................. 3 I I O<br />
33 Mrs. Opie ..................... New Tales ...................................................... 4 I 8 O<br />
35 By the Earl of Erpingham... Some Account of Myself ............ .....,.............. .. 4 I 2 O<br />
33 Anonymous..... tº s e º e º e s a s a e º e a e Rosabella ; or, Mother's Marriage ......,,................ 5 I IO O<br />
1819 33 - " " " " " : * * * * * * * * * * * * s a Conidans, &c,.................. . . ........................... I o 7 O<br />
25 Madame Planche ,,,,,,,,, A Year and a Day... ................... i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 O I2 O<br />
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## p. 97 (#111) #############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
97<br />
Year. Author. Title, Wols. Price,<br />
1819 Anonymous..................... Errors and their Consequences.............................. 2 O I3 O<br />
35 Miss Porter..................... The Fast of St. Magdalen......................... 3 I I O<br />
22 Miss Croker .................. The Question, Who is Anna P .............................. 3 I 4 O<br />
33 Mrs. Robert Moore............ Eveleen Mountjoy ............................................. 4. I 4 O<br />
182O M. A. Grant .................. Tales Founded on Facts .................................... I O 7 O<br />
29 Anonymous..................... The Retreat ................................................... 2 O I 2 O<br />
22 A. Marmacopt.................. The Wharbroke Legend....................................... 2 O 14 O<br />
33 Sir Walter Scott............... The Abbot ...................................................... 3 I 4 O<br />
35 Mrs. Opie ..................... Tales of the Heart............................................. 4. I 8 O<br />
32 R. C. Dallas .................. Sir Francis Darrell............................................. 4. I 8 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... The Mystery of Forty Years Ago ........................ 3 I I O<br />
1821 H. B. Gascoigne............... Sympathy, &c. ............... ................................ I O 5 O<br />
32 J. H. Brady .................. The Spanish Rogue .......................................... 2 O I5 O<br />
95 Anonymous..................... Concealment ......................... # * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * s a e s s 3 I I O<br />
95 Lee Gibbons .................. The Cavalier ................................................... 3 I I O<br />
39 Anonymous..................... A Legend of Argyle .............................. . ......... 3 I I O<br />
1822 Sir Walter Scott ............ The Pirate ...................................................... . 3 I I I 6<br />
53 Charlotte C. Richardson ... The Soldier's Child ... ....................................... 2 O I 2 O<br />
22 Anonymous..................... Maid Marian ................................................... I o 7 o<br />
33 James Hogg .................. Three Perils of Man .......................................... 3 I 4 O<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Pen Owen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 I II 6<br />
33 Sir Walter Scott..... ......... Peveril of the Peak ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4. 2 2 O<br />
1823 Anonymous..................... A New England Tale.......................................... I o 6 o<br />
3? 35 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Which is the Heroine P....................................... 2 O I 2 O<br />
33 33 s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Confederate................................................ 3 I I O<br />
39 99 • * * * * * * * * e & © tº a 9 tº e º e º e King of the Peak ................................ ............ 3 I I O<br />
33 Sir Walter Scott............... Quentin Durward ............................................. 3 I I I 6<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Reginald Dalton................................................ 3 I I I 6<br />
1824 35 s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Stranger's Grave ....................................... I O 6 O<br />
33 Geo. Soane ..................... The Outcasts ................................................... 2 o 16 O<br />
2 3 Geo. Butt........................ The Spanish Daughter ....................................... 2 o 16 o<br />
35 Anonymous..................... Trials, a Novel ................................................ 3 I I O<br />
2 3 Sir Walter Scott............... Red Gauntlet ................................................... 3 I I I 6<br />
33 3.5 s = * * * * * * * * * * * * * St. Roman's Well ............................................. 3 I I I 6<br />
1825 B. D'Israeli..................... Vivian Grey ................................................... 2 O 18 O<br />
23 Anonymous..................... Matilda, a Tale of the Day .............. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I O IO 6<br />
33 33 • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Story of a Life .......................................... 2 o 18 o<br />
35 35 • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Foresters................................................... 3 I 7 O<br />
23 5 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Tremaine; or, Man of Refinement ........................ 3 I 4 O<br />
5 § Sir Walter Scott.............., Tales of the Crusaders ....................................... 4. 2 2 O<br />
92 H. Willis........................ Castle Baynard ................................................ I O 8 O<br />
35 T. Lister........................ Granby ......................................................... 3 I I I 6<br />
25 H. Smith........................ Brambletye House .............................. ... . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 I I I 6<br />
1826 Anonymous..................... Sir John Chiverton, a Romance ........................... I O IO 6<br />
33 33 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Truth, a Novel ................................................ 3 I 4 O<br />
33 Allan Cunningham............ Paul Jones ...................................................... 3 I I I 6<br />
35 33 - e s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The Tor Hill, a Novel ....................................... 3 I I I 6<br />
1827 33 e s , , s a s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * Falkland, a Novel............................................. I o Io 6<br />
35 23 ° • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Confessions of an Old Bachelor ........................... I o Io 6<br />
35 32 - . . . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Belmour, a Novel ..................... ....................... 2 O 18 O<br />
33 39 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - English Fashionables Abroad ........................... & e & 3 I I I 6<br />
33 35 • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Historiettes, Tales of Continental Life .................. 3 I I I 6<br />
32 33 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Richmond, &c., a Novel .................................... 3 I I I 6<br />
1828 Sir Walter Scott............... Tales of a Grandfather....................................... I o Io 6<br />
33 Anonymous..................... Yes or No, a Novel .......................................... 2 I I O<br />
92 35 . . . * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Confessions of an Old Maid .............. .................. 3 I 8 6<br />
35 25 - - - - - - - * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Herbert Lacy, a Novel ................................... ... 3 I I I 6<br />
33 35 • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Tales and Legends.............. .............................. 3 I II 6<br />
35 33 - e s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * De Lisle; or, the Distrustful Man ........................ 3 I I I 6<br />
93 35 e s • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Herbert Milton ............................................. tº & & 3 I I I 6<br />
1830 Marryatt........................ The King's Own................................................ 3 I I I 6<br />
25 Ritchie........................... The Game of Life ............................................. 2 O 18 O<br />
22 E. Lane ........................ The Fugitives................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I O 9 O<br />
1835 Sir E. B. Lytton............... The Student .................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 I I O<br />
39 Anonymous..................... Agnes Searle ................................................... 3 I II 6<br />
?? ?? * * * * * * * * * * * * Finesse, a Novel * c s , , , , , , , , , , , , , a t w w w w • * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 2 I I Q<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 98 (#112) #############################################<br />
<br />
98<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
<br />
Year. Author. Title. Wols. Price.<br />
1840 G. P. R. James ............... The King's Highway................................. ........ 3 I I I 6<br />
1841 Anonymous..................... Bllen Braye; or, the Fortune Teller ..................... 2 I I O<br />
1845 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mary Aston..................... * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * I O 6 O<br />
35 D. Lister........................ College Chums ................................................ 2 I I O<br />
33 G. P. R. James ............... The Smuggler............................ * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 3 I I I 6<br />
1850 Anonymous..................... Shadow and Sunshine ...................... ................. I O 6 O<br />
33 35 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Silwood, a Novel ............................................. 2 I I O<br />
35 P. Leicester..................... Ada Greville ................................................... 3 I I I 6<br />
I86o Capt. Wraxall.................. Camp Life ...................................................... I O IO 6<br />
32 Anonymous..................... Hulse House, by the Author of Anne Grey............... 2 I I O<br />
2 3 F. J. Greenwood ............ Under a Cloud ................................................ 3 I I I 6<br />
If we analyse this list the following facts are<br />
established:<br />
1. From 1750 to 1792 inclusive the ruling price<br />
of a novel was 3s. a volume, so that a four-volume<br />
novel was 12s. and a three-volume novel was 98.<br />
Occasionally, however, there is observed a<br />
tendency to cheaper forms, as in 1790, when<br />
there occur two cases of novels at 2s. 6d. a<br />
volume. This price was “net;” there was no<br />
reduction or discount to the public.<br />
The novels of this period were for the most part<br />
very short; now and then, as in the case of “Tom<br />
Jones” and “Peregrine Pickle,” they were long;<br />
as a rule they were much shorter than the modern<br />
Three-Decker. .<br />
2. In the year 1793 there is a sign of an<br />
upward tendency. A single volume book is<br />
announced at 4s. Then for three or four years<br />
the old price is maintained. In 1796 Mary<br />
Robinson’s “Angelina.” is priced at 4s. 6d. a<br />
volume, and “Agatha,” whatever her merits may<br />
have been, appears at 4s. a volume. In 1797<br />
3s. 6d. and 4s. are the rule. In 1798 the old<br />
price is forgotten. In 1799 nothing is under<br />
3s. 6d. In 1800 prices range from 3s. 6d.,<br />
4s. 6d., 5s. 3d., to 6s. a volume. In 18O1,<br />
nothing is higher than 4.s. 6d. In 1802 we range<br />
from 4s. 6d. to 5s. 3d. The same prices are<br />
asked in 1803, 1804, 1805.<br />
of “Flim Flams ” asks 7s. a piece for his<br />
volumes. A common form is now the four-<br />
volume novel at a guinea. Here and there, all<br />
the time, we find the old price of 3s. In 1807<br />
Lewis’s “Feudal Tyrants” is issued in four<br />
volumes at £1 8s. In 1808 Mdme. Genlis'<br />
“Euphrosyne” is published in four volumes at<br />
the same price. In 1809 and 18 IO 6s. a volume<br />
is the rule. In 181 I an Anonymous issues a<br />
three-volume novel at £I 4s.--we are getting<br />
very close to the guinea and a half. From 1812<br />
to 1821 prices range from 6s. to 8s. a volume.<br />
In 1822 for the first time occurs the ominous<br />
price of a guinea and a half. There may<br />
be earlier cases, but the first discovered by Mr.<br />
In 1806 the author<br />
English was that of Sir Walter Scott's “Pirate,”<br />
in three volumes. In the same year “Peveril of<br />
the Peak” was published in four volumes at<br />
282 2s., viz., half a guinea for every volume.<br />
From 1823 to 1830 one-volume novels are<br />
issued at 6s, and at Ios. 6d., but by far the<br />
larger at the latter price. Two-volume novels<br />
appear at 12s., 16s., 18s., and a guinea. Three-<br />
volume novels at a guinea, 31 48., 31 7s., and<br />
31 IIs. 6d. That is, out of twenty-one three<br />
volume novels on this list fifteen are at a guinea.<br />
and a half, two at £1 8s. 6d., one at £I 7s.,<br />
two at £1 4s., and one at a guinea.<br />
From the year 1825 to 1860 the price of half a<br />
guinea for every volume was the rule, with here<br />
and there a rare exception.<br />
Of late years there have been many experiments<br />
in price and form. Certain well-known writers<br />
have never produced a three-volume novel at all;<br />
the price of the single volume has become a<br />
uniform 6s., exactly double the price a hundred<br />
years ago.<br />
The first appearance of the cheap edition<br />
seems to have been the series of novels issued by<br />
Messrs. Colburn and Bentley in 1831, called<br />
“Bentley’s Standard Novels and Romances,” at<br />
2s. 6d. each. Of this series the Athenæum of<br />
that date says: “If these works do not succeed,<br />
and eminently, it is no use catering honestly for<br />
the public. These are among the very best and<br />
cheapest ever issued from the press.”<br />
The first appearance of the six-shilling novel<br />
seems to have been in 1861, when Messrs.<br />
Blackwood and Sons published at that price<br />
George Eliot’s “Silas Marner.” Others followed<br />
at the same price, and the London publishers, as<br />
Bentley and Son, Sampson Low, &c., speedily<br />
began to publish at the same price.<br />
The second and cheap edition of the novel, in<br />
regular succession, either at 6s. Or 3s. 6d., or less,<br />
is a thing of not more than thirty years’ existence.<br />
The old rule was one form of publication, either<br />
serially or in three-volume form, and then an end.<br />
Until the year 1865 or thereabouts, if a novel<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 99 (#113) #############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
99<br />
appeared in a magazine, that was its first and final<br />
appearance. The two-shilling novel, for which<br />
Miss Braddon is chiefly responsible, began the<br />
cheap edition. But the ordinary successful<br />
novelist did not, as a rule, look forward to a cheap<br />
edition of his story, however well it was received<br />
by the public, and there were critics who spoke of<br />
a reprint, even if it contained an acknowledgment<br />
of the journal from which it was taken, as if the<br />
publisher and the author were committing some<br />
kind of fraud upon the public in presenting old<br />
Wares a,S new.<br />
The rise in price from 3s. to half a guinea a<br />
volume may perhaps be explained by more than<br />
one theory. Perhaps the following explanation<br />
may find acceptance :<br />
The rise in price begins towards the close of<br />
the last century.<br />
For nearly a quarter of a century the country<br />
was engaged in a deadly contest for life and<br />
liberty. This contest demanded the most cruel<br />
sacrifices. Therefore, although the seas were<br />
kept pretty well open and a great part of our<br />
foreign trade remained with us, the taxation fell<br />
heavily on all classes, but most heavily on that<br />
class which then formed the great bulk of readers<br />
—the clergy and the professional people. The<br />
examples of Edinburgh, Lichfield, Exeter, Norwich,<br />
and other places illustrate the importance of the<br />
literary circles—some of them containing men of<br />
great literary ability—which had sprung up all<br />
over the country. The members of these coteries,<br />
perforce, ceased to buy books; they formed book<br />
clubs and circulating libraries. The natural result<br />
of the narrowed circulation was a rise in price.<br />
From 3s. a volume the novel became gradually, as<br />
we have seen, half a guinea. And this price con-<br />
tinued, because the people had lost the habit of<br />
buying books, and, though the book clubs fell to<br />
pieces and the literary coteries were broken up,<br />
the habit of reading remained and was extended<br />
more and more, while the central circulating<br />
library took the place of the country book club<br />
and supplied the reading, the demand for which<br />
far exceeded, and still exceeds, the purchasing<br />
power of the people.<br />
*-<br />
r= - -<br />
THE AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS,<br />
HEY have already begun in the Athenæum.<br />
The number for August 25 contains the<br />
autumn lists of four publishers. It is<br />
proposed to analyse and classify these lists as was<br />
done last year in these columns. This classifica-<br />
tion cannot be complete before the end of October<br />
or perhaps later. Meantime, with thirty-five<br />
WOL. W.<br />
new books and new editions announced by<br />
Messrs. Longman; fifty-four by Messrs. Chatto<br />
and Windus; seventeen by Messrs. Chambers;<br />
and four by Messrs. Putnam, we make a good<br />
beginning. At present we may only observe that,<br />
as appears from these lists, the three-volume<br />
novel is not dead yet.<br />
*- - -º<br />
ON “WARNINGS AND ADVICE.”<br />
CORRESPONDENT addresses a letter to<br />
the editor which seems to demand especial<br />
attention. He writes to this effect :<br />
“I read your paper regularly from beginning<br />
to end. It afflicts me, every month, with a pro-<br />
found melancholy on account of your “Warnings<br />
and Advice.’ They may be most useful, for those<br />
who can follow them. I cannot. I am one of<br />
those whose first desire is to get my work pub-<br />
lished at all. Why? Because I have a message<br />
for the world? Not at all. But because I can<br />
write things of a kind which command a certain,<br />
but not a great, success. My line is the novel, but<br />
there are many others, like myself, though in other<br />
lines, who can produce work which gets bought,<br />
somehow, to some small extent. They write<br />
readable essays; ‘ historical’ chapters, cribbed<br />
from recent investigations in the Record Office<br />
and elsewhere; concocted out of old books in a<br />
library, and made to look something like work of<br />
Original research among unpublished documents;<br />
biographies of half-forgotten celebrities; poetry.<br />
But the poets are not quite up to my level,<br />
for they have to pay for their things; I want<br />
my work published, and not at my own cost. I want,<br />
also, to be known in my own circle as a man of<br />
letters. It gives one a certain distinction to have<br />
produced one book and to be engaged upon<br />
another. My vanity is, I believe, the leading<br />
motive. But, besides, I always have a suspicion<br />
that my work may be worth large sums of money,<br />
and I naturally want all I can get, and more.<br />
So that I go to my publisher, first and above<br />
all things, anxious that he should take my stuff;<br />
next, suspicious of his terms; and, lastly, afraid to<br />
stipulate any conditions. As for independence, I<br />
really haven’t any. I am in his hands; he makes<br />
me feel that he is obliging me. Not that he is<br />
insolent ; he is even kindly ; sometimes he makes<br />
me miserable by telling me how much he loses<br />
by his authors; sometimes he makes me mad by<br />
little condescensions and words of patronage.<br />
Always, of course, I am to be the obliged and<br />
grateful party in the business. I am never, as<br />
you desire me to be, independent of him. He<br />
will very kindly take my work ; he will very<br />
I.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 100 (#114) ############################################<br />
<br />
I OO<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
nobly, though he says he is certain to be a loser by<br />
it, make me an offer. He has produced half-a-dozen<br />
books of my mine; on every one he says he has lost;<br />
yet he is always ready to take another. There-<br />
fore, as he is a business man, I do not believe<br />
him. But I don’t dare tell him so. What have<br />
your warnings and your information done for<br />
me P. Well, they have proved clearly that, even<br />
with my limited sale, the gratitude should be on<br />
his side, not mine. As a (hitherto) grateful<br />
dependant on this disinterested Patron, it is<br />
gall and wormwood to me to learn what his<br />
agreement really means, and what it is that I<br />
have had to accept. Your “Warnings and Advice’<br />
are fourteen in number; they are all practical;<br />
they are all, I dare say, to other people, useful.<br />
But, alas ! they are of no use to me, because I am<br />
Quite unable to adopt any of them. I might, it<br />
is true, go so far as to stamp the agreement—I<br />
don’t think he would find it out—but the<br />
nature of the document makes it quite un-<br />
necessary for me. The other man can stamp his,<br />
if he likes, but it seems unnecessary. Then,<br />
again, I might take your advice about a literary<br />
agent, but I fear that my commercial value at<br />
the best is not great enough to make any agent<br />
anxious to have me as a client—my last book,<br />
produced on the half-profit plan, showed a loss of<br />
eleven pounds, eleven and eightpence. As regards<br />
“future work, my Patron has not yet tried to bind<br />
me down; but he would do so, I dare say, if he<br />
thought of it. And as for drawing the agreement<br />
myself, or reserving anything, or having a say in<br />
the advertisements, I think I see my Patron's face<br />
if I dared to suggest anything of the kind. One<br />
poor man, a friend in the same line as myself, and<br />
of about equal commercial value, ventured once<br />
to suggest to his Patron that he might have the<br />
accounts of the joint venture audited. “What?’<br />
cried the Patron, “do you think I mean to cheat<br />
you ?’ The retort was obvious ; there can be<br />
but one reason for your partner hiding his books;<br />
but my friend did not dare to make use of it.<br />
I myself on one occasion when a royalty was<br />
offered—I will not lower myself in your eyes<br />
by confessing the amount of that royalty or<br />
the number of copies which had to be sold<br />
before the royalty began—ventured to ask<br />
Smilingly—it was a hollow, forced smile, I fear<br />
—what share of profit the proposed arrange-<br />
ment might leave to the other side. He replied,<br />
icily, that he must really be allowed to manage<br />
nis property—he called it his property—in his<br />
own way, and it was no affair of mine whether<br />
he lost or gained. Most likely, he added, pump-<br />
ing up a sigh, he should be a very heavy loser.<br />
“In plain words, I am entirely dependent on<br />
my publisher. He gives me exactly what he<br />
chooses; I must accept or go elsewhere. And<br />
where should I go? Your advice is excellent, in<br />
fact, to those whose books are commercially valu-<br />
able. For the rank and file I submit that it is<br />
unpractical.”<br />
That the writer's position is such as he<br />
describes one need not doubt. That he is one<br />
of many in the same position we know too well.<br />
That the position is one of necessity is another<br />
question. For, if we consider, very nearly the<br />
whole business of the smaller publisher—and of<br />
all publishers except a few large houses—lies<br />
with the writers of the day, and of these by<br />
far the greater number, like our correspondent,<br />
possess individually but little commercial value.<br />
Yet, taken together, they may be very valuable,<br />
because every one represents a certain amount<br />
of gain to the publisher, otherwise his books<br />
would not be produced, and one or two among<br />
them, especially among the younger sort, may at<br />
any moment become popular and very valuable<br />
indeed.<br />
If such a writer, then, would offer his next work<br />
on our conditions to his friend the “Patron,” he<br />
would probably find it indignantly refused. He<br />
could then try elsewhere, and here the Society<br />
might possibly help him. But if all such<br />
writers—all that very large class of writers<br />
whose works possess some commercial value,<br />
however small—demanded such conditions, the<br />
result would be — must be — submission and<br />
acceptance. For, since our conditions involve<br />
nothing in the world that can be considered<br />
derogatory to the publisher, nothing unfair,<br />
nothing out of the common course, nothing but<br />
the common sense of an ordinary business trans-<br />
action, and nothing more than the Ordinary pre-<br />
cautions with which one person admits another<br />
to the management of, or partnership in, his<br />
property, it stands to reason that opposition<br />
would disappear as soon as it was found<br />
impossible or difficult to get such agency or such<br />
partnership without these conditions. The<br />
“warnings and advice,” on the other hand, to<br />
those whose work is in demand are so simple<br />
that it is their own fault if they do not stipulate<br />
for their observance. For instance, in the<br />
common case of a royalty, the “warnings”<br />
numbered respectively (I), (3), (4), (7), (8), (II),<br />
and (I2) are the only points necessary to be<br />
observed, and of these especially numbers (4),<br />
(8), (II), and (I2).<br />
Next, it must be remembered that the business<br />
of the Society is to defend literary property, and<br />
to show how it must be defended. If writers<br />
will not trouble to defend their property because<br />
it is of small value that is their concern. We<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 101 (#115) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
IO I<br />
tell them, at least, how they may estimate its<br />
possibilities, and how they may guard and keep<br />
their own. In defence of other kinds of property,<br />
the law does not permit the invasion of its rights<br />
where the value is small any more than when it<br />
is large. A pocket must not be picked of a<br />
handkerchief any more than of a watch. Nor<br />
should a literary agreement over a small property<br />
be more unfair than one over a large property.<br />
There is another way of looking at it. The<br />
one-sided old I oper cent. royalty; the penny in the<br />
shilling; the 20 per cent. when 5000 copies (say)<br />
have been sold ; and many other of the tricks<br />
which we know so well—if they are now tried with<br />
even the youngest and most dependent writer,<br />
are tried with the consciousness that they have<br />
been exposed; that the victim can ascertain for<br />
himself the reality of his position; and that,<br />
dependent as he may be for the moment, should<br />
the day of success arrive when his works would<br />
become by themselves an income to his pub-<br />
lishers, he will certainly go elsewhere. The<br />
Society has rendered many of the old “dodges *<br />
impossible by ascertaining and publishing what<br />
is really meant by the mysterious Cost of<br />
Production.<br />
To return to the class represented by our cor-<br />
respondent. They want to publish, very often,<br />
because they believe that their work is “as good<br />
as other people’s.” This desire overcomes, as is<br />
apparent from this letter, every other considera-<br />
tion. In order to be published they will accept any<br />
terms. This desire, therefore, makes the author<br />
a supplicant and a dependant. He invites a one-<br />
sided offer. If he refuses it the chances are<br />
that he is not worth much, and he is told to<br />
go elsewhere. On the other hand, if he is a<br />
young man, it is possible that he may become a<br />
success, in which case it is, perhaps, wiser to treat<br />
him with fairness, as a client whose business is<br />
desirable. This consideration smoothes the way<br />
to a better understanding.<br />
Here is a very simple rule. Such a writer<br />
generally avoids the leading Houses, thinking<br />
foolishly that he will do better with the smaller<br />
Houses—and forgetting that there is but one<br />
public. Let him, therefore, before going to one of<br />
the smaller Houses examine its lists. If he finds<br />
that it can show only one or two works of any<br />
popular author, and those his earliest works, let<br />
him ask why this popular author left this<br />
House. Naturally, because he was, or thought he<br />
was, unfairly treated. Then let this young<br />
writer make up his mind to avoid a House which<br />
cannot keep its clients. On the other hand, a<br />
House which has long lists of popular authors is,<br />
primá facie, one which acts so as to retain the<br />
confidence of writers.<br />
But if a writer considers that warning which<br />
stands last in our list, he will do well, either by a<br />
man of business or in person, to address a<br />
publisher as one business man with another.<br />
“Here,” he will say, “is a work which I believe<br />
to be a possible property, even if a small<br />
property. If your advisers also think so, is it<br />
worth your while to undertake its production<br />
on the following terms P I contribute the work<br />
itself; you contribute the liability to pay the<br />
difference, if any, between the actual cost<br />
of production and the demand for the book.<br />
You also undertake the distribution, collection,<br />
&c.; in return for which you shall have such a<br />
share of the profits as may be agreed upon as<br />
equitable. The partnership is to be quite open,<br />
as between two honourable men ; books always<br />
accessible ; nothing charged but out of pocket<br />
expenses; the proposed list of advertisements to<br />
be arranged with me : and, of course, no secret<br />
profits of any kind.” Such a letter, at all events,<br />
would not be the letter of a dependant. And the<br />
answer would probably show the true character of<br />
the publisher to whom it was addressed.<br />
NOTES AND NEWS,<br />
Rº: of the Author will rejoice to learn<br />
that Mr. Robert Sherard is about to resume<br />
his Letters from Paris in these columns.<br />
Arrangements have also been made for a Letter<br />
from New York, on American Literature and<br />
Literary Folk. The former letter will begin, it is<br />
hoped, next month ; the latter in November or<br />
December.<br />
Mr. Strachey's paper in the National Review<br />
for August, on the Heroic Couplet in English<br />
verse, indicates a new line of critical research,<br />
which will, I hope, be followed up either by Mr.<br />
Strachey or by other competent scholars. The<br />
construction—the structure—of English poetry,<br />
not the lives of the poets, or criticisms on their<br />
works, but the origin, growth, and development<br />
of its many metres, has never, so far as I know, been<br />
seriously and adequately treated. Mr. Strachey's<br />
paper is only a chapter, and that an imperfect<br />
chapter, on one branch of the subject. Where did<br />
Chaucer find his favourite metre P Why did he<br />
choose that metre in preference to the shorter line<br />
most common in the fabliaua, or the longer line<br />
which was used by his friend Eustache Deschamps?<br />
Where did Skelton find—or did he invent—his<br />
short metre P How was it that the six-foot line<br />
failed to hold its own? Sonnet, blank verse, ode,<br />
lyrical ballad, song—every branch of poetry down<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 102 (#116) ############################################<br />
<br />
I O2<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
to the new-old metres of modern versifiers—the<br />
ballade, triolet, villanelle, chanson royale—which<br />
seem to have had their day. Again, there is the<br />
splendid music of Swinburne. Is there anything,<br />
anywhere, in the history of poetry, which can<br />
compare with his march of song P Can there be<br />
any verse, anywhere, to which he owes anything P<br />
Such a paper as Mr. Strachey's takes time and<br />
reading and scholarship. Therefore it is rare.<br />
I have received from America the First Part<br />
of “The Art of Short Story Writing.” It is<br />
only a typewritten part, and I am earnestly<br />
begged to guard it from being published in this<br />
country. It would therefore be unfair to quote<br />
from the pages, or to set forth the methods and<br />
plan of the book, or to express any opinion upon<br />
the treatment or the literary value of the book,<br />
or its probable usefulness to beginners. The<br />
author of the work prefers to remain anonymous,<br />
which is perhaps wise. Many writers, seeing the<br />
terrible mistakes and the waste of good material<br />
committed by beginners in their first attempts,<br />
have thought that a school of fiction might do<br />
useful preliminary training work just as well as a<br />
school of painting. The anonymous author of<br />
this work, which will be issued by “the Revised<br />
Literary Bureau,” of New York, declares him-<br />
self strongly of this opinion. The first and<br />
obvious objection to such a school is that every-<br />
body so far has got on without it. Quite true.<br />
On the other hand, how many would have got on<br />
more quickly and better with it P. How many,<br />
again, would have been deterred from entering<br />
upon a line of work for which they had no ability?<br />
There is in the construction, the arrangement, the<br />
setting, the dialogue of a novel, as much art asthere<br />
is in the grouping of a picture, the management of<br />
the light, &c. This truth, which is perfectly well<br />
known to all those who have studied, and intelli-<br />
gently attempted, the art of fiction, has been<br />
denied, or derided, by those who write on the<br />
subject without any study of it or any sympathy<br />
with it. It may be objected that those who have<br />
the natural aptitude will find out these things<br />
for themselves. Perhaps they will ; perhaps<br />
they will not; perhaps it will take them years of<br />
work and partial failure, with the sacrifice of<br />
their best materials. Of course, those who have<br />
not the natural gift will never be able to use, even<br />
if they find out, the true methods. Why, then,<br />
teach them P. We cannot create a story teller,<br />
any more than a poet, by teaching; but we may<br />
stop at the outset those who are certain, to fail;<br />
we may teach the methods, and put into the right<br />
line the rank and file of the story tellers; and we<br />
may save genius itself from blunders and from<br />
disappointments. Another objection, however,<br />
less obvious, presents itself. After going to such<br />
a school the candidate who failed would most<br />
certainly throw the whole blame of failure upon<br />
the school. It would therefore be mecessary for<br />
the lecturers and teachers to be very ready with<br />
their warnings. He must be a stupid person,<br />
however, who was unable in six months to find<br />
out whether a student would fail or succeed. We<br />
now await the American treatise.<br />
Every year, as regularly as the showers of<br />
August, appears the letter complaining of the<br />
bold bad smuggler who imports Tauchnitz editions<br />
in his pockets. The whole family, girls and all, enter<br />
with zeal into the smuggling business; impromptu<br />
pockets are devised in feminine garments; men’s<br />
coats are found to contain stowage room pre-<br />
viously unsuspected; a successful run is made ;<br />
and the family shelves are enriched with another<br />
row of Tauchnitz books. They have been bought<br />
at half the cost of the English edition, you see.<br />
Cheapness before anything. These books, more-<br />
over, are openly sold in this country; one may<br />
sometimes see rows of them in the secondhand<br />
shops. What is to be done P. It is impossible to<br />
touch the conscience of the traveller homeward<br />
bound. He will not smuggle lace, because he<br />
understands that lace is property—it is visible<br />
property—he must not defraud the revenue;<br />
literary property he does not understand—he<br />
cannot see it. Here is a book—why cannot he<br />
take the book home with him P Because the law<br />
prohibits? Nonsense; it can hurt nobody. It is<br />
impossible to make him see that to import this<br />
book is an infringement of right; a robbery of<br />
author or publisher, or both. Therefore some-<br />
thing else must be attempted. What? Let us<br />
take counsel together. There must surely be some<br />
way of preventing the smuggling of books. Now<br />
the rough and ready way by which dockyard<br />
labourers are prevented from stealing dockyard<br />
stores might be attempted. Wardens of the yard<br />
stand at the gates and feel the men as they pass.<br />
An expert hand would detect a Tauchnitz in the<br />
coat pocket. And a substantial fine judiciously<br />
and sternly administered would do the rest. But<br />
perhaps some other method might be suggested.<br />
- We referred last month to the critic who<br />
desires the reduction of three volumes to one,<br />
because we should then get a shorter novel. I<br />
have before me two novels, each in one volume.<br />
One is called “Marcella," and the other “The<br />
Manxman.” The former contains about 28O,OOO<br />
words, and is therefore twice as long as the<br />
ordinary three-volume novel; the latter contains<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 103 (#117) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
IO3<br />
about 236,000 words, and is therefore half as<br />
large again. No ; we shall not necessarily get<br />
our novels any shorter when they are published<br />
in orie volume; and, as was said last month, a<br />
book may be very short and yet very ill-con-<br />
structed.<br />
It is well known that Mr. Hall Caine<br />
deliberately resolved to try the result of appealing<br />
to the public at once with his new novel “The<br />
Manxman.” The following was the result, pub-<br />
lished here with the author's sanction, eight days<br />
before the day of issue:—<br />
Mudie's subscription .......... IOOO<br />
Smith’s 35 ............... 200<br />
Smith's railway stalls............ ... 2COO<br />
The trade, &c. ..................... 4OOO<br />
Separate Colonial edition ......... 5OOO<br />
Total, I 2,260, before the book was out. Now, it<br />
must be remembered that Izoo, or even looo, is a<br />
very large subscription for a three-volume novel.<br />
The publishers’ immediate returns, therefore, are<br />
probably more than doubled by the new system.<br />
Everybody, however, it is objected, is not so<br />
popular as Mr. Hall Caine. That is quite true.<br />
The figures must therefore be taken to show what<br />
may be meant by a popular work, and they<br />
certainly do carry encouragement to those<br />
who believe in going to the whole public of<br />
readers in the first instance.<br />
Since this was written the Athenaeum (Aug. 25)<br />
states that the first edition of 20,000 “ ran low ’’<br />
in a fortnight.<br />
We have been accused of encouraging persons<br />
who have not the faintest chance of achieving<br />
either kind of literary reputation—that is,<br />
reputation for literary style, or popularity—to<br />
believe that figures such as these may apply to<br />
themselves. Disappointment most probably awaits<br />
those sanguine persons, But is it not the same<br />
in other professions P. The freshman from the<br />
country grammar school goes up to the university<br />
dreaming of the Craven, with a first-class and a<br />
fellowship to follow. In five or six years he has<br />
found his place as a third-class man and an<br />
assistant master in his old school. The young<br />
barrister recognises the splendid prizes of his<br />
profession and dreams of becoming a leader, a<br />
Q.C., a judge, a Lord Chancellor. Why should<br />
not the young writer in the same way dream of<br />
vast popularity ? Meantime, as the Society is in<br />
existence mainly for the defence of literary pro-<br />
perty, is it not necessary to show what literary<br />
property means ?<br />
A paper on the “Art of the Novelist,” by the<br />
late Amelia B, Edwards, is published in the<br />
August number of the Contemporary. The<br />
paper bears the appearance of being unfinished,<br />
or, at least, uncorrected, being out of proportion,<br />
covering too much ground, and generally “un-<br />
workmanlike.” But, for one thing, it is valuable.<br />
The author speaks out strongly on behalf of a<br />
novelist whom we seem to be forgetting, viz.,<br />
Anthony Trollope. His works will perhaps be<br />
read again, but not until the time comes when<br />
the society of this century has become the study<br />
of the historian. Then, indeed, Trollope will be<br />
found a mine of wealth for the ideas, the habits,<br />
the prejudices of that kind of society — the<br />
higher middle class — which he drew so well.<br />
Perhaps no novelist has ever understood his own<br />
generation better than Trollope. Dickens knew<br />
the lower middle class; Trollope knew the class<br />
above — the gentlefolk of the country town;<br />
the clergy; the country people; the professionals. .<br />
Last year in America. I met a lady—a lady no<br />
longer young—a lady of reading and culture—<br />
who declared to me that, in her opinion, whatever<br />
might be said to the contrary, Trollope was the<br />
first English novelist of this century. Trollope's<br />
greatest vogue was in the Sixties. When he died<br />
—was it not in 1879 P−he had not outlived his<br />
reputation, because there were millions who<br />
remembered his work, but his circle of readers<br />
had wofully diminished. Those of us who<br />
remember the Sixties can recall the joy with<br />
which his novels were received, one after the other;<br />
the firm drawing; the clearly outlined portrait—<br />
all his figures were types; the individuality of<br />
the author who owed nothing to any predecessor.<br />
Thinking over these things, I understood what<br />
that American lady meant. And here is Amelia B.<br />
Edwards, after her death, speaking to us to much<br />
the same effect. I wonder how a modern young<br />
lady would like one of Trollope's novels of the<br />
Sixties, with its illustrations — the dumpy girl<br />
with her hair in a net, the crinolined skirts, the<br />
flat heels, her round face with the great innocent<br />
eyes, her honest worship of Man the Superior—<br />
ohl so very, very different from her daughter,<br />
from the new girl, who defers to no masculine<br />
mind, talks on all subjects, writes on all, and<br />
carries a latch key !<br />
The testimony of Professor Brander Matthews,<br />
of New York (see p. 29), to the working of the<br />
American Copyright Act, which we owe to the<br />
Daily Chronicle, is extremely valuable. He<br />
shows, especially, how the Act has weeded out<br />
the reprints of English authors, and encouraged<br />
and stimulated American authors, who for the<br />
first time find themselves, he says, free from com-<br />
petition with stolen goods. Henceforth all the<br />
best books will belong to both countries alike;<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 104 (#118) ############################################<br />
<br />
IO4<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
but the bulk of the more popular literature will<br />
remain American for the Americans, and British<br />
for Britons; in other words, while the writers<br />
who can command an audience on both sides of<br />
the Atlantic will enjoy the widest audience that<br />
was ever granted to any writer in any country,<br />
the people for their daily reading will prefer their<br />
own folk, their own local setting, and their own<br />
dialect. I am pleased to read Professor<br />
Matthews’ opinion on the effect of free libraries,<br />
because I have always maintained, from my own<br />
experience, observation, and conversation with<br />
those who know, viz., librarians themselves, pre-<br />
cisely the same opinion.<br />
As regards the magazines, it is also pleasant<br />
to find Professor Matthews practically saying<br />
exactly what has been said in the Author. In<br />
one or two points he does not speak from know-<br />
ledge. For instance, he says that the American<br />
weekly paper contains much the same kind of<br />
work, and is illustrated in the same way, as our<br />
Strand. Obviously he has never seen the illustra-<br />
tions of the Strand, or he would not compare<br />
them with the terrible things of the American<br />
weekly. Again, I doubt his “main" fact;<br />
namely, that the American reading public is so<br />
much larger than our own. He quotes a circula-<br />
tion of 200,000 copies. We can show a circulation<br />
of 3OO,OOO copies of this same magazine, the<br />
Strand. The questions are, it seems to me—<br />
What makes popularity ? Is good work com-<br />
patible with popularity ? The example of the<br />
American magazines seem to prove that it is—<br />
unless, which would be a most humiliating con-<br />
fession, we must own that the middle class in<br />
this country is below the corresponding class in<br />
America in intelligence, taste, and cultivation.<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
*-* →<br />
r- - -,<br />
PUBLIC LIBRARIES IN AMERICA.”<br />
C{INCE writing the notes on English Free<br />
S Libraries and the books read by the people<br />
who use them, for the number of August,<br />
I have received a work by Mr. William J.<br />
Fletcher, Librarian of Amherst, on the Public<br />
Libraries in America (Columbian Knowledge<br />
Series: Sampson Low and Co). This little book<br />
supplements the information already gathered<br />
concerning our own libraries. The greater part<br />
of it is, it is true, devoted to topics belonging to<br />
* Public Libraries in America. By William J. Fletcher,<br />
M.A., Librarian of Amherst College. London; Sampson<br />
Low, Marston, and Co. 1894,<br />
librarians, such as classification, cataloguing, pre-<br />
servation, distribution, buying, and binding.<br />
There are, however, many points of more general<br />
interest. For instance, as to the number of public<br />
libraries. In the year 1858 there were in the<br />
United States no more than IOO libraries, with<br />
something like a million volumes altogether.<br />
The largest was that of Harvard College, with<br />
70,000 volumes. In 1890 the number of libraries<br />
in the country was 4000, the number of volumes<br />
amounted altogether to 27,OOO,OOO ; and there<br />
were fifty libraries with more than 50,000 volumes<br />
each. Moreover, free libraries are multiplying<br />
much more rapidly than ever before. Not only<br />
are there founded every year many new libraries,<br />
but it is found that the old libraries cost more<br />
every year to maintain, the growth of a large<br />
library being much faster in proportion than<br />
that of a small library. Neglected depart-<br />
ments are discovered and brought up to date;<br />
serial publications have to be continued; the<br />
reference department is always increasing.<br />
A great deal has been done in the States by<br />
private gifts. This book contains a list of donors<br />
and donations, including only those of 50,000<br />
dollars and upwards, amounting in all to<br />
17,OOO,OOO dollars, or three and a half million<br />
sterling ! How much has been given to free<br />
libraries in this country by private persons P<br />
The incomes of the hundred largest public<br />
libraries are also given in a classified list ;<br />
they amount to nearly a million and a half of<br />
dollars, or £300,000, but the returns of ten out of<br />
the hundred are not complete. The number of<br />
free public libraries which contain more than<br />
10,000 volumes does not much exceed one hundred.<br />
But in the smaller towns there are a great many<br />
libraries as yet quite small, too small to be<br />
included in the Government report.<br />
The 4ooo libraries above mentioned may be<br />
divided roughly as follows:<br />
College and school libraries... . 2 OOO<br />
Subscription libraries ... 5CO<br />
Libraries of societies, &c. . IOOO<br />
Free public libraries 5CO<br />
The free public libraries are all lending libraries.<br />
For instance, in the Newark (New Jersey) library<br />
any resident of the town may freely borrow books,<br />
under certain conditions to insure the library<br />
against loss. This extension of the public library,<br />
once introduced, seems essential for its true<br />
usefulness. A large number of the libraries are<br />
open on Sunday, but not the greater number.<br />
Again, there are a large number of special<br />
libraries not included in the lists already con-<br />
sidered. Almost every State has its Historical<br />
Society, which has its library, free and open to<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 105 (#119) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
iO5<br />
any student. There are also the State libraries,<br />
which are composed chiefly of law books and<br />
public documents, of great use for purposes of<br />
reference. And there are the special collections of<br />
scientific books. At Washington alone there are<br />
nine special libraries, including more than a<br />
million volumes, and of the university libraries<br />
there are six at least which contain over IOO,OOO<br />
volumes each ; that of Harvard alone contains<br />
43O,OOO volumes.<br />
What do the people who use these libraries read?<br />
This little book gives no lists or details. But it<br />
states, what everyone might guess beforehand, that<br />
the fiction circulated far exceeds all other classes of<br />
books together, “the great majority of readers<br />
seeming to care for nothing else.” Not that the<br />
American librarian groans over the fact. “This,”<br />
he says, “simply shows how great is the demand<br />
for reading as recreation. To the masses of the<br />
people, hard worked and living humdrum lives,<br />
as well as to their pining for something to kill<br />
time, the novel comes as an open door into an<br />
ideal life, in the enjoyment of which, even in<br />
fancy, one may forget the hardships or the<br />
tedium of real life.” Something is said as to the<br />
guidance exercised by librarians in this respect.<br />
Enough has been said to show that the Ameri-<br />
cans are much in advance of us in the matter of<br />
libraries. Four thousand libraries with over Io,000<br />
volumes each, and a great many more with from<br />
one to ten thousand; more libraries continually<br />
being founded ; rich men continually giving great<br />
sums of money for the foundation and mainten-<br />
ance of libraries; this is a statement with which<br />
comparison is not calculated to inflate our own<br />
pride.<br />
One thing more. Everything good in litera-<br />
ture becomes instantly, as soon as published, the<br />
common property of all the English-speaking<br />
peoples. These figures illustrate and prove, what<br />
we have persistently maintained, that already a<br />
popular book, of whatever kind — historical,<br />
scientific, religious, imaginative—commands in<br />
Great Britain and Ireland, the Colonies, India,<br />
and the United States, taken all together, an<br />
audience from the libraries alone which has never<br />
yet been equalled in the history of literature.<br />
There are writers belonging to this country alone,<br />
writers in every branch of literature, who<br />
command on the first appearance of a new book<br />
the subscription of every important library over<br />
the vast area where our language prevails. And<br />
great as is already this audience, it is nothing<br />
compared with that which awaits the writer and<br />
teacher of fifty years hence. When the number<br />
of libraries will be multiplied by fifty, and<br />
the number of readers by ten, one hundred<br />
millions of English-speaking people will be two<br />
hundred millions: if there are now only ten<br />
millions of readers there will then be a hundred<br />
millions. W. B.<br />
*– A –iº<br />
r- - -<br />
LOWE'S COMPLETION.<br />
Dim are the memories of those early days<br />
When Love was only in the bud as yet ;<br />
Swift glances—peeps of tangled woodland ways:—<br />
The hues she wore, the way her hair was set.<br />
Like broken lights upon some fairy stream,<br />
When Dian’s silver shafts are shivered there,<br />
Through misty veil seen faintly as in dream,<br />
So gleam those far off days, so dimly fair.<br />
As we forget its tributary rills,<br />
When seawards borne upon the river's breast ;<br />
The flashing breakers boom ; amid the hills<br />
The becks are hushed, or murmur at the best.<br />
So, launched on Life’s inexorable sea,<br />
Those echoes of the past have ceased to move<br />
Our wedded souls; their whispers drowned—Ah me !—<br />
In the imperial symphony of love<br />
F. B. DOVETON.<br />
*- a sº-º<br />
sº- - -<br />
LITERATURE OR PHYSICAL SCIENCE:<br />
OR the last twenty years, the increasing<br />
predominance of subjects other than<br />
literary in English education has been<br />
most marked. An active movement has been<br />
observable to deprive letters of the prominent<br />
place they had hitherto occupied; and confident<br />
predictions have been uttered that this revolution<br />
will be complete, that art and letters will be<br />
entirely replaced by the absorbing pursuit of the<br />
knowledge afforded in physical science.<br />
No doubt, the scientific method of investi-<br />
gation is a most valuable discipline, and it is<br />
desirable that everyone should have some expe-<br />
rience of it ; but it is folly to deny that Art and<br />
Poetry and Eloquence have the capability of<br />
refreshing and delighting us, and possess for<br />
mankind a fortifying, elevating, quickening, and<br />
suggestive power. However, for the time being<br />
the partisans of Science are popularly supposed<br />
to have the victory; and gloomy prognostications<br />
are to be heard with reference to the future of<br />
modern literature as well as antique. .<br />
These apprehensions have been felt elsewhere<br />
in Europe. The late M. Renan asserted that<br />
“one hundred years hence the whole of the<br />
historical and critical studies in which his life<br />
had been passed, and his reputation made, will<br />
have fallen into neglect, and that natural science<br />
will exclusively occupy man’s attention.” No<br />
one, familiar with the history of European litera-<br />
ture, will for a moment accept this view. It is<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 106 (#120) ############################################<br />
<br />
106<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
only by the pursuit of this study that we can<br />
rightly appreciate the history of the race. Litera-<br />
ture is the voice of the people. I believe that so<br />
long as man exists, from the very constitution of<br />
the human mind, there will always be moral and<br />
aesthetic cravings, which Science, however attrac-<br />
tive, can never gratify. I think, therefore, that<br />
the “splendour and rapid march of the physical<br />
sciences” have partially eclipsed, but will never<br />
extinguish, the interest in the older subject of<br />
literature.<br />
However, some of those whose opinions carry<br />
weight in the scholastic world have asserted that<br />
it cannot be taught, and that the experiment has<br />
failed. The signs of this failure are to be found in<br />
the modifications of certain examinational require-<br />
ments, in which literature has been degraded to<br />
a secondary place, or altogether eliminated, or<br />
recognised only in connection with Philology.<br />
“Literature has been regarded as mere material<br />
for the study of words. All that constitutes its<br />
intrinsic value has been ignored. Its master-<br />
pieces have been resolved into exercises in<br />
grammar, syntax, and etymology; its history<br />
into a barren catalogue of names and works and<br />
dates. No faculty but that of memory has been<br />
called into play in studying it.” That it should<br />
have failed therefore to commend itself as an<br />
instrument of education is no more than might<br />
have been expected.<br />
The aim and purpose of modern culture are<br />
distinctly utilitarian ; all studies have been<br />
appraised and valued, and “saleable knowledge”<br />
is the most sought. No wonder the proper<br />
study of literature can find no place in the<br />
system of modern education. Indeed, it is better<br />
out of it.<br />
Wise men are pointing out the necessity in<br />
these days for finding some effective agency for<br />
cherishing within us the ideal, and herein is the<br />
great value of literature to all those who seek<br />
the higher education, with a genuine desire for<br />
true culture. It supplies a want, which, how-<br />
ever much the exclusively scientific may ignore,<br />
will make itself felt in the human heart. It was<br />
well said by a great Oxford scholar that “the<br />
object of literature in education is to open the<br />
mind, to correct it, to refine it, to enable it to<br />
comprehend and digest its knowledge, to give it<br />
power over its own faculties, application, flexi-<br />
bility, method, critical exactness, sagacity, ad-<br />
dress, and expression.”<br />
support the truism that literature is a most<br />
valuable agent in self-culture. But we can avoid<br />
the mistake of those who confound its pursuit<br />
with education, or regard it as the sole and<br />
sufficient agent. Burke said, “What is the<br />
education of the world? Reading a parcel of<br />
We need not pause to<br />
books? No! Restraint and discipline, examples<br />
of virtue and of justice, these are what form the<br />
education of the world.” -<br />
Let us avoid all extravagance, however, and<br />
remember that it contains “the best that has<br />
been thought and said in the world,” and there-<br />
fore regard it as a priceless factor in self-<br />
cultivation.<br />
But enough, perhaps, has been said upon the<br />
disciplinary and educative character of the study<br />
of literature. It contains other sources of<br />
interest; it brings to our knowledge many whom<br />
it is a delight to know. While some excite our<br />
reverent admiration, and some afford endless<br />
entertainment, there are others who call forth<br />
deeper feelings by the loveableness of their<br />
character—the noble-minded, in whom pride and<br />
vanity, resentment and self-love have no place,<br />
who in pure simplicity and singleness of heart<br />
give their great knowledge and power unre-<br />
servedly to the world, solely that all may share<br />
their own happiness; men whose lives seem<br />
realised ideals of what is most excellent in moral<br />
beauty.<br />
*-- * ~ *<br />
e- - -º<br />
BOOK TALK.<br />
AS the one-volume fiction anything to fear<br />
from the one-volume collections of short<br />
stories? It would be very interesting to<br />
know whether the circulation of “Tife's Little<br />
Ironies” has equalled that of the one-volume edition<br />
of any of Mr. Hardy's other novels. Perhaps such<br />
a collection of good short stories, already popular,<br />
is likely to become more popular than the long<br />
novel, whether in one or three volumes. In the<br />
words of a recent critic, “the tendency of the<br />
public taste is in the direction of brevity and wit<br />
rather than of long drawn-out narratives and<br />
elaborate word painting!” No rule, however,<br />
can be laid down as to length, that depends on<br />
the subject; on the author's style; on the inci-<br />
dents; on a thousand things. If a novel can be<br />
too long, it may also be too short. And, indeed,<br />
every one knows novels which one would like to<br />
go on for ever. The impatience of readers on the<br />
length of a novel belongs to London, or to the rush<br />
of life in great cities, which leaves little time for<br />
reading. In the country, or quiet colonies, there<br />
is no such impatience: the reader loves to linger<br />
among the creations of the novelist.<br />
Mr. Morley Roberts' new book, “The Purifica-<br />
tion of Dolores Silva, and other Stories,” is one<br />
which must leave a good impression on the reader<br />
as far as the art of short story writing is con-<br />
cerned, but, at the same time, the impression is a<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 107 (#121) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
IO7<br />
sad one. In the first story, “ Initiation,” a girl's<br />
first lover, or, let us say, would be lover, is treated<br />
with surely more than usual severity, even by<br />
the most startled innocence. In the second story<br />
the lover never knows till after her death that the<br />
heroine cared about him at all. In the third,<br />
called “When She May,” the luckless proverb is<br />
complete. She does get May—a May lasting a<br />
lifetime. “Panic ’’ is the next, and is the one<br />
story in the book which everyone will have read<br />
before, we forget where it appeared, but it was<br />
spoken of as a good story at once. We cannot be<br />
quite sure whether, after carefully showing that<br />
the chief character was a coward, the author did<br />
not mean to convey the idea that after all he had<br />
a certain amount of courage—as much as a great<br />
many men. However lily-livered, however great<br />
a “cur” a man may be, to cut one's throat with a<br />
a razor in front of a looking glass requires some<br />
nerve. The “Fair-trader’ is, perhaps, the most<br />
worthy of praise, but it provokes the question<br />
whether it is at all founded on fact. If European<br />
girls who disappear are really drafted into<br />
Mohammedan households, it is surely a question<br />
for public meetings and Parliament.<br />
When we take up Miss Ella Hepworth Dixon's<br />
story, “A Modern Woman,” it is natural just<br />
now to wonder beforehand whether or not we are<br />
going to have the fin-de-siècle young person over<br />
again. It is therefore particularly pleasing to<br />
find that a modern woman as described by a<br />
woman need not necessarily imply a pretty piece<br />
of up-to-date vulgarity. We have in Mary<br />
Erle, Miss Dixon's heroine, as sensible a girl as<br />
One would expect the daughter of an eminent<br />
scientist to be; her father's distinguished position<br />
gives her a footing in society, but at his sudden<br />
death she has to earn her own living. The story<br />
opens with some account of the professor's<br />
funeral, which might have been pruned a little,<br />
true as it is to the dismal facts of our methods<br />
of interment. From this point we have a history<br />
of the girl’s fruitless attempts to become an<br />
artist, and afterwards of her success as a society<br />
journalist and writer of stories. With the account<br />
of these struggles is interwoven that of her own<br />
and her friend’s love affairs, which the author<br />
refuses in either case to bring within the possibi-<br />
lity of a happy ending. We doubt whether<br />
Miss Dixon has been as successful with her men<br />
characters, but we confess to have been suffi-<br />
ciently interested to want to know what became<br />
of them in the real end—“Jimmie,” for instance,<br />
and the A.R.A.<br />
One method of trying to arrive at the best<br />
relation between producer and consumer is to<br />
compare our system with that of other nations,<br />
and the question is asked, when his (the<br />
novelist's) story has passed through the magazines<br />
or the syndicate of newspapers, must he fling it<br />
on to the world as one volume, and let people buy<br />
it or not as they think fit * That is what he has<br />
to do in France, that is what he has to do in<br />
Germany, that is what he has to do in the United<br />
States. Whether foreigners can be called greater<br />
readers than Englishmen because they may be<br />
greater buyers appears doubtful—we have had our<br />
system, they have had theirs. But if our three-<br />
volume system has given way, there are those<br />
who say that the foreign system of publication<br />
has become quite as risky.<br />
For instance, apropos of the novel in Paris, we<br />
have lately read: “A member of a great novel pub-<br />
lishing firm tells me that now it does not pay to<br />
bring out novels unless there is some great name<br />
on the title page.” Zola still makes money, but<br />
this business man believes the turn of the tide<br />
has in his case begun. Before advocating any<br />
foreign system, American, then, or continental,<br />
the author would require a much more exact<br />
knowledge than we at present possess of the<br />
agreements entered into between publisher and<br />
author in those countries. As it is, it has taken<br />
this Society many pages of recapitulation to<br />
get its members to understand that while there<br />
is no sentiment in business, every plausible man<br />
of business knows there is a great deal of<br />
business in sentiment.<br />
Perhaps the most striking, because the most<br />
ignorant, comment on the recent three-volume<br />
novel discussion, is the following:—“The simple<br />
fact is, that until the public can be educated<br />
to buy books instead of borrowing them, the<br />
attempt to produce original works of fiction<br />
in one volume must inevitably result in a<br />
ruinous failure.” Well, but how about the thou-<br />
sands—the hundreds of thousands—the millions<br />
of one-volume novels which are bought every<br />
year P. How about the returns of those who write<br />
them P The fact is, the public does buy books<br />
in vast numbers. Perhaps the numbers should be<br />
even greater, but it is absurd still to speak of the<br />
public as a borrowing instead of a buying body.<br />
As to the price asked, perhaps the critic could<br />
help by giving his opinion as to whether the book<br />
is worth buying at all, or at any other price.<br />
Rarely, if ever, in our leading reviews do we<br />
see the price of the book mentioned or discussed,<br />
but now it really seems a false shame on their<br />
part to persistently avoid the pecuniary question<br />
when perusing a book; but however that may be,<br />
apart from excellence in literary criticism, the<br />
duty of educating the public to become book<br />
buyers must lie chiefly in the hands of the critics.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 108 (#122) ############################################<br />
<br />
IO8<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
May we not therefore leave the reading powers<br />
of the public alone for a minute, and revert to<br />
the idea of property? In every family there will<br />
be those who read and those who prefer other<br />
amusements; but the outlay of money upon books,<br />
the investment in books, the formation of a<br />
library, which in the ordinary course of events<br />
would pass to a man's children or be sold—why<br />
should this be generally left to chance? Why<br />
should a householder be so careless of the value<br />
of the books admitted into his home that on his<br />
demise they will only fetch I d. or 2d. a volume?<br />
Yet how often is that found to be the case ?<br />
A valuable book is certainly more within the<br />
reach of most men than are valuable pictures,<br />
but because some books can be obtained cheap,<br />
like some prints, that is no reason why some<br />
discrimination should not be used. Library<br />
is perhaps too big a term for most people's<br />
collection of books, but, on the other hand,<br />
modern literature must have fallen very low<br />
indeed if it excites no desire in the reader to<br />
possess and re-read what has appeared to be<br />
worth finishing when once taken up.<br />
Mr. Lockwood has published through the Rox-<br />
burghe Press his lecture on the Laws and the<br />
Ilawyers of Pickwick, with a sketch of Mr.<br />
Serjeant Buzfuz as a frontispiece. Every reader<br />
of Pickwick has his own idea of what Buzfuz<br />
was probably inclined to be like, and those who<br />
sometimes may find amusement in visiting the<br />
public galleries of the courts may have fixed on<br />
quite a different type of counsel as representative<br />
of that distinguished advocate. Surely Serjeant<br />
Buzfuz's handkerchief ought to appear. As the<br />
lecture consisted mostly of readings, the author<br />
tends an apology for reproducing it in book form ;<br />
but perhaps he did not intend it to be much<br />
more than a souvenir of what must have been<br />
an enjoyable evening to each of his audience.<br />
A new novel, entitled “The Birth of a Soul’’<br />
—a psychological study — by Mrs. Alfred<br />
Phillips, author of “Benedicta,” &c., will be<br />
published in England and America early in<br />
October, in one volume.<br />
“A Spanish Singer,” by Annabel Gray (Stone-<br />
man), vol. 2 of the Annabel Gray library, is a<br />
well-constructed and dramatic story depicting<br />
the artistic experiences of a young débutante in<br />
opera, in Italy. Vocalists will find much to<br />
interest them in this realistic sketch of art<br />
abroad.<br />
In Mr. S. R. Crockett’s “Mad Sir Uchtred of<br />
the Hills,” the author has at least done one thing,<br />
and that a difficult one ; he has added another<br />
“ cat’’ to literature. The madman has a broken-<br />
legged wild cat which performs a grand feat in<br />
the destruction of a weasel. The introduction<br />
of this incident, and the manner of describing it,<br />
seems to us to be the best thing in this clever book.<br />
The late Professor Romanes wrote poetry and<br />
printed his verse, but refrained from publishing<br />
it. His poems, which are said to be chiefly<br />
religious in their tone, were given to his friends<br />
only. It would be possible, perhaps, to secure<br />
the publication of those which may appear<br />
worthy of the author's reputation as a man of<br />
science.<br />
Mr. Samuel H. Church thinks that Oliver<br />
Cromwell has never had justice done him by any<br />
of his English biographers. He has therefore<br />
addressed himself seriously to the subject, and<br />
the result has been issued by Putnam's, New<br />
York.<br />
A presentation copy of “Among the Boers and<br />
Basutas; or, a Study of our Life on the Frontier,”<br />
by Mrs. Barkly, has been graciously accepted by<br />
the Queen. The book is now in its second<br />
edition.<br />
The Rev. Prebendary Jones has issued (Smith,<br />
Elder, and Co.) a new and cheaper edition of his<br />
“Holiday Papers.”<br />
This is the very deadest time of all the year. The<br />
book advertisements are chiefly lists of the<br />
“Standard ” works and “Favourite ” novels.<br />
The “ announcements’ have hardly begun. The<br />
dear old phrase— ‘Messrs. Bungay and Co.<br />
promise us”—as if we were all waiting anxiously<br />
for that distinguished Firm to tell us what it<br />
has got in the bag—has not yet appeared; it will<br />
begin next week. It is a mistake, however, to<br />
suppose that it is the month of the least reading.<br />
If the publishers of the Saturday or the Spectator<br />
would divulge secrets it would probably be shown<br />
that the circulation goes up, not down, while the<br />
people are running about the country, killing long<br />
hours in the train, sitting in lonely seaside<br />
lodgings with a rainy day to get through.<br />
Holiday time is reading time with a large number<br />
of people who are too much occupied with busi-<br />
ness and society to read while they are at home.<br />
The magazines which are tossed over in June are<br />
read through in August.<br />
Of literary articles there are not many in the<br />
August magazines. One observes in the Contem-<br />
porary a paper by the late Amelia B. Edwards on<br />
the “Art of the Novelist; ” a paper by Hall<br />
Caine in the National Review on “The Novelist<br />
in Shakespeare; ” and No. 1 of a series of papers<br />
on “The Historical Novel” by Mr. George<br />
Saintsbury in Macmillan. All on fiction.<br />
The friends of the late Rev. Henry Allon, D.D.,<br />
will note with pleasure that the story of part, at<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 109 (#123) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
IO9<br />
least, of his life, that of his Ministry, has been<br />
written and published. The biographer is the<br />
Rev. W. Hardy Harwood ; the publishers are<br />
Cassell and Company. It would seem, however,<br />
that his literary life, which would interest many,<br />
apart altogether from his career as an indepen-<br />
dent minister, is not included. Yet he was for<br />
many years the editor of the British Quarterly<br />
Ičeview, a magazine which was the home of many<br />
admirable papers—literary, social, and historical,<br />
as well as controversial. Dr. Allon was a per-<br />
sonal friend of the late Dean Stanley, and<br />
acquainted with most of the men of leading in<br />
that part of the literary world which is engaged<br />
on subjects treated in quarterly reviews. He was<br />
a many sided man ; his views on literature were<br />
broad, and while he was its editor the British<br />
Quarterly Review was a power of considerable<br />
weight and authority.<br />
Mr. Grant Allen’s new book “The Tidal<br />
Thames” (Cassell and Co.), is a sumptuous work,<br />
illustrated by—and illustrating—twenty original<br />
drawings by W. L. Wyllie, A.R.A. It is not,<br />
perhaps, a cheap edition—35 15s. 6d. cannot be<br />
called cheap—but the drawings are exquisite;<br />
everything that is fine, however, is in a sense<br />
cheap, whatever price be put upon it; because<br />
there is no measuring of artistic worth by money,<br />
and the only question is whether one can afford<br />
to pay the price asked for the work desired.<br />
Mr. Standish O'Grady's heroic Irish romance,<br />
“The Coming of Cuculain,” will be published<br />
early in October by Methuen and Co., illustrated<br />
by Mr. D. Murray Smith. The story is now run-<br />
ning serially through the Warder (Dublin) and<br />
the Northern Whig (Belfast). The hero of Mr.<br />
O'Grady’s tale is the famous Cuchullin of High-<br />
land tradition, the Cuthullun of MacPherson’s<br />
eplc.<br />
*~ * ~ *<br />
g- - --e.<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—THE LAUREATESHIP.<br />
& HAVE read with great interest the article<br />
| on the Laureateship and its long abeyance<br />
in the Author for this month. It would be<br />
impossible to put the view of the case which we,<br />
who are in favour of maintaining this ancient and<br />
unique office, entertain in terser or more forcible<br />
language. To my mind the delay is one which<br />
can in no way be excused. There is one point<br />
which I should like to emphasise which the<br />
writer of the article has passed over, and it is<br />
this. It is notorious that poetry in England does<br />
not in general pay. Long after Mr. Tennyson<br />
had published his most characteristic and<br />
popular poems his income consisted mainly of the<br />
pension from the Consolidated Fund, which he<br />
retained to his death. But, on his appointment<br />
as Laureate, his income is said to have risen<br />
enormously. Without going into figures, it<br />
is certain that his position as Laureate very<br />
largely affected his popularity and increased his<br />
income.<br />
What the gains of a new Laureate would be on<br />
appointment it is impossible to tell. If he should<br />
unfortunately be a writer with no public,<br />
probably they would be but small. If he<br />
already had a considerable circulation, it is<br />
certain that the appointment would mean a<br />
very largely increased income.<br />
It is of this substantial advantage that the<br />
perhaps natural hesitation of extreme age has<br />
deprived the literary profession for nearly two<br />
years. It is well that the literary public should<br />
know that it is not the pittance of £80 or so,<br />
which is the nominal salary, that is at stake, but<br />
a much larger sum, to say nothing of the great<br />
discouragement which the blank silence of the<br />
authorities has inflicted upon the chief glory of<br />
our literature for a period without precedent in<br />
the history of the vacant office.<br />
II.-M. MALLARME's SCHEME.<br />
I hope that the Society will take up and at least<br />
ventilate the proposal made by M. Mallarmé in<br />
the Figaro that the literature of the past should<br />
become the property of the nation, or at least of<br />
living writers. How much would have been<br />
realised by the works of Sir Walter Scott had<br />
there been a royalty of 1d. in the shilling laid<br />
upon every volume issued since the copyright<br />
came to an end ? And why, M. Mallarmé asks,<br />
should this great property be handed over, not to<br />
the nation, but to a small class of tradesmen P<br />
Pray let us know more about it. A MEMBER.<br />
III. ON THE WARNINGS AND ADVICE.<br />
(Our correspondent's letter on this subject will<br />
be found with comments on p. 99).<br />
IV.—ON THE CO-OPERATION OF MEMBERS.<br />
Now that the dead season gives one time to<br />
look round and think, I should like to ask you,<br />
Mr. Editor, if the time has not come to take the<br />
members’ opinions upon many subjects concerning<br />
which the Author has spoken from time to time.<br />
I would suggest that a list of subjects of<br />
importance to the craft be drawn up, taken one<br />
after the other, and referred to the whole body of<br />
members. I think that your hands would be<br />
strengthened, the members would feel that they<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 110 (#124) ############################################<br />
<br />
I IO<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
were having a voice, and that many ways of joint<br />
action might be arrived at. A Journal,IST.<br />
W.—THE SocIETY's READERs.<br />
I submitted a MS. to be read. I received an<br />
opinion which was careful and courteous, and not<br />
complimentary. It pointed out certain definite<br />
objections to the work as reasons why it would<br />
not be accepted. I have now removed those<br />
objections, yet it is not accepted.<br />
A BEGINNER.<br />
[It is to be hoped that the Society's reader did<br />
not commit himself to the statement that altera-<br />
tion would mean improvement, or that the<br />
removal of certain objections would mean<br />
acceptance by publishers. Everyone knows the<br />
common criticism on a new author. “Well, he<br />
knows, at least, how to write.” Any publisher's<br />
reader also knows the MS. of which he says,<br />
“Well, at least he has not yet learned to write.”<br />
The Society's reader can only suggest why the<br />
latter judgment was pronounced, and here the<br />
“way to write” can be discovered.]<br />
>e cº<br />
WHAT THE PAPERS SAY.<br />
I.—THE LATE MR. WYATT PAP worTH.<br />
R. WYATT PAPWORTH, F.R.I.B.A.,<br />
M curator of Sir John Soane’s Museum,<br />
died at the museum on Sunday, Aug. 19.<br />
Mr. Papworth was distinguished for his literary<br />
work in connection with architecture, especially<br />
in his contributions to the Transactions of the<br />
Royal Institute of British Architects, among<br />
which those “On the Superintendents of English<br />
Buildings in the Middle Ages, with especial<br />
reference to William of Wykeham,” and “Collec-<br />
tions for an Historical Account of Masons, their<br />
Customs, Institutions, &c.,” are of historical<br />
importance. He was also a constant contributor<br />
to Notes and Queries. To his labours the<br />
architectural profession is indebted for the pro-<br />
duction of “The Dictionary of Architecture”<br />
(Architectural Publication Society), recently com-<br />
pleted in eight volumes folio, begun in 1852<br />
on the lines of the notes and collections of<br />
himself and his late brother, Mr. J. W. Pap-<br />
worth, and, until its completion in 1892, carried<br />
out under his sole editorship. Mr. Papworth, as<br />
a member of the Court and Master and Past<br />
Master of the Clothworkers' Company, took a<br />
leading part in the promotion of technical<br />
education and in the City and Guilds Institute.—<br />
Times, Aug. 21.<br />
II.--THE AIM AT PopULARITY.<br />
The man who aims at being popular and<br />
admired is not nearly so likely to be popular and<br />
admired as the man who thinks little or nothing<br />
about it, but aims simply at his own individual<br />
ideal. Here, again, the failure of the direct aim<br />
appears to be due to its real and perceived<br />
inferiority to those aims which usually secure it.<br />
The man who directly aims at getting admira-<br />
tion and esteem will hardly deserve them, for he<br />
cannot deserve them without cherishing plenty of<br />
aims which would be very likely to risk or forfeit<br />
other persons’ admiration and esteem. The man<br />
who lives for the good opinions of others, cannot be<br />
deserving of those good opinions, for he cannot<br />
contribute much to teach others, by the indepen-<br />
dence of his own life. In this case also, then, the<br />
ill-success of the direct pursuit of admiration is<br />
simply due to the fact that that pursuit is a lower<br />
aim than any consistent with the attainment of<br />
the admiration pursued. But if happiness be the<br />
true standard and end of life, why should it fall<br />
into the hands only of those who do not directly<br />
seek it P Surely, if it is not safe to pursue it<br />
directly, it can only be because it is not the<br />
proper end and aim of life—because while it may<br />
be the natural reward of the pursuit of better<br />
ends, it is not itself the chief end. Nothing could<br />
well be more improbable than that the one<br />
standard and best fruit of human action should<br />
be carefully wrapped up in the folds of inferior<br />
ends, so that you may come upon it by accident,<br />
if you are to taste it properly at all.<br />
R. H. HuTTON.<br />
a-i----~~~"<br />
•-Fs-e-es-e-<br />
NEW. BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS,<br />
Theology.<br />
BROWNE, CANON. The Christian Church in these Islands<br />
before the Coming of Augustine. Three lectures<br />
delivered at St. Paul's in January, 1894. Society for<br />
Promoting Christian Knowledge.<br />
DAVIDS, PROFEssoR RHYs. Buddhism.<br />
S.P.C.K. 2s. 6d.<br />
EVE, NOAH, ABRAHAM : a study in Genesis. By a Layman.<br />
Cassell. Is.<br />
GRAY, REV. HERBERT B. Men of Like Passions, being<br />
Characters of some Bible Heroes, and other sermons,<br />
preached to boys at Bradfield College. Longmans. 58.<br />
KING, RIGHT REv. E. Practical Reflections on Every Werse<br />
of the Prophet Isaiah. Longmans. 4s. 6d.<br />
MALDONATUS, JOHN. A Commentary on the Holy<br />
Gospels : St. Matthew's Gospel. Part III. Translated<br />
and edited from the original Latin by George J. Davie.<br />
John Hodges. Is... net.<br />
History and Biography. -<br />
CHURCH, CANON. Chapters in the Early History of the<br />
Church of Wells, I 136-1333. Limited edition. Elliot<br />
Stock, and Barnicott and Pearce, Taunton. 158.<br />
New edition.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 111 (#125) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I I I<br />
RLVIN, REv. C. R. S. The History of Walmer and Walmer<br />
Castle. Canterbury : Cross and Jackman.<br />
FoRREST, G. W. The Administration of the Marquis of<br />
Lansdowne, Viceroy of India, 1888-94. Calcutta :<br />
Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing.<br />
FREEMAN, PROFESSOR. The History of Sicily from the<br />
Earliest Times. Wol. IV. From the Tyranny of Diony-<br />
sios to the Death of Agathokles. Edited from post-<br />
humous MSS., with supplements and notes, by Arthur<br />
J. Evans. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press. Henry<br />
Frowde. 2 Is.<br />
GAsquièT, DR. FRANCIs A. Henry VIII. and the English<br />
Monasteries. Sixth Edition. Part I. Hodges. Is.<br />
HARRIs, THOMAs. Three Periods of English Architecture.<br />
B. T. Batsford. 7s. 6d.<br />
HowARD, MAJOR-GENERAL O. O.<br />
Funk and Wagnalls. 6s.<br />
HUME, MAJOR-GENERAL JoHN R. Reminiscences of the<br />
Crimean Campaign, with the 55th Regiment. The<br />
Author, 27, Pilgrim-street, Ludgate-hill. Cheap edition.<br />
3s.6d.<br />
RAYSERLING, DR. M. Christopher Columbus. Translated<br />
from the author’s MS. with his sanction and revision, by<br />
Charles Gross. Longmans. 5s.<br />
LLOYD-VERNEY, COL., and HUNT, LIEUT.-COL. J. M.<br />
Records of the Infantry Militia, Battalions of the<br />
County of Southampton from A.D. 1757 to 1894. And<br />
Records of the Artillery Militia Regiments of the<br />
County of Southampton from A.D. 1853 to 1894. With<br />
Isabella of Castile.<br />
portraits and illustrations Longmans. 3O8.<br />
MoRRIs, WILLIAM, and MAGNUsson, EIRíKR. The<br />
Heimskringla. Vol. II. By Snorri Sturluson. Trans-<br />
lated from the Icelandic. Being Vol. IV. of the Saga<br />
Library. Quaritch. 31. I Is. 6d.<br />
SHUCKBURGH, EVELYN S. A. History of Rome to the<br />
Battle of Actium. Macmillan. 8s. 6d.<br />
THIERs, Lou Is ADOLPHE. History of the Consulate and<br />
the Empire of France under Napoleon. Translated by<br />
D. Forbes Campbell and John Stebbing. With thirty-<br />
six steel plates. Chatto and Windus. Twelve vols.<br />
12s. each.<br />
WALTON, CoL. CLIFFORD, C.B. History of the British<br />
Standing Army A.D. 1660 to 1700. Harrison and<br />
Sons.<br />
General Literature.<br />
ABBOTTs, W., M.D. Stammering, Stuttering, and other<br />
Speech Affections: Their Causes and Cure. The<br />
Savoy Press. Is. -<br />
BADDELEY, M. J. R. Guide to the Peak District. Dulau<br />
and Co., Soho-square. 3s.<br />
BAKER, JAMEs. The New Guide to Bristol and Clifton.<br />
Edited. J. Baker and Son.<br />
BRASSEY, LORD. Papers and addresses on Work and<br />
Wages. With an introduction by G. Howell, M.P.<br />
Longmans. 58.<br />
BRITISH MUSEUM : Supplement to the CATALOGUE of the<br />
ARABIC MSS., by Charles Rien ; CATALOGUE of<br />
ARABIC Books, by A. G. Ellis, Vol. I. A to L; CATA-<br />
LoGUE of HEBREW Books acquired during the years<br />
1868 to 1892, by S. van Straalen. Longmans,<br />
Quaritch, Asher, Kegan Paul, and Henry Frowde.<br />
CALVERT, ALBERT F. The Aborigines of Western<br />
Australia. Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent, and<br />
Co.<br />
CASE AGAINST DIGGLEISM. Published for the Progressive<br />
School Board Election Council by Alexander and<br />
Shepheard. Is.<br />
CHANUTE, O. Progress in Flying Machines.<br />
American Engineer and Railroad Journal.<br />
New York :<br />
CICERO, M. T. Correspondence. Edited, with a revision<br />
of the text, a commentary, and introductory essays, by<br />
Professor Tyrrell and L. C. Purser. Wol. IV. Long-<br />
mans, Green. I5s.<br />
CYNICUs, HIs HUMOUR AND SATIRE.<br />
Company. Is.<br />
DAVIs, A. H. Dover College Register, 1871-1894. Edited<br />
by. Dover : the Editor. 2s. 6d.<br />
DEMBO, DR. J. A. The Jewish Method of Slaughter, com-<br />
pared with other Methods. Translated from the<br />
German. Kegan Paul. Boards, 2s. 6d. net.<br />
DOLAN, DR. THOMAS, M. Our State Hospitals. Leicester :<br />
John Richardson and Co. 2s. 6d.<br />
DUBOIs, F#1,Ix. The Anarchist Peril. Translated, edited,<br />
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Derechef. T. Fisher Unwin. 5s.<br />
EDGAR, John. Voluntary Schools and Board Schools Con-<br />
trasted. R. W. Simpson.<br />
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FUR AND FEATHER SERIES : THE GROUSE ; Natural<br />
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Thorburn. Longman's. 58.<br />
FURSE, COLONEL GEORGE. The Organisation and Adminis-<br />
tration of the Lines of Communication in War. Clowes<br />
and Sons. I28. -<br />
GREEN wooD, MAJOR. The Personal Responsibility of<br />
Judges. Paper Covers. G. Barber, Cursitor-street.<br />
HART, ERNEST, D.C.L. On the Use of Opium in India.<br />
Prepared by. Smith, Elder. Is.<br />
HATFIELD, T. H. Land o' Nod. Gay and Bird. 6d. net.<br />
HELLER, THOMAS EDMUND. The New Code for Evening<br />
Continuation Schools (1894-95). With Introduction,<br />
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HEwiTT, J. F. The Ruling Races of Prehistoric Times in<br />
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Archibald Constable and Co. 18s.<br />
|HOOPER, W. H., and PHILLIPs, W. C. Manual of Marks<br />
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ICTHYosAURUs. Hints and Wrinkles on Sea Fishing.<br />
Iliffe and Son. Is.<br />
Cynicus Publishing<br />
JONES, BENJAMIN. Co-operative Production. With a<br />
Prefatory Note by Mr. Acland, M.P. 2 vols. Henry<br />
Frowde. I5s.<br />
Journa L OF THE SANITARY INSTITUTE, for July. Stan-<br />
ford. 2s. 6d.<br />
LEHMANN, R. C. Conversational Hints for Young Shooters.<br />
Chatto and Windus.<br />
LE QUEUx, WILLIAM. The Great War in England in<br />
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Crowther. Tower Publishing Company. 6s.<br />
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Is. 6d.<br />
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5, Endsleigh-gardens, N.W.<br />
LUSSICH, ANTONIO D. Celebrated Shipwrecks.<br />
covers. Monte Video : El Siglo Ilustrado.<br />
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MILLAIS, J. G. Game Birds and Shooting Sketches.<br />
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MURRAY's HANDBOOK FOR SCOTLAND. Sixth Edition.<br />
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1816. Blades, East, and Blades.<br />
Paper<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 112 (#126) ############################################<br />
<br />
II 2<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
PARROTT, J. E. The Industrial and Social Life and<br />
Duties of the Citizen. W. H. Allen and Co. Is.<br />
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL Coloni AL INSTITUTE. Wol.<br />
XXV., 1893-94. Edited by the Secretary. The Royal<br />
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woode. 9d.<br />
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IS.<br />
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Company.<br />
SHAw, LIEUT.-CoI. WILKINson J. Elements of Modern<br />
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SIMs, G. R. Dagonet on Our Islands. Fisher Unwin. Is.<br />
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Clowes and Sons.<br />
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Mostyn, Bachelor. Gay and Bird. 3s.6d.<br />
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IS.<br />
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WALLIS, J. WHITE. Manual of Hygiene. Kegan Paul.<br />
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WILKIE, JAMEs. The Life Assurance Agent's Wade-<br />
Mecum. Compiled by. Edinburgh : Andrew Elliot. Is.<br />
WIRE, ALFRED P., and T)AY, G. Knowledge through the<br />
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BLACKMoRE, R. D. Perlycross. Sampson Dow, Marston,<br />
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269 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/269 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 05 (October 1894) | <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.+05+Issue+05+%28October+1894%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 05 (October 1894)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1894-10-01-The-Author-5-5 | | | | | 113–140 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1894-10-01">1894-10-01</a> | | | | | | | 5 | | | 18941001 | C be El u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.)<br />
CONDUCTED BY WALTER BESA NT.<br />
VoI. W.-No. 5.]<br />
OCTOBER 1, 1894.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
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<br />
## p. 114 (#128) ############################################<br />
<br />
II 4.<br />
THE AUTHOR,<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
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mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
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HE Editor of the Author begs to remind members of the<br />
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Those who possess the “Cost of Production ” are<br />
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<br />
<br />
## p. 115 (#129) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
115<br />
as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 />
hy 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 call it.<br />
*- - --><br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—MAYNARD, MERRILL, and Co., appellees, v.<br />
WILLIAM BEVERLEY HARRISON, appellant.<br />
May, 1894.<br />
(Before Judges WALLACE, LACOMBE, and SHIP-<br />
MAN, United States Circuit Court of Appeal.)<br />
Q(HIPMAN, C.J.-The complainant, Maynard,<br />
Merrill, and Co., a corporation duly created<br />
under the laws of the State of New York,<br />
and having its principal office in the City of New<br />
York, was, in June, 1893, the owner of the<br />
copyright of a book entitled “Introductory<br />
Language Work,” of which Alonzo Reed was<br />
the author, and which had been duly copy-<br />
righted by him in July, 1891, under the<br />
laws of the United States respecting copyrights.<br />
The complainant is a book publisher, and<br />
has been in the habit of sending the printed<br />
and unbound sheets of this book, and of other<br />
books which it published, to George W. Alex-<br />
ander's bookbindery, in the City of New<br />
York, to be stored there until it gave Mr.<br />
Alexander an order to bind a specified quantity,<br />
who would sometimes bind a lot in anticipation<br />
of such orders. On June 21, 1893, a destructive<br />
fire occurred in this bindery, the result of which<br />
was, as the complainant supposed, to destroy the<br />
commercial value of all the property which it had<br />
in the building.<br />
One of its employés, at its request, examined<br />
the débris and reported that there was nothing of<br />
value which the complainant could use in the<br />
manufacture or sale of books. Alexander there-<br />
upon sold the entire débris which had fallen into<br />
the cellar to one Fitzgerald, who resold it, with-<br />
out moving it, to some Italian dealers in waste<br />
paper, and in order to prevent them from using<br />
the paper and books for other purposes than<br />
paper stock, incorporated the following provision<br />
in the contract of sale: “It is understood that all<br />
paper taken out of the building is to be utilised<br />
as paper stock, and all books to be sold as paper<br />
stock only, and not placed on the market as any-<br />
thing else.”<br />
“The cellar was cleared of this class of mate-<br />
rial, and subsequently a quantity of damaged<br />
copies of “Introductory Language Work”<br />
appeared in the market, as owned and offered for<br />
sale by the defendant, William Beverley Harrison,<br />
a dealer in second-hand books, and a citizen of<br />
the State of New York and residing in the City<br />
of New York. The leaves of the books were dis-<br />
coloured and stained by smoke and water, but<br />
the covers had a respectable appearance, and the<br />
complainant supposed that the unbound sheets<br />
which had escaped the fire had been rebound by<br />
Barrison, or under his direction, or with his<br />
privity, and that he was selling such newly bound<br />
books, as well as some bound books which had<br />
escaped serious injury, and thereupon brought a<br />
bill in equity before the United States Circuit<br />
Court, to restrain his alleged infringement of its<br />
copyright. The bill counted entirely upon the<br />
right of the complainant under the copyright<br />
statutes of the United States. Upon its motion,<br />
the Court granted an injunction pendente lite.<br />
Harrison denies, in his affidavit, that he pur-<br />
chased any sheets or loose covers of the book.<br />
He further says, rather vaguely, that he “learned<br />
that certain dealers had come into possession of<br />
the salvage from the fire at said Alexander's<br />
place; that affiant visited the premises where<br />
said salvage was stored, and from them purchased<br />
a number of bound and completely finished<br />
volumes, some of which were the publications of<br />
the complaimant.” He further says that he “pur-<br />
chased the said books in the regular course of trade,<br />
without any knowledge of any understanding or<br />
arrangement, if any there was, between com-<br />
plainant and others, and that he accepted the<br />
same, as he believes, according to the established<br />
usage of the trade, believing them to be books<br />
which had been put upon the market as Salvage,<br />
as damaged books are bought and sold.”<br />
The affidavits show that the complainant, which<br />
was the owner of the copyright. permitted<br />
Alexander to sell absolutely all its copyrighted<br />
books in his cellar, and that his vendee obtained<br />
the entire legal title to these damaged volumes.<br />
They were sold again, together with other papers<br />
and books, under express restrictions against their<br />
use for any other purpose than for the manufac-<br />
ture of paper. Harrison says that he bought the<br />
books in question without knowledge of this<br />
restriction. Whether he had notice of facts which<br />
should have put a purchaser upon inquiry to<br />
ascertain whether he was being made a party to<br />
a violation of contract cannot be determined upon<br />
the affidavits.<br />
The question, as it arises upon the bill and the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 116 (#130) ############################################<br />
<br />
I i 6<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
affidavits, is, can the owner of a copyright restrain,<br />
by virtue of the copyright statutes, the sale of a<br />
copy of the copyright book, the title to which he<br />
has transferred, but which is being sold in viola-<br />
tion of an agreement entered into between him-<br />
self and the purchaser; or are the remedies of the<br />
original owner confined to remedies for a breach<br />
of contract P<br />
So long as the owner of a copyright retains the<br />
title to the copies of the book which he has the<br />
exclusive right to vend, by virtue of the copyright,<br />
he can impose restrictions upon the manner in<br />
which and upon the persons to whom the copies<br />
can be sold. Having the exclusive right to vend,<br />
he has the right to appoint to whom the book<br />
shall be sold. If his agents, to whom he has<br />
intrusted the possession of his books, violate his<br />
instructions and fraudulently sell to a person with<br />
knowledge or notice of the fraud,-such fraud will<br />
be an infringement of the copyright, with which<br />
the original owner has never parted, and can be<br />
restrained by virtue of the Statutes of the United<br />
States. Thus, if the owner of a copyrighted book<br />
entrusts copies of the book to an agent or<br />
employé for sale only by subscription and for<br />
delivery to the subscribers, and the agent fraudu-<br />
lently sells to non-subscribers, who have know-<br />
ledge or notice of the fraud, such sale is an<br />
infringement of the original owner's copyright,<br />
who can disregard the pretended sale and have<br />
the benefit of all the remedies which the statute or<br />
the law furnish. This right to enjoy the benefit<br />
of the copyright statutes results from the fact<br />
that the owner has never parted with the title to<br />
the book or the copyright, although he parted<br />
with the possession of the book.<br />
But the right to restrain the sale of a parti-<br />
cular copy of the book, by virtue of the copyright<br />
statutes, has gone when the owner of the copy-<br />
right and of that copy has parted with all his<br />
title to it, and has conferred an absolute title to<br />
the copy upon a purchaser, although with an<br />
agreement for a restricted use. The exclusive<br />
right to vend the particular copy no longer<br />
remains in the owner of the copyright by the<br />
Copyright statutes. The new purchaser cannot<br />
reprint the copy, he cannot print or publish a<br />
new edition of the book; but the copy having<br />
been absolutely sold to him, the ordinary inci-<br />
dents of ownership in personal property, among<br />
which is the right of alienation, attach to it. If<br />
he has agreed that he will not sell it for certain<br />
purposes, or to certain persons, and violates his<br />
agreement and sells to an innocent purchaser, he<br />
can be punished for a violation of his agreement,<br />
but neither is guilty under the copyright statutes<br />
of an infringment. If the new purchaser parti-<br />
cipates in the fraud he may also share in the<br />
punishment : (“Clemens v. Estes,”<br />
899.) . . .<br />
The distinction between the remedy of the<br />
owner of a copyright and the books published<br />
under its protection, who has retained the title<br />
to the books and the copyright, and has been<br />
defrauded by an unauthorised sale to a purchaser,<br />
with notice, and the remedy of a copyright owner<br />
who has parted with his title to a copy of the<br />
copyrighted book, and has been injured by the<br />
failure of the purchaser to comply with his con-<br />
tract in regard to its use, is stated by Judge<br />
Hammond in “Henry Bill Publishing Company<br />
v. Forsythe’’ (27 Fed. Rep. 914) as follows:<br />
“The owner of the copyright may not be able<br />
to transfer the entire property in one of his<br />
copies, and retain for himself an incidental<br />
power to authorise a sale of that copy, or rather<br />
the power of prohibition on the owner that he<br />
shall not sell it, holding that much, as a modicum.<br />
of his former estate, to be protected by the copy-<br />
right statute; and yet he may be entirely able,<br />
so long as he retains the ownership of a particular<br />
copy for himself, to find abundant protection<br />
under the copyright statute for his then inci-<br />
dental power of controlling its sale. This copy-<br />
right incident of control over the sale, if I may<br />
call it so, as contradistinguished from the power<br />
of sale incident to ownership in all property—<br />
copyrighted articles like any other—is a thing<br />
that belongs alone to the owner of the copyright<br />
itself, and as to him only so long as and to the<br />
extent that he owns the particular copies involved.<br />
Whenever he parts with that ownership, the<br />
ordinary incident of alienation attaches to the<br />
particular copy parted with, in favour of the<br />
transferee, and he cannot be deprived of it.<br />
This latter incident supersedes the other —<br />
swallows it up, so to speak—and the two cannot<br />
co-exist in any owner of the copy except he be<br />
the owner at the same time of the copyright;<br />
and, in the Inature of the thing, they cannot be<br />
separated so that one may remain in the owner<br />
of the copyright as a limitation upon or denial of<br />
the other in the owner of the copy.” -<br />
The case of “Murray v. Heath " (I Bain &<br />
Adol. 804), which is somewhat relied upon by<br />
the defendant’s counsel, does not throw a strong<br />
light upon a case arising under the statutes of<br />
the United States. The question was whether<br />
the sale of the engravings was, under the circum-<br />
stances of the case, a violation of the English,<br />
statutes, which prohibited a piratical publication,<br />
of the engravings of another, or was a breach of<br />
contract. The Court was of opinion that the<br />
statutes were not applicable. -<br />
The other cases which were cited on the argu-<br />
ment are not applicable to the facts of this case, ,<br />
22 Fed. Rep.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 117 (#131) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
117<br />
although they are instructive upon the rights of<br />
copyright owners, under copyright statutes, or of<br />
the rights of owners of manuscripts: (“Stephens<br />
v. Cady,” 14 How. 529; “Stephen v. Gladding,”<br />
17 How. 447; “Parton v. Prang,” 3 Cliff. 537;<br />
“Bartlette v. Chittenden º’ 4 McLean, 3oo;<br />
“Prince Albert v. Strange,” 2 De G. & S. 652;<br />
“Taylor v. Pillow,” L. R. 7 Eq. Cases, 418;<br />
“Howitt v. Hall,” Io Weekly Rep. 381 ; “Hud-<br />
son v. Patten,” I Root, Con. 133.) The dis-<br />
cussion by Judge Hammond upon the general<br />
subject, in “Henry Hill Co. v. Smythe.” (supra) is<br />
most valuable, and anyone who has occasion to<br />
examine this subject will find that the territory<br />
bas been thoroughly explored.<br />
Our conclusion is that, upon the facts stated<br />
in the bill and in the affidavits, the complainant<br />
has no remedy under the copyright statutes of<br />
the United States, and, as both parties are<br />
deemed to be citizens of the State of New York,<br />
the complainant is without remedy in the Circuit<br />
Court for the Southern District of New York.<br />
The order of the Circuit Court for a preliminary<br />
injunction is reversed and set aside, with costs.<br />
Wallace and Lacombe, J.J. concur.<br />
New York Law Journal, June 13.<br />
II.-MUSICAL CoPYRIGHT IN AMERICA.<br />
We published in the September number of<br />
the Author a letter addressed by Mr. G. Dixey,<br />
secretary of the Music Publishers’ Association,<br />
on a recent decision in an American court.<br />
To repeat the last words of that letter, “The<br />
judgment thus delivered has settled the point<br />
for the present, and until that judgment is upset<br />
or varied it must be accepted that the law of<br />
the United States of America is, that the expres-<br />
sion “book’ in the Act of 1891 does not include<br />
‘ musical composition and that, consequently it is<br />
not necessary that such compositions should be<br />
printed in America as a condition of obtaining<br />
copyright there.”<br />
On this point Mr. R. H. Johnson writes from<br />
New York as follows: “I hope the news of the<br />
confirmation by the courts of our contention that<br />
music does not have to be manufactured here will<br />
be widely published in your country. It closes<br />
a chapter in the history of International copyright<br />
Music is now a thing produced and published, and<br />
not subject to exclusion because the method of<br />
publication may be like that of books or chromos.<br />
My testimony as to the intention of the framers<br />
of the bill was part of the plaintiff's brief, and<br />
that consideration seems to have had weight in<br />
the decision.” -<br />
III.-AUTHORSHIP FALSELY AsCRIBED.<br />
A publisher of New York printed in 1873 a<br />
volume, the authorship of which was ascribed to<br />
Bret Harte. This volume contained four chapters<br />
of a story that had actually been written by Bret<br />
Harte ten years previously, while the remaining<br />
chapters making up the volume were written by<br />
some person unknown. To the whole story Bret<br />
Harte's name was prefixed, but at the end of<br />
his portion of the story appeared an explanatory<br />
note. .<br />
The facts having been proved as above stated,<br />
the court granted Harte's application for an<br />
injunction under which further sale of the book<br />
was restrained. The judge said, in his opinion:<br />
“I think that the plaintiff has such an interestin<br />
his name and in his reputation as an author as<br />
entitles him to invoke the aid of a court of equity<br />
in restraining the defendant in falsely repre-<br />
senting that a literary production published and<br />
sold by the defendant is the work of the plaintiff.<br />
. . . It seems to me that the act of the defen-<br />
dant is calculated to mislead the public, and<br />
induce the purchase of the work referred to in<br />
the complaint, under the impression that said<br />
work is wholly written by the plaintiff. The case<br />
is analogous to that of a trade mark, and the<br />
principle on which the relief is granted in such<br />
cases is that a defendant shall not be permitted<br />
by the adoption of a trade mark that is untrue or<br />
deceptive, to sell his own goods as those of the<br />
plaintiff, which is injuring the latter and also<br />
defrauding the public. In this case the gen ral<br />
public would, in my judgment, be misled by the<br />
title-page of the book in question into supposing<br />
that the whole of the book was a production of<br />
the plaintiff, and the facts seem to point strongly<br />
to the conclusion that it was the design of the<br />
defendant thus to mislead the public. &<br />
It is no answer to this to say that every one who<br />
read the book must necessarily read the note at<br />
page 34, as that note is better calculated to call<br />
the attention of the purchaser to the fact that he<br />
has been deceived rather than to prevent the<br />
deception. Entertaining these views, I shall<br />
direct that an order be granted continuing the<br />
injunction until the case can be tried, plaintiff<br />
to pay all the costs of the motion.”<br />
-—-º-º-º-º-º-<br />
IV.—HANFSTAENGL v. NEWNEs.<br />
The “living picture * cases, Hanfstaeng! v.<br />
Newnes, 7 R. Aug. 80; Hanfstaeng! v. Empire<br />
Palace, '94, 2 Ch. 1, 7 R. Sept. 84 (both in C.A.),<br />
make a good example of the true principles of<br />
copyright law. Copyright is not a property in<br />
ideas conferred by the law of nature, as certain<br />
philosophers have vainly talked, but a monopoly<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 118 (#132) ############################################<br />
<br />
1 18<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
specially created by law on grounds of public<br />
utility, and a monopoly not in ideas or artistic<br />
motives in the abstract, but in particular forms<br />
of expression. Therefore copyright in a work of<br />
literature or art can be infringed only by a repro-<br />
duction ejusdem generis, a picture by something<br />
pictorial, and so forth. It does not follow, how-<br />
ever, that infringement might not be indirectly<br />
committed by reconstruction of the original design<br />
from something which was not itself an infringe-<br />
ment, even if the reconstructor had no direct<br />
acquaintance with the original ; it was expressly<br />
allowed by the Court of Appeal that it could be<br />
so, though they held that in the particular case it<br />
was not. The questions of dramatising literary<br />
work and of “performing rights * are not touched<br />
by these decisions, and stand on a special footing.<br />
—Law Quarterly Review for October.<br />
*– ~ *-*<br />
THE INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT<br />
CONGRESS AT ANTWERP,<br />
R. J. E. MUDDOCK, F.R.G.S., was the<br />
sole representative of England at the<br />
Congress, which closed its sittings on the<br />
26th of August, Mr. Muddock, who went over<br />
by special invitation of the committee, speaks in<br />
glowing terms of the princely hospitality offered<br />
to the foreign delegates by their Belgian confrères<br />
Without making any invidious comparison, he<br />
wishes to particularise the exceeding kindness and<br />
courtesy of the Hon. Paul Cogel, President of the<br />
Antwerp Society of Bibliophiles; of M. Victor<br />
Robyns, the esteemed President of the Antwerp<br />
Cercle Artistique, Litteraire, and Scientific; and<br />
M. Franz Gittens, the well-known Belgian<br />
dramatic author. Fetes, illuminated corteges,<br />
receptions, dinners, excursions, and visits to all<br />
that is interesting in Antwerp, were the order of<br />
the day, and the wonder is that the guests have<br />
survived all this kindness. They have not only<br />
survived, however, but are unanimous in their<br />
expressions of satisfaction and gratitude for the<br />
magnificent hospitality of their hosts. Notwith-<br />
standing all the feasting and junketing much solid<br />
work was done, as two seances were held each day,<br />
and some six hours a day were consumed in this<br />
way. At the opening sitting, M. Robyns, in the<br />
name of the old and intellectual city of Antwerp,<br />
extended a warm welcome to the foreign delegates,<br />
and he alluded in graceful terms to the great<br />
interest manifested in the Congress by His<br />
Majesty the King of the Belgians. It was a<br />
good sign when representatives of nearly every<br />
European nation assembled to discuss amicabl<br />
their mutual interests in the products of intellect,<br />
whether such products took the form of litera-<br />
ture, art, science, poetry, the drama, or music.<br />
Meetings like that did more to bring about the<br />
longed for universal brotherhood than anything<br />
else could possibly do; for there was no nation-<br />
ality in brain work. Literature and art were<br />
cosmopolitan, they recognised no frontiers, and<br />
gatherings of that kind served to strengthen the<br />
bond of good feeling which literary men and<br />
women, musicians, artists, composers, &c., enter-<br />
tained for one another, irrespective of country.<br />
Great strides had been made of late years in<br />
securing to authors and artists universal recogni-<br />
tion of their rights in the works they created.<br />
But there was still much to do, though the good<br />
work that had already been done was a guarantee<br />
for the future; and it might safely be asserted<br />
that there would be no pause until the literary<br />
and artistic millenium was reached. Then nations<br />
would be compelled to recognise, by the laws of<br />
their respective countries, that the products of a<br />
man’s brain labour could no more be filched<br />
from him with impunity than could his land, his<br />
houses, his household effects, or anything that<br />
was legitimately his.<br />
The sentiments expressed by the President<br />
were received with warm approval, and Dr.<br />
Albert Osterrieth, who spoke in the name of<br />
the Congress of German authors, said that<br />
throughout Germany there was a very strong<br />
desire to promote in every possible way the<br />
interests of international copyright. M. Pfeiffer,<br />
of the Syndicate of the Musical Composers of<br />
Paris; Dr. Lundstadt, in the name of Swedish<br />
publishers, and of the Literary and Artistic<br />
Circle of Stockholm ; Herr Stoutz, for Switzer-<br />
land; and Mr. J. E. Muddock, for England, said<br />
that authors and composers of their respective<br />
countries would not rest until their rights<br />
in literary and artistic property were fully<br />
recognised.<br />
At the second sitting there was a very large<br />
attendance, including the Princess Napoleon<br />
Bonaparte-Weiss, and several women of letters,<br />
amongst them being Madame Brun, the well-<br />
known Belgian novelist and journalist. When<br />
the meeting had been declared open by the<br />
President, M. Bonilla, who represented the<br />
“Society of Spanish Writers,” rose to address<br />
the assembly. Speaking in Spanish, he made a<br />
stirring and eloquent appeal for the universal<br />
recognition of the results of intellectual labour.<br />
He insisted that workers with the pen and pencil<br />
had been too long regarded as mere time-servers<br />
of the public, whose mission was to give to the<br />
world the efforts of their genius, but like the<br />
slaves of old they could own nothing. Fortu-<br />
nately a more enlightened era was dawning, and<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 119 (#133) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I Ig<br />
the day could not be far distant when authors<br />
and artists would have cause to rejoice that they<br />
had clamoured for an equitable recognition of<br />
their interests by all nations.<br />
A long discussion followed on the rights of<br />
translation. Translation in principle is said to<br />
be a mode of reproduction, but while that prin-<br />
ciple is admitted in some countries it is contested<br />
in others. It was certainly proclaimed at the<br />
Brussels Congress in 1858; and since then the<br />
International Literary Union has endeavoured to<br />
get it universally recognised. Under any cir-<br />
cumstances, the desirability was urged of pro-<br />
longing the term during which an author's<br />
consent has to be obtained before his works can<br />
be translated, and twenty years was named as an<br />
equitable limit. This was objected to by M.<br />
Ernest Eisenmann, an avocat of Paris, and the<br />
author of an important work on the rights of<br />
authors and journalists. He maintained that if<br />
such restrictions were placed upon the rights<br />
of translation they would militate against the<br />
author's themselves. That would certainly be<br />
the case in dramatic and musical composition.<br />
When the subject had been well threshed out,<br />
without any very definite conclusion being<br />
arrived at, M. Alcide Darras, one of the general<br />
secretaries of the union, laid before the assembly<br />
a brief but lucid account of the legislative move-<br />
ments that had been made with regard to inter-<br />
national copyright during the past few years.<br />
He spoke bitterly of the action of the United<br />
States, and said it was something more than an<br />
anomaly that Canada should be disposed to favour<br />
American writers in preference to all others.<br />
England had given copyright to English authors<br />
in the whole of the British Empire, and that<br />
copyright was secured by an international treaty;<br />
nevertheless Canada showed a strong disposition<br />
to give American authors Canadian rights,<br />
although America had treated English authors so<br />
scurvily. Referring to Mexico, M. Darras said it<br />
was greatly to the credit of that country that<br />
Mexican subjects, or anyone producing a literary<br />
work in Mexico, had the advantage of perpetual<br />
copyright, while great liberality was shown to<br />
authors of all nationalities. It certainly would<br />
be more honourable on the part of the Govern-<br />
ment of the United States if they took a leaf out<br />
of their neighbour's book. At the subsequent<br />
sittings of the Congress long and interesting dis-<br />
cussions took place on the relations of publishers<br />
and authors, in so far as those relations were<br />
concerned in contracts of publications. All the<br />
speakers pointed out that in every country, as<br />
matters now stood, the author was entirely in the<br />
hands of his publisher, and if the publisher chose<br />
to act dishonestly, as he often did, the author<br />
WOL. W.<br />
suffered, and had no remedy. It was pertinently<br />
asked why literary contracts should not be<br />
placed upon the same basis as any other<br />
commercial contract. If an author wrote a<br />
book, and a publisher undertook to publish<br />
it on terms of mutual profit, there was a<br />
distinct partnership created. The author's<br />
capital in the business was represented by his<br />
work, and the value of that work must be taken<br />
to be equal in every sense to the amount the pub-<br />
lisher invested when he printed and put the<br />
work on the market. The author should there-<br />
fore be in a position to know precisely what busi-<br />
ness is being transacted and what returns are<br />
coming in. As matters now stood, he was<br />
entirely dependent for this information on the<br />
bare statement of the publisher. And, while it<br />
was not assumed for a moment that all pub-<br />
lishers were dishonest, it could not be denied that<br />
the temptation to make a little extra profit by<br />
the manipulation of accounts and the suppression<br />
of information that ought to be afforded was very<br />
great indeed; and human nature was the same in<br />
a publisher as it was in other buman beings, often<br />
more so. It was admitted that the subject was a<br />
very difficult one to deal with in an international<br />
sense, for transactions of the kind often had to be<br />
determined by local circumstances. But there<br />
was no reason why some general principles<br />
should not be laid down and adopted by the<br />
union. And it was suggested that in default of<br />
distinct stipulation to the contrary a contract of<br />
publication should be taken to mean one edition<br />
only, whether it was of a musical or literary<br />
work. The number of that edition should be<br />
expressly stated in the contract, and every copy<br />
of it should be numbered and signed by publisher<br />
and author. This scheme would at once afford<br />
an author a ready means of knowing how many<br />
copies of his work had been sold, and it would be<br />
a safeguard against unauthorised reproduction.<br />
Of course the same regulations would apply to<br />
any subsequent editions.<br />
Although no definite decision was arrived at<br />
on this subject owing to various difficulties that<br />
presented themselves, it was admitted that it was<br />
too important to be shelved, and that it should<br />
be brought forward next year, and in the mean-<br />
time some concerted plan of action should be.<br />
worked out which should aim at doing justice to.<br />
all parties without wounding the susceptibilities.<br />
of any.<br />
Mr. Wolfgang Kirschbach, the well-known.<br />
theatrical critic and editor of the Dresdner.<br />
Nachrichten, then invited the Congress to meet.<br />
next year at Dresden, and he said he was autho-<br />
rised to promise a welcome and a reception in the<br />
name of the Saxon Government, as well as of the<br />
N<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 120 (#134) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 20<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
municipal authorities. And he further promised<br />
that the warmest support would be accorded te<br />
the work and aims of the Congress by the whole<br />
of Germany, North and South. The invitation<br />
was accepted, and Dresden fixed as the next<br />
place of meeting.<br />
Altogether it may be said that the Congress<br />
has been productive of many good results, and the<br />
work so far achieved is just and equitable to all<br />
who labour with their brains. And, as M.<br />
Bergerem, the Minister of Justice, said at the<br />
grand banquet given by the President to the<br />
distinguished foreigners gathered together in<br />
Antwerp in the name of literature, science, and<br />
art, the objects of the association must, in the<br />
end, be universally triumphant. They had right<br />
on their side, and they would soon have power<br />
to enforce those rights.<br />
It is greatly to be regretted that the entire<br />
English press, from the Times downwards, should<br />
have been so utterly indifferent to this important<br />
Congress that no report of it has appeared in any<br />
paper in this country. Journalists cannot afford<br />
to ignore the aims and objects of the association,<br />
and it surely would have been worth while for<br />
the great London dailies to have instructed<br />
their foreign correspondents to furnish to their<br />
respective papers some particulars of the labours<br />
of the Congress. It is also a matter of surprise<br />
that Mr. Muddock was not supported by some<br />
of his London confrères. The question of inter-<br />
national copyright is one which very closely affects<br />
us as a literary people, and particularly in so far<br />
as our dealings with America are concerned. And<br />
unless writers and artists here think their<br />
property is not worth protecting, they would do<br />
well to show that they are in full accord with the<br />
spirit and aims of these annual congresses, and<br />
attend in numbers to speak and vote on all that<br />
tends to promote the common welfare of the<br />
great brotherhood of the pen and pencil.<br />
*— — —”<br />
* * *<br />
NOTES FROM PARIS.<br />
AM writing this from a fishing village at the<br />
extreme southern point of the Bay of Biscay,<br />
in a desolate land of dunes, with the purple<br />
line of the Pyrenees in front of me, and all<br />
around a forest of pine trees. . A coin perdu. if<br />
ever there was one, yet at the time of the English<br />
rule in Aquitaine, a place of some importance.<br />
In the middle of the village rises the “Tower of<br />
the English,” and many of the houses were built<br />
by English hands. g e gº<br />
Is it a fallacy that, as many of us imagine, soli-<br />
stude and quiet are very necessary to the man<br />
who would produce his best work, and that a<br />
man works hardest where there is little tempta-<br />
tion for him to leave his writing-table P Zola has<br />
recorded the fine fevers of industry which come<br />
upon him in the country, but then Zola will<br />
work anywhere and under any circumstances.<br />
Daudet, on the other hand, has told me that at<br />
the seaside at least he is never able to work.<br />
“The sea is a terrible waster,” he said, and added<br />
that having sought solitude in a little village on<br />
the Mediterranean coast, he remained six weeks<br />
without putting pen to paper. For my part my<br />
experience is that a solitary and monotonous way<br />
of life is fatal to literary production. One<br />
cannot think when one yawns. And again, the<br />
song of the sea is one continual invitation to<br />
idleness, whilst the fields and the forest have<br />
mysterious and syremlike voices to tempt one<br />
away. People who have read “Jack,” will remem-<br />
ber the poet D’Argenton, who, having longed for<br />
years for a quiet retreat in the country, found,<br />
when he was able to afford one, that he could not<br />
work there, and wasted six years in idle endea-<br />
vours. Perhaps the reason of this is that the<br />
country is so delightful that idleness becomes a<br />
real pleasure.<br />
It is a characteristic trait of the American<br />
critics that when reviewing a translation all men-<br />
tion of the translator, even in quoting the title of<br />
the book, is omitted by them. Translation, it<br />
would appear, after their manner of thinking, is<br />
and cannot be otherwise than hack work. Yet<br />
one of Charles Baudelaire's chief titles to fame is<br />
in his masterly translation of Poe's tales.<br />
American journalism, by the way, seems to be<br />
sinking lower and lower into infamy. Not many<br />
days ago I was passing a delightful hour in the<br />
pine forest near my house, with my dog and my<br />
grey donkey for companions, and an odd volume<br />
of Montaigne in my hand. I could see the great<br />
red sun going down into the sea, athwart the<br />
pines; the air was fresh and balsamous, and only<br />
the cooing of the turtle-doves broke the stillness.<br />
I was away for the time from everything that was<br />
common and cruel, and ugly and human. And<br />
then broke in upon my tranquil meditation<br />
American journalism, in the form of a cablegram<br />
from New York, an unclean thing that I threw<br />
away from me with disgust as soon as I had read<br />
it. It came from a great American editor, and<br />
requested me to nose out the dirty story of an<br />
American milliardaire, who, it appears, has fallen<br />
into the toils of some Parisian Phryne. I was to<br />
“ mail photos,” and to accompany the same with<br />
a “rip-roarer story of their intimacy.” After<br />
reflection I picked the filthy paper up again, and<br />
have pasted it up in my study as a reminder of<br />
the things to which American journalism leads.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 121 (#135) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 2 I<br />
Inasmuch as, by the stress of circumstances,<br />
there are many writers who engage in literature<br />
in a purely commercial spirit, might not the<br />
critics exact that the publishers in sending in<br />
ibooks for review should mention, besides the<br />
price of each volume, the amount of remunera-<br />
tion which was assured to the author when he<br />
sat down to the task of its production. This<br />
knowledge might dispose them to greater<br />
leniency or severity, as the case might be. The<br />
critic might be very exacting in the case of a<br />
book for which the author had received or was<br />
to receive several hundred pounds, and less so<br />
in the case of work paid for with as many six-<br />
pences. I would like to read some such sentence<br />
in a literary critique as the following: “This is<br />
a hastily-written book, immaturely considered.<br />
Still, when we remember that the author<br />
produced it at the rate of fourpence halfpenny<br />
for each hour's work, we cannot but commend it<br />
as extremely good value for money.” In this<br />
matter also the philosophy of Mrs. Gamp holds<br />
good, and them as wants titivating must pay<br />
accordingly.<br />
Alphonse Daudet has just finished a new<br />
novel. It is one of the very few of his stories—<br />
is it not the only one P-which contains a murder.<br />
There are a husband and wife who each suspects<br />
the other of the crime, and so on. It ends in a<br />
reconciliation. I am glad to say that Daudet's<br />
health is improving. I had a long letter from<br />
him a few days ago, entirely in his own hand,<br />
firm, healthy writing “in his least nervous pen.”<br />
Be usually dictates to his secretary, the amiable<br />
M. Ebner. He tells me that his son’s book,<br />
“Les Morticoles,” is still selling very well,<br />
already in a tenth edition, I believe.<br />
Apropos of Léon Daudet, who, it will be<br />
remembered, married Victor Hugo's grand-<br />
daughter, the last time I saw him he told me<br />
that Hugo's books were selling very badly<br />
indeed, and he is in a position to know the<br />
facts, as husband of the lady who is entitled<br />
to one half the revenue from the Hugo copy-<br />
rights. This disposes of various accounts we<br />
have heard of the continued demand for these<br />
works.<br />
Emile Zola, leaves for Rome next month to<br />
collect materials for the second volume of “Les<br />
Trois Villes " series, which is to be called “Rome.”<br />
I am afraid that he will not succeed, as he had<br />
hoped, in securing an interview with the Holy<br />
Father, and it is to be feared that the odium<br />
theologicum provoked by “Lourdes,” will put<br />
many difficulties in his way. In the meanwhile<br />
“Lourdes'' is in its hundredth edition, and<br />
Charpentier's presses are still hard at work<br />
turning out copies by the thousand. It is expeeted<br />
WOL. V.<br />
that this book will have the largest sale of any of<br />
Zola's works. *<br />
Edmund de Goncourt, I am sorry to say, is, as<br />
I hear from Champrosay, ailing with “a liver<br />
crisis.” This splendid old man is, however, so<br />
robust that I expect him to outlive us all. He is<br />
resting his pen at present, though, of course, he<br />
continues to keep his daily diary, as he has done<br />
for the past thirty years.<br />
The widow of Leconte de Lisle is preparing<br />
her late husband's manuscripts for the press.<br />
She is working in collaboration with De Héredice,<br />
and they hope to collect sufficient material for a<br />
volume of poems, which shall add to the reputa-<br />
tion of the author of “Poémes Barbares.” The<br />
task is a difficult one, as the late poet was very<br />
critical about his own work, and they are anxious<br />
not to print anything which he would have<br />
refused to publish. Leconte de Lisle destroyed<br />
more than four thousand lines of verse which he<br />
deemed unsatisfactory, and what he published<br />
had been revised and revised again.<br />
A new life of Napoleon is being prepared in<br />
Paris by a Boston Professor, and will run for two<br />
years in the Century Magazine. I myself was<br />
recently invited by the proprietors of another<br />
American magazine to do another life of Napoleon,<br />
and very good terms were offered. But the<br />
matter fell through when I was informed that<br />
Napoleon had to be treated in an entirely favour-<br />
able light, as I found it impossible to do so. The<br />
Americans all have an immense admiration for<br />
Napoleon, chiefly, no doubt, because of the persis-<br />
tent way in which he plagued England. A study<br />
of Napoleon as the Arch-Anarchist and forerunner<br />
of the anarchy of this fin de siècle would be<br />
interesting. ROBERT H. SHERARD.<br />
Capbreton, Landes, Sept. 19.<br />
*– ~ –”<br />
g- > -e<br />
AUGUSTA WEBSTER,<br />
HE death of Augusta Webster on Sept. 5<br />
takes from us a poet of very remarkable<br />
powers, and of achievement second to no<br />
woman of the age who has attempted poetry.<br />
She was a daughter of the late Admiral Davies,<br />
who for many years filled the post of Chief<br />
Constable for Cambridgeshire, and lived at Cam-<br />
bridge.<br />
Augusta Davies published her first volume of<br />
verse in the year 1861 or 1862. It was entitled<br />
“Blanche Lisle,” and bore the assumed name of<br />
Cecil Horne. After her marriage to Mr. Thomas<br />
Webster, a classical scholar and a Fellow of Trinity,<br />
she published under her own name translations<br />
of “Prometheous Vinctus ” and the “Medea,”<br />
N 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 122 (#136) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 22<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
she also published another volume of verse under<br />
her nom de plume. The works that followed were<br />
“Dramatic Studies” (1866), “A Woman Sold”<br />
(1867), “Portraits” (1870), “The Auspicious<br />
Day” (1872), “Yu-Pe-Yas's Lute” (1874),<br />
“Disguises” (1879), “A Book of Rhyme’”<br />
(1881), “In a Day” (1882), “Daffodil and the<br />
Croaxaxicans” (1884), and “The Sentence”<br />
(1887). In addition to these volumes of verse,<br />
Mrs. Webster produced a book of essays called<br />
“A Housewife's Opinions.” She wrote for the<br />
Eacaminer when William Minto was its editor,<br />
and, it is understood, for the Athenæum. She<br />
also essayed a novel, but, apparently, without<br />
success, and for six years she was a member of<br />
the London School Board.<br />
It will be seen that her time of greatest<br />
activity was in the sixties and the seventies. It<br />
seems a long time ago, but the time has not yet<br />
come for an estimate of Augusta Webster's place<br />
among the poets of the Victorian age—an age<br />
which produces more fine verse in a decade<br />
than was written during the whole of the last<br />
century, and an age in which critics are continu-<br />
ally bemoaning the decay of verse; an age in<br />
which we are so busy over our own work that we<br />
have no time to read the work of others; an age<br />
in which a new great Inovelist, if not a new great<br />
poet, is boomed every month; an age in which<br />
the poet of to-day will be clean forgotten to-<br />
morrow. The contemporaries of Augusta<br />
Webster—those who lived in the sixties and<br />
the seventies—have read her works and found in<br />
them qualities of the highest order, purity of<br />
thought, beauty of expression, music in rhythm,<br />
dexterity in metre, power of conceiving and<br />
drawing character. Does the younger genera-<br />
tion read her P Ome knows not. Will the works<br />
of this singer survive? Out of all she wrote,<br />
surely, something. He would be a bold critic who<br />
would foretell immortality, even a limited im-<br />
mortality—an existence prolonged for three<br />
generations—for any poem of the day. But to<br />
him who remembers those early volumes—the<br />
“Dramatic Studies,” “Portraits,” and the trans-<br />
lations—Augusta Webster will always remain a<br />
figure in contemporary literature among the fore-<br />
most, and among the worthiest. W. B.<br />
** a 2–º<br />
r- - -,<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
R. JAMES PAYN writes that if he had<br />
twenty lives he would give them all to<br />
the profession of Letters. He says,<br />
moreover, that no profession is more free from<br />
jealousies and acrimonies. Well, a certain depress-<br />
ing work on the “Quarrels of Authors” is to be<br />
found in most of our libraries. Some day it will<br />
be brought up to date, and then some very pretty<br />
jealousies and acrimonies of the present day, of<br />
which the world is now ignorant, will be brought<br />
to light. There have been two or three actions in<br />
the High Court of Justice produced by “acri-<br />
monies’’ of literary men. And there are too<br />
often to be seen even in signed articles, criticisms<br />
and judgments by literary men concerning other<br />
literary men that are certainly not kindly either<br />
in phrase or intention. In fact, one of the prin-<br />
cipal reasons which has hitherto kept men of<br />
letters apart from each other, is the unhappy pre-<br />
judice that it is the duty of a writer to criticise<br />
and sit in judgment upon other writers, as if the<br />
power of writing verse should make a critic as<br />
well as a poet. That criticism should be con-<br />
temptuous and derisive; that it should not be<br />
written with the view of pointing out what ought<br />
to be, but to inflict as much pain as possible by<br />
exaggerating what is, in the volume: these are<br />
articles of belief that seem happily passing away.<br />
The editor of the immediate future will certainly<br />
insist on as much courtesy in his columns as at<br />
his dinner table.<br />
I have before me certain extracts from the<br />
registers of St. Bartholomew's Church, which<br />
formerly stood on the site now occupied by the<br />
east wing of the Bank of England. The dates<br />
of these registers are from 1568 down to 1720 or<br />
thereabouts. There are baptisms, marriages, and<br />
deaths. Among them are three entries which<br />
are curious. They are all in the burials, and are<br />
as follows:<br />
1672. Katharine Dufoe.<br />
I687. Katharine Dufoe.<br />
1708. Mary Defoe.<br />
Now Daniel Defoe, son of Thomas Foe, of<br />
Cripplegate, and said to be the grandson of<br />
Thomas Foe, of Elton, assumed the “De '’ about<br />
the year 1684. It is generally assumed that he<br />
did so in the hope of passing for one of gentle<br />
birth. These entries, however, make it clear that<br />
there was one family, perhaps two, in the City<br />
of the name of Dufoe or Defoe. It is probablé,<br />
therefore, that this was the older way of spelling<br />
his name, and that he was really connected with<br />
families who so spelled the name.<br />
The Rev. Dr. Bell, of Cheltenham, calls my<br />
attention to the question in the September<br />
number of the Author : “Is not the Sheridan<br />
family the only family on record which has con-<br />
tinued to hand down its best characteristics from<br />
One generation to another ?” He reminds me of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 123 (#137) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 23<br />
the Arnold family as another which has also done<br />
so. He mentions the names of Matthew Arnold,<br />
Thomas Arnold, Mrs. Humphry Ward, Mr. Oakley<br />
Arnold Forster. Undoubtedly this is another<br />
case of hereditary genius, which in the domain of<br />
literature is exceedingly rare. In music and in<br />
law hereditary ability is more often found. What<br />
descendants of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton,<br />
Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, have ever distin-<br />
guished themselves in literature ?<br />
In another column will be found some kind of<br />
answer—though of necessity incomplete—towards<br />
the question of what the people read. Setting<br />
aside fiction, an army of Io,000 borrowers, in<br />
one library, read during one year 65,000 works of<br />
history, travels, philosophy, art, and science.<br />
This for a body of people only just beginning to<br />
read seems pretty well. We must remember that<br />
they are nearly all working people; that a great<br />
many of them—the women especially—have very<br />
long hours of work; that during the summer<br />
months they will naturally take their recreation<br />
in the open air; and that a large proportion of<br />
the men have been accustomed to take their<br />
winter recreation in public houses.<br />
Let us remember also that without this library<br />
only very few of these working men would have<br />
read any book at all. Not any book at all. It is<br />
rare to find books in a working man's lodging ;<br />
it is still rarer to find him buying books. How<br />
can he buy books unless out of the twopenny<br />
basket P Indeed, to those who ignorantly accuse<br />
us, as a nation, of not buying books, the first<br />
reply is, that whether we want to buy books or<br />
not we cannot afford to do so, because, out of the<br />
whole 37,000,000 population or 7,400,000 families<br />
in this our United Kingdom, there are but<br />
250,000 families which earn an income of so much<br />
as 32OO a year, and not more than 400,000<br />
families which either earn or possess that modest<br />
income. Now, with the lowest possible standard<br />
of necessary comfort, what margin can be left<br />
with an income of £200 for the purchase of<br />
books P From time to time we read letters in the<br />
papers on the economy of small incomes. Some-<br />
thing is put down for the luxury of trips and<br />
excursions—for change of air is necessary; the<br />
gentility of a pew, instead of a free seat, is never<br />
forgotten ; but nothing is ever left for books.<br />
Why? Because books cannot be afforded. And<br />
those who cannot buy books are now growing<br />
eager to read them. “We would buy,” they say,<br />
“if we could. But, indeed, we are not able to<br />
buy.”<br />
-->e-<br />
As for those favoured few—the happy 4OO,OOO<br />
families—whose income is 32OO a year and over,<br />
they have hitherto bought all the books that are<br />
sold—new or secondhand—all but the books of<br />
elementary education. The new public libraries are<br />
now stepping in as purchasers. When we speak of<br />
the vast audience which already awaits a success-<br />
ful writer, whether historian, poet, exponent of<br />
science, preacher, philosopher, or novelist, it<br />
must be remembered that this great body of<br />
readers who cannot buy will always form the<br />
largest part. And if, as seems probable, the<br />
400,000 families above-named become reduced in<br />
number, and their incomes grow steadily and<br />
yearly less, there will be nobody at all left to buy<br />
books, and the libraries will be the only pur-<br />
chasers. Meantime what the 400,000 do buy and<br />
how much they buy, and how far the reproach is<br />
just that they do not buy, must be considered by<br />
the light of actual figures. And these figures<br />
we will try to collect and to publish.<br />
The New York Critic of Aug. 11 contained a<br />
paper on Art in the Magazines, suggested by cer-<br />
tain comparisons made in these columns between<br />
the advance of the American magazines and the<br />
seeming decline of our own. The writer says:<br />
“Among other reasons advanced for this state of<br />
things is the abundance of illustrations that we<br />
give, but the most important thing is omitted,<br />
viz., their quality. With us illustration is an art;<br />
in England it is a pastime—it entertains without<br />
instructing. The same class of men do not prac-<br />
tise it in both countries; and, furthermore, the<br />
English draughtsmen have not yet learned to<br />
draw for the photo-engravers, as have the<br />
American and the French.” He goes on to<br />
criticise the artistic character of a certain English<br />
magazine. The remarks under this head may be<br />
omitted. The following, however, is an American's<br />
opinion on American art. One would like that<br />
of an English artist on the same work:<br />
Now take the August Harper’s and see the difference<br />
between the American process-work and that of England.<br />
Note Mr. Smedley’s illustrations in Mr. Ralph's story of<br />
“Old Monmouth,” in Mr. Matthews’s “A Vista in Central<br />
Park,” or in Mr. Warner's story. They are made by the<br />
Kurtz process. Here we have the artist and the process-<br />
engraver working in perfect harmony, and the result is<br />
almost as fine as that brought about by the graver. Mr.<br />
Remington’s illustrations of his own paper are even better.<br />
There are few artists who know so well how to work for<br />
mechanical engraving as Mr. Remington. An admirable<br />
piece of work is Mr. Thulstrup's in “Up the Coast of<br />
Norway.” The illustration on page 381 has all the softness<br />
and light and shade of a mezzotint engraving. Mr. Du<br />
Maurier's illustrations of “Trilby’’ lend themselves parti-<br />
cularly well to the work of photo-engraving, because they<br />
are pen-and-ink drawings. The engraver could probably<br />
not reproduce them any better, if as well. But to see just<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 124 (#138) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 24<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
what delicaey and tone the engraver's hand gives to a picture,<br />
we must turm to the frontispiece, “On Shark River,” drawn<br />
and engraved by Victor Bernstrom. In Mr. Castaigne we<br />
have another artist who is a master of the art of drawing<br />
for process-engraving. He is a Frenchman, and learned his<br />
art in France, where they have long made a specialty of it.<br />
I doubt whether the engraver could do him the justice that<br />
the camera does. It would be very difficult to catch his<br />
peculiar effects with the hand. His illustrations to<br />
“Washington as a Spectacle,” in the Century, make this<br />
clear, especially the picture on page 490. Mr. Sterner<br />
shows himself in a new light in his illustration of “Poe in<br />
the South.” There is an imaginative quality in his work<br />
that goes well with that of the author he illustrates. For<br />
work with the graver it would be hard to find anything<br />
more satisfactory than Mr. Timothy Cole's reproduction of<br />
Quentin Matsy’s portrait of his second wife. Here we have<br />
something that mechanical engraving can never give—the<br />
personality of the engraver, the touch of the artist. In<br />
looking at this picture one feels the dignity of handwork<br />
over that of the machine. Another fine example of the<br />
engraver's art is the frontispiece of Scribner's, Carolus .<br />
Duran’s “The Poet with the Mandolin,” engraved by W. B.<br />
Closson. Here, again, we have what photo-engraving cannot<br />
give. The name of W. S. Vanderbilt Allen is comparatively<br />
new in the art world, but it accompanies some spirited<br />
scenes of Newport life, which have had the distinction of<br />
being engraved. Kaemmerer's illustrations of Professor<br />
C. G. D. Roberts's poem would have gained much, had<br />
Florian touched them into life; as it is, they have lost by<br />
the “process.” On the other hand, it is doubtful whether<br />
the engraver could have done more for Castaigne's illus-<br />
trations of Mr. Bunner's story. Process work has seldom<br />
been seen to better advantage than in the picture opposite<br />
page I64. Mr. Sterner's illustrations of “An Undiscovered<br />
Murder” are, if anything, better than those he has in the<br />
Centwry. They are certainly more pleasing in subject, and<br />
the one on page 183 is a gem. No ; one does not find such<br />
art in the English magazines.<br />
Everybody is interested in the Autocrat of<br />
Boston. Therefore I make no doubt that every-<br />
body will read the following extract from the<br />
New York Critic (Sept. 8, 1894). I had the<br />
pleasure of an afternoon with the most amiable<br />
of poets and essayists last year. We drove from<br />
Salem to Beverly one fine afternoon in July, the<br />
party consisting of Prof. Woodberry, Mr. Sprigge,<br />
and myself. And we spent a couple of hours<br />
talking to the Autocrat, who was in the best<br />
spirits, and the best health possible. At Beverly<br />
he has a charming country house on a hill with<br />
a large garden and a delightful view.<br />
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s birthday, of which the<br />
Critic had brief mention last week, was celebrated in a very<br />
quiet manner, as the poet himself desired. He is not only<br />
adverse to publicity on that day, but finds it best to protect<br />
his health as far as possible by preventing intrusion into his<br />
Sanctum. The good Doctor is always kindly in feeling and<br />
expression towards every reporter who calls, but yet has be-<br />
come now extremely reserved. To the first reporter who<br />
came last week he gave an interview, and then, when the<br />
other gentlemen of the press trod the path to his Beverly<br />
Summer home, he presented each with a printed slip con-<br />
taining this same interview, thus saving time and exertion.<br />
The friends who called on his birthday were glad to find that<br />
in spite of the prolonged illness which prostrated both mind<br />
and body (infact, the doctor himself says that it was the longest,<br />
illness he ever had), the Autocrat is regaining his physical<br />
strength. He is no longer able to answer the hosts of letters.<br />
that pour in upon him as they always have, people by the score<br />
having simply flooded his table with queries and with manu-<br />
scripts to which they have invited his attention ; and, while the<br />
Doctor has always expressed himself as gratified at words.<br />
of affection, he has not been able of late to answer even the<br />
complimentary notes. Indeed, he does no writing now at<br />
all, and whatever dictation he is able to carry out is devoted<br />
to the completion of his autobiography, now made his great.<br />
lifework, and not destined to be published until after his<br />
death. Someone suggested to the Doctor, when the latter<br />
spoke of the cramp that affected his hand in writing, that<br />
he learn to use the type-writer, but the poet smilingly<br />
replied that he did not propose to forsake an old friend for<br />
a new one at his time of life. For eight summers now Dr.<br />
Holmes has been at Beverly Farms, which he regards as the<br />
most perfect of summer resorts (barring the east winds),<br />
and he delights in telling visitors about all the surroundings.<br />
of the place. He points out, with delightful interest, the<br />
two islands in front of his house, quaintly named “Great.<br />
Misery" and “Little Misery"—terms derived from a game<br />
of cards called Boston,” invented by some British officers.<br />
who were quartered upon those islands during the early<br />
wars. Of course, the trees still consume a great deal of his<br />
attention. Recently, it is said, he has found a new tree in.<br />
Beverly, which he considers the most beautiful of all; and<br />
to its base he drives several times each week, there to sit<br />
in its shade and enjoy its protection. If he can hear of any<br />
big tree within any reasonable distance of his home he is sure<br />
to visit it.<br />
Speaking about his health to a caller, Dr. Holmes said:—<br />
“I am afraid that I am commencing to grow old. Since<br />
last February, when I had a severe attack of the grip, I<br />
have not been very well, and I have been obliged to take.<br />
good care of myself. Walking and riding principally, an<br />
occasional call and receiving some of my friends who are<br />
kind enough to call upon me, form the day’s routine.” He<br />
spoke briefly of literary people he had known, stating that<br />
he had been visited by almost every literary Englishman,<br />
who had come to Boston since Dickens's time. He added<br />
sadly, “Lowell’s death affected me keenly, it makes.<br />
me feel that I am old, that I have outlived my genera-<br />
tion.” It is a well known and remarkable fact that<br />
the year which saw Dr. Holmes’s birth, 1809, also saw<br />
the births of Tennyson, Darwin, Gladstone, Robert C.<br />
Winthrop, and Abraham Lincoln. Dr. Holmes himself<br />
once spoke of this, mentioning all except himself in noting:<br />
the “wonders” of the year, and when his visitor added,<br />
“You have forgot to mention one birth, Doctor, that of<br />
Oliver Wendell Holmes,” the Autocrat quickly responded,<br />
“Oh, that doesn’t count ; I ‘sneaked in, as it were.” Dr.<br />
Holmes’s birthday this year was remembered, as usual, by<br />
his publishers, Houghton, Mifflin and Co., with a magnificent.<br />
bouquet of eighty-five roses, one for each year of the poet's,<br />
life, while other friends sent remembrances.<br />
The classification of Literature is a subject<br />
which belongs especially to the Institute of<br />
Librarians. If, however, the existing methods of<br />
classification are to be considered by this body,<br />
we may ask to send representatives to the<br />
deliberating committee. A letter by Mr. J.<br />
Taylor Kay, in the Daily Chronicle for Sept. 18,<br />
proposes that a commission consisting of one or<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 125 (#139) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 25<br />
two members of the crafts of author, publisher,<br />
bookseller, journalist, and librarian, shall be<br />
appointed to consider existing systems, and to<br />
recommend, or to create, a classification for<br />
general use. Meantime Mr. Kay gives the<br />
classification which he considers the best, that of<br />
Mr. Melville Dewey, proposed in 1876. Here it<br />
IS :—<br />
CLASSES AND DIVISIONs.<br />
O 480 Greek.<br />
IO Bibliography. 490 Other Languages.<br />
2O Book Rarities and 500 NATURAL SCIENCE.<br />
MSS. 5IO Mathematics.<br />
30 General Cyclopedias. 520 Astronomy.<br />
40 Polygraphy. 53O Physics.<br />
50 General Periodials. 540 Chemistry.<br />
6O General Societies. 550 Geology.<br />
70 Bookbinding. 560 Paleontology.<br />
80 Catalogues. 57O Biology.<br />
90 58o Botany.<br />
IOO PHILOSOPHY. 590 Zoology.<br />
I IO Metaphysics. 6OO USEFUL ARTs.<br />
I 20 - 6IO Medicine.<br />
130 Anthropology. 62O Engineering.<br />
140 Schools of Psychology. 630 Agriculture.<br />
I 5o Mental Faculties. 64o Domestic Economy.<br />
16O Logic. 650 Communication and<br />
17o Ethics. Commerce.<br />
180 Ancient Philosophies. 660 Chemical Technology.<br />
190 Modern Philosophies. 670 Manufactures.<br />
2OO Theology. 68o Mechanic Trades.<br />
2Io Natural Theology. 690 Building.<br />
22O Bible. 700 FINE ARTs.<br />
23o Doctrinal Theology. 7Io Landscape Gardening.<br />
240 Practical and Devo- 720 Architecture.<br />
tional. 730 Sculpture.<br />
250 Homiletical and Pas- 740 Drawing and Design.<br />
toral. 75o Painting.<br />
26O Institutions and Mis- 76o Engraving.<br />
sions. 77O Photography.<br />
270 Ecclesiastical History. 78o Music.<br />
28o Christian sects. 790 Amusements.<br />
290 Non-Christian Reli- 8oo LITERATURE.<br />
gions. 8Io Treatises and Collec-<br />
3OO SOCIOLOGY. tions.<br />
3IO Statistics. 820 English.<br />
320 Political Science. 830 German.<br />
330 Political Economy. 84o French.<br />
340 Law. 85o Italian.<br />
350 Administration. 86o Spanish.<br />
360 Associations and In- 870 Latin.<br />
tutions. - 88o Greek.<br />
37O Education. 890 Other Languages.<br />
380 Commerce and Com- 90o HISTORY.<br />
- munication. 9IO Geography and De-<br />
390 Customs and Cos- scription.<br />
tumes. 920 Biography.<br />
4OO PHILOLOGY. 930 Ancient History.<br />
4IO Comparative. 940 Europe.<br />
42O English. 950 º ſ:<br />
430 German. 96o 3 || Africa.<br />
44O French. 97O 3 4 North America.<br />
450 Italian. 98o 3 | South America.<br />
460 Spanish. 990 Oceanica and<br />
47O Latin. Polar Regions.<br />
. . Each of these divisions is, of course, capable of<br />
mine further sub-divisions. In adapting the<br />
8th Alabama Regiment.<br />
system to shelving arrangements, the above<br />
numbers are the subjects or class numbers, and<br />
a decimal point number being added, acts at the<br />
order of numeration on the shelves, which in each<br />
case will, of course, run to infinity.<br />
An interesting point in literary history is<br />
touched upon by an “Old Novel Reader”<br />
(p. 129). He informs us that the first attempt<br />
to introduce cheap books was made in Ireland<br />
nearly sixty years ago, by Mr. John Simms, of<br />
the firm of Simms and MacIntyre, of Belfast.<br />
Mr. Henry Herman is dead. One was sur-<br />
prised to learn, first, that he was sixty-three<br />
years of age, and next, that he was formerly a<br />
Confederate officer—Lieutenant-Colonel of the<br />
He was the author,<br />
in collaboration with Mr. Henry Arthur Jones,<br />
of the “Silver King,” and he wrote “Claudian.”<br />
He also wrote, with Mr. David Christie Murray,<br />
two novels, and several without collaboration.<br />
He was a man of strong friendships, of great<br />
resource, and of wide personal experience.<br />
Sir Frederick Pollock (p. 126) objects to the<br />
“language” of a note of mine about the importa-<br />
tion of Tauchnitz books. He complains that it is a<br />
note of “vituperation.” I thought, in my feeble<br />
way, that it was a note written in good temper<br />
and without any calling of names. I have read<br />
it again ; and again I fail to find any “vitupera-<br />
tion.” Is it right, or is it not, to bring these<br />
books into England P. If it is not right, one is<br />
justified in saying so. The reason why the prac-<br />
tice is common is that many excellent people who<br />
carry it on are ignorant that it is much the same<br />
thing as smuggling a roll of lace. And this was<br />
pointed out in the note. However, as some<br />
readers have not perhaps read the note of<br />
September who will read Sir Frederick's remarks<br />
in October, I reproduce it, vituperation and all :<br />
Every year, as regularly as the showers of August,<br />
appears the letter complaining of the bold bad smuggler who<br />
imports Tauchnitz editions in his pockets. The whole family,<br />
girls and all, enter with zeal into the smuggling business;<br />
impromptu pockets are devised in feminine garments;<br />
men’s coats are found to contain stowage room previously<br />
unsuspected; a successful run is made ; and the family<br />
shelves are enriched with another row of Tauchnitz books.<br />
They have been bought at half the cost of the English<br />
edition, you see. Cheapness before anything. These books,<br />
moreover, are openly sold in this country; one may some-<br />
times see rows of them in the secondhand shops. What is<br />
to be done P. It is impossible to touch the conscience of the<br />
traveller homeward bound. He will not smuggle lace,<br />
because he understands that lace is property—it is visible<br />
property—he must not defraud the revenue ; literary pro-<br />
perty he does not understand—he cannot see it. Here is a<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 126 (#140) ############################################<br />
<br />
126<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
book—why cannot he take the book home with him P<br />
Because the law prohibits P Nonsense ; it can hurt nobody.<br />
It is impossible to make him see that to import this book is<br />
an infringement of right; a robbery of author or publisher,<br />
or both. Therefore something else must be attempted.<br />
What? Let us take counsel together. There must surely<br />
be some way of preventing the smuggling of books. Now<br />
the rough and ready way by which dockyard labourers are<br />
prevented from stealing dockyard stores might be at-<br />
tempted. Wardens of the yard stand at the gates and feel<br />
the men as they pass. An expert hand would detect a<br />
Tauchnitz in the coat pocket. And a substantial fine<br />
judiciously and sternly administered would do the rest. But<br />
perhaps some other method might be suggested.<br />
About the magnitude of the mischief; Sir<br />
Frederick puts it down at £50 or £100. Let us<br />
see. Every year there are at least 300,000<br />
travellers from the British Isles on the Continent.<br />
These include the people who crowd the hotels of<br />
Biarritz, the Riviera, and Italy in the winter; the<br />
people who stay at the mountain resorts; and the<br />
people who travel in the spring, summer, and<br />
autumn. All these people buy for their reading<br />
the Tauchnitz books. This collection contains<br />
2Ooo works, I believe, in about 25oo volumes. It<br />
is certainly not too much to estimate the annual<br />
purchase at one volume for each traveller. If<br />
only half of these volumes—say 150,000, repre-<br />
senting I2O,OOO works—are brought back to Eng-<br />
land, it means that I2O,OOO works printed abroad<br />
are annually brought over here, to the great detri-<br />
ment and loss of books printed in this country. We<br />
certainly must not assume that every book brought<br />
over prevents the purchase of an English manufac-<br />
tured book. But, remembering the way that<br />
books get lent, and that in certain houses, where<br />
not much can be spent in new books, every book<br />
is circulated, we may be pretty sure that the<br />
Tauchnitz books do prevent the purchase of a<br />
very large number of English books. I should be<br />
disposed, roughly, to estimate the yearly loss at<br />
something like 60,000 volumes, which means a<br />
good many thousand pounds, and I think that if<br />
the Society could do anything to stop the practice<br />
of bringing over these books, it would be doing<br />
good service to everybody concerned.<br />
The new departure which was observed by<br />
Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, and Co. in the<br />
publication of Mr. Blackmore’s “Perlycross"<br />
has been followed in Mr. William Black's new<br />
novel “Highland Cousins.” The first issue of<br />
the novel in book form is in one volume at 6s.<br />
The edition consisted of 6000 copies, and the 4th,<br />
5th, and 6th thousand are so numbered on the<br />
title page. The month which produces “Trilby’’<br />
and “Perlycross” and “Highland Cousins” is<br />
fortunate indeed. WALTER BESANT.<br />
NOTES BY THE WAY.<br />
HE correspondent who complains, in the<br />
September number of the Author, that he<br />
dares not talk to his publisher like a man<br />
of business, has another way open to him. If he<br />
really believes in his own estimate of the com-<br />
mercial value of his work, he can easily make sure<br />
whether his view or the publisher's is right. Let<br />
him publish on commission. But this, it may be<br />
said, involves risk. Of course it does. Nothing<br />
venture, nothing have. In the usual forms of<br />
publishing contract the author is insured against<br />
risk by the publisher. People will not insure your<br />
book against publishing risks for nothing, any<br />
more than they will insure your house against<br />
fire, or your crops against storm. This insurance<br />
is not separately charged, but is one of the many<br />
elements determining the author's share of<br />
profits. In the case of an author who is already<br />
successful, the risk and the insurance premium<br />
may be taken as less than any assignable quan-<br />
tity. In the case of an unknown or hitherto<br />
unsuccessful author they are and must be appre-<br />
ciable. The fact that a new author's book suc-<br />
ceeds does not show that there was no risk, no<br />
more than the fact of one's house not being burnt<br />
down or one's ship wrecked shows that it was<br />
foolish to insure. For the rest, the Society can<br />
and does give information and advice to its<br />
members; it cannot provide them with back-<br />
bones.<br />
2. I must deprecate the language of the note<br />
about importing Tauchnitz editions. It is use-<br />
less to call people thieves and robbers for not<br />
being in advance of public opinion ; and I must<br />
also protest against the suggestion of adding<br />
some new inquisitorial procedure to the terrors<br />
of our custom houses, which are already, since<br />
the dynamite scare of ten or twelve years ago, the<br />
most troublesome in Western Europe. Neverthe-<br />
less, a law-abiding man ought to satisfy law and<br />
conscience, and at the same time do a work of<br />
charity to other travellers, by leaving his foreign<br />
reprints asan addition to some hotelorship library.<br />
Public opinion has to be educated on this point,<br />
but it is not to be done by vituperation. Mean-<br />
while, I should like to know whether the total<br />
loss to British publishers and authors by the<br />
private importation of Tauchnitz copies amounts<br />
to anything like 3100 or £50 in a year. We<br />
certainly cannot assume that every one who brings<br />
in a Tauchnitz copy of a popular book would<br />
otherwise have bought an English one. It seems<br />
to me that we have more important things to<br />
attend to, even in this particular line. For<br />
example, the book market of the minor colonies is,<br />
or very lately was, supplied almost wholly by<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 127 (#141) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
127<br />
pirated issues notwithstanding the efforts already<br />
made by the Society to procure better inforce-<br />
ment of the law. The same mischief exists,<br />
though not so largely, in Canada.<br />
3. The question of filling up the Laureateship<br />
iseems to me outside the business of the Society<br />
of Authors. Individual members are entitled to<br />
their opinions. I shall not state mine, but I feel<br />
sure that any corporate attempt at meddling in<br />
this matter could only bring the Society into<br />
ridicule.<br />
4. I have observed with uneasiness, in the<br />
Author and elsewhere, a tendency to revive the<br />
high metaphysical theory of copyright as a per-<br />
petual and immutable right of property conferred<br />
by the law of nature. This theory is, in my<br />
opinion, unsound, and at all events it has been<br />
definitely rejected by English and American law.<br />
'Copyright is property, but not a property in<br />
ideas; it is a monopoly or exclusive franchise,<br />
created for reasons of policy, in particular forms<br />
whereby ideas are expressed. M. Mallarmé's<br />
project is of a different order. It is an instal-<br />
ment of Socialism, and points towards a proposal<br />
which I quite expect to see seriously made some<br />
day, namely, to abolish copyright and substitute<br />
the endowment of literature by a State depart-<br />
ment, which department would, as a probable<br />
though not necessary corollary, be invested with<br />
large powers of censorship. Let authors consider<br />
how they would like this. -<br />
FREDERICK POLLOCK.<br />
*— - -º<br />
HAMMERSMITH PUBLIC LIBRARY,<br />
- HE Report of the Commissioners for the<br />
Public Library of Hammersmith for the<br />
year 1893-94 has been sent to us. The facts<br />
and figures are instructive. By an unfortunate<br />
omission the rules of the library are not presented<br />
with the report, so that the subscription or price<br />
of a ticket for the lending library cannot be<br />
learned. That it is very small is shown from the<br />
return of receipts for the year, in which<br />
320 Os. 5d. is set down for sales of tickets.<br />
Comparing the number of applicants for new<br />
tickets with the amount realised, it would seem<br />
that 2:#d. was the price of a ticket, but perhaps<br />
this is wrong.<br />
Bowever, there are about Io,000 borrowers.<br />
An analysis of the professions and trades of the<br />
2OOO who enrolled themselves during the year<br />
shows 350 belonging to the professional classes,<br />
among them two authors, three publishers, one<br />
barrister, one solicitor, fourteen clergymen, two<br />
missionaries, nine journalists, while the rest are<br />
all working men and working women. The<br />
library, therefore, belongs to all classes. It con-<br />
tains II,500 books, of which more than one-fourth<br />
belong to fiction. It is greatly to be hoped that<br />
in the next report the commissioners will give an<br />
analysis of the books taken out, showing the<br />
names of the authors mostly read. There is,<br />
however, a classified list showing the number of<br />
books in each class. The figures are very satis-<br />
factory. The IO,OOO borrowers between them,<br />
representing, in the proportion, viz., 18 per cent.<br />
of the professional to 82 per cent. of the working<br />
classes, read between them the following:<br />
Theology and Philosophy 1,958 books<br />
History and Biography... 7,088<br />
Voyages and Travels 5,220 , ,<br />
Law and Politics ......... 679 ,<br />
Arts and Sciences......... 8,027 ,<br />
Fiction ..................... I 25,827 ,<br />
Poetry, Drama, and<br />
Classics .................. I,725 23<br />
Miscellaneous and Maga-<br />
Zines ..................... 9,469 ×<br />
Juvenile Literature ... ... 28,350 ,<br />
Music........................ 1,871 ,,<br />
In all they read I 90,214 books, which, divided<br />
among the IO, SOO, means very nearly twenty<br />
books a-head. Since reading is no longer to the<br />
great mass of mankind study but recreation, and<br />
since it may be allowed that the Commissioners<br />
and the librarian between them know how to<br />
present only literature that is worthy of being<br />
read, we need not wonder at fiction representing<br />
60 per cent. of the books taken out. If, however,<br />
we ask what fiction is read, the answer exactly<br />
agrees with what has been repeatedly advanced in<br />
these columns; that the general public turned<br />
into a public library read exactly what the limited<br />
public turned into Mudie’s library read, viz., the<br />
newest fiction by living writers first, and that they<br />
call for these books oftenest. This must neces-<br />
sarily be the case, because the books of the day will<br />
always interest more than the books of yesterday.<br />
Thus Rider Haggard’s books go out at the rate of<br />
56 copies a year for each volume, but Scott's<br />
only 22 ; Thomas Hardy’s novels are taken out<br />
at the rate of 47 copies a year for each book;<br />
Charles Dickens's at the rate of 35; Thackeray,<br />
23; Charles Kingsley, 36. The dead novelists<br />
still in demand at the Hammersmith Library<br />
may be classified as follows:–<br />
Wilkie Collins ............... 26O4 issues.<br />
Harrison Ainsworth ......... I926 ,<br />
Miss Muloch .................. I 594 3,<br />
Lord Lytton .................. I494 3,<br />
Anthony Trollope ............ I494 3,<br />
Dickens ........................ I388 ,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 128 (#142) ############################################<br />
<br />
fº&<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Sir W. Scott ~<br />
II 22 issues.<br />
Lever ................. ......... 815 ,<br />
George Eliot .................. 696 »<br />
Thackeray ..................... 5I 7 2,<br />
Charlotte Bronté ............ 347 ,<br />
As to the popularity of living authors the<br />
returns are not trustworthy, because the collections<br />
do not appear to be complete.<br />
On the same subject the Tibrarian of the<br />
Clerkenwell Public Library—Mr. J. D. Brown—<br />
writes as follows: “My experience is that slush<br />
and truck are avoided even by the classes who<br />
are supposed to have nothing in the nature of<br />
educated perception about them. Give even the<br />
ordinary public library boy reader his choice<br />
between one of Henty’s tales and ‘Broadway<br />
Bill’s Adventures in Denver,’ and it will soon be<br />
seen that Paternoster-row licks the Bowery.’”<br />
• *=~~~~~<br />
--z-------<br />
FICTION.<br />
HE following is an enumeration of the prin-<br />
T cipal novels and tales published in one,<br />
two, and three volumes respectively during<br />
the last three years—Sept. 1891 to Aug. 1894, both<br />
included. It is compiled from the monthly list of<br />
, “New Books and New Editions” published in<br />
the Author, these lists being prepared from the<br />
daily announcements. Each work is counted<br />
once only, taking no account of the numerous<br />
new editions. Translations are not included :-<br />
1891. 1892. 1893.<br />
1. 2 3 1. 2 3 1 2 3<br />
Vol. Wols. Vols. Vol. Vols. Vols. Vol. Vols. Vols.<br />
September ... Ig | 2 || 5 || 2 I | 2 | II || 48 || 1 || 12<br />
October ...... 28 || 4 || 7 || 62 || 2 || 14 || 81 8, 16<br />
November ... 52 || 3 || 6 || 52 || 8 || Io || 75 || 6 || Io<br />
December ... 18 || 3 9 || 35 | 5 || 5 || 51 || 6 9<br />
1892. 1893. 1894.<br />
January ....., I6 || 2 7 I I I 2 8 || 24 2 6<br />
February ... I9 || 3 || 5 || I4 5 8 || 20 || 4 8<br />
March ...... 28 2 8 || 2I IO || 23 4 4.<br />
April ......... I9 || 4 4 || 26 2 6 || 30 7 7<br />
May ......... 35 || 5 || IO 27 | 5 9 || 28 || 4 || 13<br />
June ......... 23 2 6 || 38 || 4 || I4 || 41 || 8 || 14<br />
July ......... 18 4 3 : 36 I 5 || 28 3 3<br />
August ...... I9 2 3 || 25 | I 3 I7 2 2<br />
Totals... 204] 36 || 73 ||368 || 37 IO3|466 55 IO2<br />
Note, in connection with this list, a passage in<br />
the Author for Sept. 1894, page IO7:—<br />
“Perhaps the most striking, because the most<br />
ignorant, comment on the recent three-volume<br />
novel discussion is the following:—‘The simple<br />
fact is, that until the public can be educated to:<br />
buy books instead of borrowing them, the attempt<br />
to produce original works of fiction in one volume:<br />
must inevitably result in a ruinous failure.’”<br />
It will be observed that the one-volume form.<br />
has increased in two years from 294 to 466. This.<br />
form is produced for the buying public. Some of<br />
the books have run into many thousands of copies;,<br />
we have not heard of any ruinous failures in<br />
consequence of their appearance.<br />
II.—THE THREE-VoIUME NOVEL.<br />
The London Booksellers’ Society has addressed<br />
a letter to publishers. The letter was published<br />
on July 18 in the Westminster Gazette, from<br />
whose columns it is here quoted. By accident the<br />
slip has been delayed two months:–<br />
“We observe in the circular addressed to you<br />
by Messrs. Mudie and Messrs. W. H. Smith and<br />
Son, with reference to the price of three-volume:<br />
novels, that they suggest—‘That you shall<br />
agree not to issue cheaper editions of novels and<br />
of other books, which have been taken for library<br />
circulation, within twelve months from the date.<br />
of publication.” We beg to convey to you our<br />
unqualified disapproval of such a proposal, and<br />
in the event of your being inclined to entertain<br />
the idea, we desire, at this early stage, to enter<br />
our formal protest against such an injustice to:<br />
the bookseller. At the same time we are very<br />
conscious that on this subject your own ideas.<br />
and ours run on parallel lines. As the whole<br />
question of three-volume novels is now being<br />
raised, we should like to say that it would be a<br />
great satisfaction to us if good works of fiction<br />
ceased to be issued in this way. We are unani-<br />
<br />
mously in favour of such novels being published<br />
at once in a six-shilling form, or, at any rate, at<br />
some popular price, and we feel convinced that.<br />
not only would the bookseller order such volumes<br />
in large numbers, but that the library orders.<br />
would not be diminished. As to ‘other books,’<br />
we have long been of opinion that the price at<br />
which they are issued upon first publication pro-<br />
hibits sales.”<br />
III.-LoRD CHESTERFIELD ON NOVELS.<br />
In connection with the discussion on the length.<br />
of novels, I think the following quotation from<br />
Lord Chesterfield is not inapposite: “I am in<br />
doubt whether you know what a novel is : it is a<br />
little gallant history, which must contain a great<br />
deal of love, and not eaceed one or two small,<br />
volumes. The subject must be a love affair, the<br />
lovers are to meet with many difficulties and<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 129 (#143) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I-29<br />
obstacles, to oppose the accomplishment of their<br />
wishes, but at last overcome them all, and the<br />
conclusion or catastrophe must leave them happy.<br />
A novel is a kind of abbreviation of a romance;<br />
for a romance generally consists of twelve<br />
volumes, all filled with insipid love nonsense and<br />
most incredible adventures.”<br />
F. Norreys Conn ELL.<br />
IV.--THE Two-WOLUME, NOVEL.<br />
As no voice has so far been raised on behalf of<br />
the two-volume novel during your late interest-<br />
ing discussion upon the rival merits of its longer<br />
and shorter sister, might Inow urge my feeble plea<br />
for it P. In the first place, would not many three-<br />
volume novels be improved in quality by some<br />
compression P. How often the padding will come<br />
out in that third inevitable volume. Witness<br />
even “Lord Ormont and his Aminta.” I am an<br />
ancient and omnivorous novel reader, and I speak<br />
the name of George Meredith with all due<br />
reverence, but here for the first time I did strip<br />
some irrelevant (as it seemed to me) details and<br />
conversations, not bearing in his usual admirable<br />
way upon the plot, which helped to expand two<br />
very short first vols. and this filled up last one<br />
into the publishers’ fatal three.<br />
I speak in ignorance of the financial aspect of<br />
the question. Perhaps you would enlighten us a<br />
little as to that matter. As regards the reader,<br />
his pocket would benefit of course, though less<br />
than if the com oression into one solid mass,<br />
involving smaller type and poorer margins,<br />
became general. But then our eyes. We<br />
especially who go on loving fiction in our<br />
decrepitude. Besides, who has the courage to<br />
face a one-volume “Middlemarch " or “Diana<br />
of the Crossways,” if even the shabbiest of<br />
second-hand editions in decent print can be had<br />
second-hand on easy terms ?<br />
May I venture, in my role of sexagenarian, to<br />
correct a statement in your August number to<br />
the following effect, and by so doing do justice<br />
to an enterprising Irish firm of publishers ?<br />
“The cheap edition” you say “was introduced<br />
about thirty years ago.” It is almost double that<br />
term of years since Mr. John Simms, of the firm<br />
of Simms and MacIntyre, an old established firm<br />
in Belfast, invented the shilling novel. This<br />
gentleman is still alive. I inclose his address<br />
On the chance that you may care to have a few<br />
particulars of his venture. I remember, when<br />
a child, the arrival of each gay green monthly<br />
volume as it came to be read aloud of an evening,<br />
and then added to the long rows of its fellows on<br />
the book-shelves. These bore on their backs the<br />
names of Miss Mitford, Mary Howitt, Mrs. Gore,<br />
shilling.<br />
Mrs. Trollope (Anthony's mother), the Banims.<br />
(O'Hara family), Carleton, Gerald Griffin, and<br />
numbers of other good novelists, to say nothing<br />
of the great “Monte Christo,” “Consuelo,” and<br />
hosts of the better sort of French and German.<br />
stories, translated for the first time into English.<br />
All these came to us at the modest price of one<br />
With many apologies for intruding on<br />
your space, I am, sir, yours faithfully,<br />
AN OLD NOVEL READER.<br />
THE AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS.<br />
Tº: following announcements are reduced<br />
and classified from the lists published in<br />
the Athenæum up to Sept. 22. The order<br />
followed is that of their appearance in that.<br />
paper.<br />
Among the more important books announced<br />
by Messrs. Longmans are Froude's “Life and<br />
Letters of Erasmus;” Gardimer’s “History of<br />
the Commonwealth;” “Wandering Words,” by<br />
Sir Edwin Arnold; Liddon’s “Life of Pusey,”<br />
third vol. ; Liddon’s “Clerical Life and Work;”<br />
the Bishop of Peterborough’s “Hulsean Lectures.<br />
for 1894.” They announce one three volume<br />
novel, one novel in one volume, and a complete.<br />
set of Mrs. Walford’s books. A new edition of<br />
Max Müller’s “Chips from a German Workshop;”<br />
a new edition of Chesney’s “Indian Polity;” and<br />
a new edition of Leslie Stephen’s “Playground<br />
of Europe,” are also in their list of thirty-seven<br />
new books.<br />
Messrs. Chatto and Windus will produce fifty-<br />
seven new books, including three novels in<br />
three volumes; five in two volumes; twenty-five-<br />
in one volume ; some of these being cheap<br />
editions only. In what is called more solid.<br />
literature will be issued Wols. III. and IV. of<br />
Justin Huntly M*Carthy’s “French Revolution;”<br />
the Life and Inventions of Edison ; a translation.<br />
of the Memoirs of the Duchess de Gontant ;.<br />
Flammarion’s “Popular Astronomy ; ” George<br />
MacDonald’s Poetical Works. Not belonging to .<br />
“solid" literature, is Lehmann’s “Conversational.<br />
Guide to Young Shooters,” from Punch.<br />
Messrs. Chambers's announcements are mainly<br />
of fiction. Nine one volume novels; four new<br />
volumes of popular biographies; and certain.<br />
elementary works.<br />
Messrs. G. P. Putnam's Sons announce forty--<br />
two works. Among these are biographies and<br />
studies of Rufus King, Oliver Cromwell, Tinto-<br />
retto, Napoleon, Prince Henry, Julian the<br />
Apostate, Louis XIV., Thomas Jefferson, Thomas<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 130 (#144) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 30<br />
THE AUTHOR,<br />
Paine—a sufficiently miscellaneous collection—<br />
and five novels.<br />
Messrs. Macmillan and Co. announce in all<br />
eighty-two works, including reprints and new<br />
editions and selections, and republished essays and<br />
papers. Among the reprints and old authors we<br />
find Shakespeare: a new Concordance to Shake-<br />
speare; Tennyson, “Gulliver's Travels;” Froissart,<br />
Thoreau, Chaucer, Keble, Southey, a new version<br />
of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, and several new<br />
editions of classical works. The more important<br />
of the new books are Matthew Arnold’s Letters;<br />
Mrs. Oliphant’s “Reign of Queen Anne,” Mrs.<br />
Steele's “Tales of the Punjab,” novels by Marion<br />
Crawford and Sir H. Cunningham, the Life of<br />
Dean Church, the Life of Cardinal Manning, the<br />
Life of Sir A. C. Ramsay, Frederic Harrison on<br />
“The Meaning of History;” Five Lectures by<br />
Freeman; Canon Atkinson on “Whitby,” and a<br />
book on Sport and Natural History, by the<br />
late George Kingsley.<br />
Mr. John Nimmo will publish eight new books,<br />
and will complete the “Border Waverley.”<br />
Among these books will be a biography of the<br />
late John Addington Symonds; a posthumous<br />
work by Symonds on Boccaccio; and a selection<br />
from the stories of Bandello.<br />
Mr. Edward Arnold announces twenty-six<br />
works, including a Life of Sir John Macdonald ;<br />
a Memoir of Maria Edgworth ; the Recollections<br />
of the Dean of Salisbury; Robert Sherard’s Life<br />
of Alphonse Daudet; Dean Hole's “Thoughts<br />
upon England spoken in America; ” and a selec-<br />
tion from Ste. Buive.<br />
Messrs. Hutchinson announce thirty-four new<br />
books. Among these are novels by Mrs. Oliphant,<br />
D. C. Murray, Mrs. Spender, the author of the<br />
- “Yellow Aster,” F. Frankfort Moore, Mrs. Dilke,<br />
Mrs. Alfred Marks, “Rita.” Adeline Sergeant,<br />
Amelia Barr, and Sarah Tytler.<br />
The Sunday School Union announces five books,<br />
including a volume to which Archdeacon Farrar<br />
- contributes. -<br />
Messrs. Cassell and Co. announce thirty-eight<br />
works. These include the second volume of<br />
Traill’s “Social History of England; ” George<br />
Augustus Sala’s Autobiography; a “Life of<br />
Daniel Defoe;” by Thomas Wright; and novels by<br />
Frank Stockton, Hesba Stretton, Max Pember-<br />
ton, H. Hutchinson, L. T. Meade, Mrs. Alex-<br />
ander, Mrs. Molesworth, Anthony Hope, Frank<br />
Barrett, Egerton Castle, Maurus Jokai, and<br />
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.<br />
Messrs. Partridge and Co. announce twenty-<br />
seven works. Among these are Biographies of<br />
Reginald Heber, John Howard, Elizabeth Fry,<br />
and Bishop Alwyn. There are novels by G.<br />
Manville Fenn and Sarah Doudney, and there are<br />
books for boys and girls.<br />
The S.P.C.K. announce sixteen works. Among<br />
the writers are Mrs. Charles, Professor Maspero,<br />
G. Manville Fenn, F. Frankfort Moore, Harry<br />
Collingwood, and others,<br />
Messrs. Innes and Co. announce six new books,<br />
besides story books, for these children's series.<br />
Dorothea Gerard and Stanley Weyman have<br />
intrusted them with two novels.<br />
Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson, and Ferrier<br />
announce three new books, including one novel by<br />
Maggie Swan.<br />
Messrs. Bell announce twenty-eight books.<br />
Among them are a new volume of Pepys; a<br />
History of the British Navy, by Capt. Robinson,<br />
R.N. ; a new edition of “Eros and Psyche,” by<br />
Robert Bridges; a “Handbook to the Ruins of<br />
Rome,” by the Rev. Robert Burn; and a transla-<br />
tion of Gregorovius's “History of Rome in the<br />
Middle Ages.”<br />
Messrs. A. and C. Black announce nineteen<br />
works. Among them are Archdeacon Farrar on<br />
“The Life of Christ as represented in Art;” an<br />
“Introduction to the Book of Isaiah,” by the Rev.<br />
T. K. Cheyne; Haikel’s “Monism,” translated;<br />
“Syriac Literature,” by the late William Wright;<br />
“The Religion of the Semites” (new edition), by<br />
the late Professor Robertson Smith ; and three<br />
novels.<br />
Messrs. Methuen and Co. have forty-six books<br />
in preparation. Among them are six selections of<br />
English verse and one of English prose; additions<br />
to the different series running for this firm ; a<br />
History of Egypt, by Professor Flinders Petrie; a<br />
book on the French Riviera, by Mrs. Oliphant; a<br />
book of Ballads, by Rudyard Kipling; and novels<br />
in one volume by Baring Gould, W. E. Norris,<br />
Gilbert Parker, Anthony Hope, Conan Doyle,<br />
Robert Barr, “X, L.,” and Standish O'Grady.<br />
Messrs. Sonnenschein and Co. announce fifty-<br />
six works, of which thirteen are educational and<br />
thirteen belong to social and political economy.<br />
There is a volume of Ethical Discourses by<br />
Leslie Stephen; a new series, called “Social Eng-<br />
land Series,” will be commenced; and there are<br />
four novels.<br />
Mr. Fisher Unwin announces fifty-seven works.<br />
Among them are a translation of Villari’s<br />
Florence ; “A Literary History of the English<br />
People,” by M. J. J. Jusserand; the Life of<br />
Charles Bradlaugh, by his daughter; a Life of<br />
Abraham Lincoln, by John Nicolay and John<br />
Hay; Henry Norman's Travels in the Far East;<br />
four or five books of new verse; twenty novels,<br />
including one by the Rev. S. R. Crockett and<br />
one by “Rita; ” the Tales of John Oliver Hobbes,<br />
now first collected, in one volume ; and the com-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 131 (#145) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I31<br />
mencement of a series called the “Criminology<br />
Series.”<br />
Messrs. Wells Gardner and Co. announce<br />
twenty-three works, including seven stories.<br />
Mr. John Hogg announces two books, viz., one<br />
on Whist and a collection of stories.<br />
The Cambridge University Press announce<br />
fifty-one books, of which the greater part are<br />
theological, classical and educational. Not a<br />
single mathematical or scientific work is in the<br />
list. The most important of the new books are<br />
“The History of English Law,” by Sir Frederick<br />
Pollock and Frederic William Maitland; “Chap-<br />
ters on the Principles of International Law,” by<br />
J. Westlake; “The Growth of British Policy,”<br />
by Sir J. R. Seeley; “Outlines of English<br />
Industrial History,” by W. Cunningham and E.<br />
A. McArthur; “The Europeans in India,” by H.<br />
Morse Stephens; and “The Foundation of the<br />
German Empire,” by J. W. Headlam.<br />
Messrs. Chapman and Hall are producing<br />
fifteen new books. The more important are Sir<br />
C. P. Beauchamp Walker's “Days of a Soldier's<br />
Tife,” Col. Malleson’s “Tife of Warren Hastings;<br />
Col. Cooper King’s “Life of George Washington,”<br />
“Life of General Lee,” by Fitzhugh Lee, his<br />
nephew ; six books of sport and travel, and five<br />
novels.<br />
Messrs. Heinemann has a list of thirty-five new<br />
books. Among them may be mentioned “Letters<br />
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” edited by Ernest<br />
Hartley Coleridge; “In Russet and Silver,” a<br />
new volume of poems by Edmund Gosse; three<br />
new volumes of the “Great Educator’”; seven-<br />
teen novels by Mrs. Lynn Linton, W. E.<br />
Norris, M. L. Pendered, including transla-<br />
tions of Björnstjerm, Björnson, Tourjuénief, and<br />
Zola.<br />
The “Roxburghe Press” announce sixteen<br />
books. Among them is the address of the<br />
Marquis of Salisbury to the British Association,<br />
revised.<br />
Mr. David Nutt announces twenty-one books.<br />
They are not all reprints of mediaeval and Tudor<br />
literature. Among them is Canon Jenkinson's<br />
“Cardinal Toussure and the Jesuits in China,”<br />
and “Lectures on Darwinism,” by the late<br />
Alfred Milne Marshall. -<br />
Messrs. Nisbet and Co. announce twenty-five<br />
new books, with a note of “several new volumes<br />
in the ‘Pilgrim’ and other series.” With the<br />
exception of two stories, they appear to be of a<br />
religious character.<br />
Messrs. Blackie and Sons announce five new<br />
books and a new series.<br />
Messrs. Routledge and Sons announce six new<br />
novels, beginning a series—new editions of Long-<br />
fellow, Grace Aguilar, Randolph Caldecott, and<br />
“The Three Musketeers,” and Harry Furniss's,<br />
Book of Romps.<br />
Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton announce<br />
thirty works. Of these twelve are devotional,<br />
seven are novels, the rest chiefly biographical.<br />
Messrs. Henry and Co. announce five books—<br />
One of sport, one of rhymes, one of housewifery,<br />
and two novels, of which one is by John Oliver<br />
Hobbes.<br />
Messrs. Oliphant, Anderson, and Farrier<br />
announce twelve books. Of these three are bio--<br />
graphical, one is devotional, seven are novels.<br />
*- = -º<br />
a- - -<br />
M. MALLARMES PROPOSAL.<br />
MALLARME'S proposal, published in<br />
M the month of August, called forth a .<br />
* considerable amount of discussion, for<br />
the most part favourable as to the general.<br />
principle involved, viz., that if literary property<br />
is to become everybody’s property after a term.<br />
of years it might very well be subject to a .<br />
tax, i.e., that those who, for trading purposes,<br />
produce books whose time of copyright has<br />
expired should pay to the State for that privi-.<br />
lege a royalty upon every copy sold. It is not<br />
expected that persons interested in this kind.<br />
of property should welcome the proposal —<br />
indeed, one or two such persons have already<br />
cried out pretty loudly against “taxing the<br />
public ’’ and “taxing knowledge.” But it would<br />
not be taxing the public at all, nor would it.<br />
be taxing knowledge; it would be taxing the<br />
publisher for permission to use literary pro-.<br />
perty for his own individual emolument. We.<br />
may be very certain that a book now sold.<br />
for a shilling, if it were subject to a half.<br />
penny stamp, would continue to be sold for a<br />
shilling.<br />
The opinion of our Chairman, Sir Frederick<br />
Pollock, on the proposal will be found in another<br />
column (p. 127). Meanwhile, without consider-<br />
ing the possibility or even the wisdom of such a .<br />
scheme, let us see how it would work.<br />
Suppose such a tax imposed. It would be<br />
collected by the simple process of affixing a<br />
stamp on every copy that went out of the pub-<br />
lisher's office. It would produce say, at a half-<br />
penny in the shilling, a small revenue, say, of<br />
320,000 a year. What could be done with that<br />
money P Would the heirs of the authors by the<br />
sale of whose books it was raised be entitled to<br />
take it all? Clearly not, because then the needy<br />
author would be induced to sell his possible.<br />
claims in futurity as he now sells his copyright,<br />
very likely for a mere song. It must, therefore,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 132 (#146) ############################################<br />
<br />
** * * *<br />
I:32:<br />
be thrown into a special Fund—not the Literary<br />
Fund, which exists only for the relief of<br />
occasional distress, but a special Fund which<br />
shall distribute the income. The rights of<br />
successful books would then belong to the<br />
mation in trust. This Fund would be used for<br />
the purpose of preventing distress. It is always<br />
a miserable and a humiliating thing to appeal<br />
to the Literary Fund for assistance; it would be<br />
well not to extend the humiliations. Such a Fund<br />
as that proposed should be used for conferring<br />
pensions on the children and grandchildren of<br />
great writers, should they be in want; and in giv-<br />
ing pensions to living writers should their works<br />
warrant the grant. Such pensions to the living<br />
would be like a good-service pension in the navy,<br />
an honour and a distinction. It is not, however,<br />
in the least likely that the proposal will ever go<br />
farther.<br />
One point rises out of the discussion. It is<br />
fifty years since the question of terminable copy-<br />
right was discussed. Perhaps the time has now<br />
returned when the question should be again<br />
-discussed. If the same arguments would be<br />
used which then prevailed they would at least be<br />
clothed in new language, and would be set forth<br />
by leader writers and magazine writers in<br />
language that would be understood by the<br />
people. Whatever the conclusion of such a<br />
discussion might be as to the law, one good<br />
result would certainly follow: that authors would<br />
better understand what is meant by copyright,<br />
and would more stiffly demand agreements in<br />
accordance with their rights of property. It may<br />
be quite true that only one book in a thousand<br />
enjoys an existence of a hundred years; it is cer-<br />
tainly quite true that most agreements are based<br />
on the tacit understanding that the work will not<br />
become a classic. At the same time, every writer<br />
should act as if his book was going to become<br />
immortal.<br />
*— — —”<br />
a- - -<br />
A DISHONEST AUTHOR,<br />
R. HEINEMANN communicates to the<br />
Daily Chronicle the following story:<br />
“Years ago a clever author brought<br />
to the publisher an incomplete MS., saying that<br />
the remainder should be delivered within a few<br />
weeks, and pressing the publisher to at once go<br />
to press with the part delivered. His plausible and<br />
pleasant manner persuaded the unsuspecting<br />
publisher to do so, and, with the additional plea<br />
of poverty, he obtained a large sum of money on<br />
account of the price of the whole. For years the<br />
publisher vainly begged, prayed, clamoured,<br />
insisted to be given the remainder of that MS.,<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
so that the book could be published; but, waiving<br />
aside all trivial considerations of honesty and<br />
good faith, the author, with a splendid indiffe-<br />
rence, steadily declined to again put his pen to<br />
paper to complete the work in question. Neither<br />
did he vouchsafe any satisfaction to his victim.<br />
When all amicable means failed, and the publisher<br />
found himself duped and deceived, the arm of<br />
the law was called in, but every stick that the<br />
author owned had been cleverly donated to<br />
another. The book was never completed, never<br />
published, except that the author used the<br />
identical title for a later work issued through<br />
another channel. The publisher, however,<br />
resigned himself to his loss, and refrained even<br />
from attempting to persuade a British jury that<br />
money had been obtained from him under false<br />
pretences.”<br />
One has heard from time to time of this case,<br />
but vaguely. It is like a nursery story beginning<br />
“Once upon a time.” It would be well if it<br />
were fitted with a name and date. Meantime<br />
we may note Mr. Heinemann's sweeping state-<br />
ment that publishers are “only too often victims<br />
of thieves most cunning, robbers most unscru-<br />
pulous.” Only “too often " ? Then let us hear<br />
another case or two, if another can be found.<br />
No good is accomplished by exaggerating the<br />
importance of a single fact so as to make it<br />
appear like a typical instead of an isolated fact.<br />
Publishers, in fact, are not “too often º’ victims<br />
of such dishonesty; though they may be sometimes<br />
treated in this manner. No one supposes that<br />
every writer is therefore an honourable man.<br />
Publishers may also lend money to an author in<br />
difficulties, and find it difficult to get that money<br />
back, a thing which happens in every profession<br />
or trade. Would it not be better to recognise<br />
all along that between author and publisher<br />
the same business precautions should be observed<br />
as between any other two parties to a business<br />
transaction ?<br />
No one pretends that perfect confidence should<br />
be placed in an author because he is an author;<br />
nor does any man in any business, except that<br />
of publishing, demand that absolute confidence<br />
shall be placed in him simply because he is in that<br />
business.<br />
><br />
º:<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 133 (#147) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 33<br />
BOOK TALK.<br />
R.S. STEVENSON will contribute a new<br />
volume to Messrs. Hutchinson’s series of<br />
“Homespun Stories.” It will be called<br />
“Woodrup's Dinah, a Tale of Nidderdale.” She<br />
has also nearly ready a story entitled “Helena<br />
Hadley.”<br />
Among the reprints announced in the literary<br />
columns, the most interesting to one old enough<br />
to remember the literature of the sixties is that<br />
of Henry Kingsley's novels. He had the misfor-<br />
tune to be the rival of his brother, who came first<br />
and had the advantage always conferred by a<br />
serious and a religious turn. Kingsley's Devon-<br />
shire lads who sailed westward ho! all carried<br />
a Bible in their pockets, and were extremely<br />
careful not to use naughty words. . In “Alton<br />
Locke” and in “Yeast ’’ Charles Kingsley was a<br />
reformer and a radical ; in “Hypatia” he gave<br />
us nineteenth century difficulties discussed by<br />
philosophers in Alexandria from an English point<br />
..of view taken about the year 1860. Henry<br />
Kingsley, on the other hand, had no reforms to<br />
propose, no grievances to remove, no difficulties<br />
to encounter. He took the world as he found it; he<br />
had no theological difficulties; he was not plagued<br />
with “questions; ” and he wrote his stories about<br />
the men and women that he knew. Thirty years<br />
ago they were rattling good stories—considered as<br />
stories, a good deal better than his brother could<br />
produce, with a lighter touch and a more<br />
dramatic instinct. Whether, after all these years,<br />
one would find them as bright and interesting<br />
remains to be seen. Mr. Clement Shorter edits<br />
the books and contributes a memoir. I have<br />
Beard that Henry Kingsley wrote the most<br />
delightful letters possible, but I have never had<br />
the opportunity of reading any of them. Perhaps<br />
Mr. Shorter will be able to give the world an<br />
illustration.<br />
Mr. John Bloundelle-Burton's new novel, “The<br />
Hispaniola Plate,” will commence in the St.<br />
James's Budget, on Friday, the 5th inst., and will<br />
be illustrated by M. G. Montbard. In this novel<br />
the scene will be laid partly in the present day<br />
and partly in the last days of the Stuart period,<br />
bothepochs being connected by incidents pertaining<br />
to the ends of the seventeenth and nineteenth<br />
centuries. The action of the story takes place<br />
principally in the Virgin Islands.<br />
A translation of “Astronomie Populaire,” by<br />
M. Camille Flammarion, the well-known French<br />
astronomer, will be published immediately by<br />
Messrs. Chatto and Windus. The work, which is a<br />
very interesting and popular one, written expressly<br />
for the general reader, had an enormous sale in<br />
France, no less than IOO,OOO copies having been<br />
sold in a few years Several new illustrations<br />
have been added, and the work has been carefully<br />
brought up to date by the translator, Mr. J. E.<br />
Gore, F.R.A.S.<br />
Cecil Clarke has just issued a new novel,<br />
entitled “An Artist's Fate,” through Mr. Elliot<br />
Stock.<br />
Mr. Maberly Phillips, F.S.A., of the Bank<br />
of England, Newcastle-on-Tyne, has written a<br />
book on the History of Banks and Bankers of<br />
Northern England. The book deals with early<br />
currency, the establishment of the first north-<br />
country bank, traces the evolution from their<br />
early beginnings of the many well-established<br />
banking concerns which now exist, and gives<br />
most interesting accounts of the serious failures<br />
which attended the efforts of the earlier bankers<br />
to cope with the rapid strides in trade and<br />
industry which followed the epoch-making inven-<br />
tion of steam power. It will be published<br />
immediately by Messrs. Effingham, Wilson,<br />
and Co.<br />
Mr. C. A. M. Fennell, Litt.D., proposes a<br />
“National Dictionary of English Language and<br />
Literature.” It is to be issued in monthly parts<br />
at a subscription of three guineas paid in advance,<br />
or four guineas in parts. The work will be based<br />
on full indexes of certain selected authors, with<br />
quotations from many others.<br />
We learn from the New York Critic that<br />
Messrs. Dodd, Mead, and Co., of Boston, are<br />
about to issue a new edition of Mrs. Trollope's<br />
famous “Domestic Manners of the Americans,”<br />
in two volumes, with ninety-four illustrations<br />
from contemporary drawings reproduced from<br />
the first edition of 1832.<br />
From the same paper we learn that a new and<br />
complete Concordance to Shakespeare, by Mr.<br />
John Bartlett, who has been engaged upon the<br />
work for eighteen years, will be published in<br />
New York immediately. It will fill 1910<br />
double column quarto pages. Also that Mr.<br />
Richard Watson Eddis's poems will shortly be<br />
issued in a collected form by the Century<br />
Company.<br />
Max O’Rell sails for America this month on a<br />
fourth lecture tour in the States.<br />
On Longevity of Authors, “H. G. K.” says:<br />
“You might have noted Hobbes, Fontenelle,<br />
St. Evremond, and Goethe, whose united ages<br />
amount to 368, an average of 92.”<br />
A new edition has just appeared of Mr. Powis<br />
Bale’s “Handbook for Steam Users” (Long-<br />
mans), and a new and enlarged edition of “Wood-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 134 (#148) ############################################<br />
<br />
I34.<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
working Machinery; its Rise, Progress, and Con-<br />
struction ” (Crosby, Lockwood, and Son).<br />
Early in the autumn a new serial story by Fitz-<br />
gerald Molloy, entitled “A Justified Sinner,” will<br />
be run through Messrs. Tillotson's syndicate of<br />
newspapers.<br />
The same author began in the third week of<br />
this month (September) a sensational serial novel<br />
called “In Shadow of Shame,” in Cassell’s<br />
Saturday Journal. This story deals with a cer-<br />
tain operation performed on the brain, and the<br />
consequences which follow. The incident has<br />
not previously been used in fiction. Mr. Fitz-<br />
gerald Molloy recently told an interviewer<br />
that such a case was brought to his notice<br />
by a distinguished surgeon, and that the<br />
chapter in which he, the author, deals with<br />
the subject is largely copied from the medical<br />
reports, all distressing and disagreeable details<br />
being omitted.<br />
Mr. Thomas Aspden, author of “The House of<br />
Stanley,” “Queen Victoria,” &c., will produce a<br />
political novel this month called “The Member<br />
for Workshire; or Church and State.” The pub-<br />
lishers are Swan, Sonnenschein, and Co.<br />
Mr James Baker, F.R.G.S., has had two works<br />
published during the past month; one, “Pictures<br />
from Bohemia,” being this year's volume of the<br />
“Pen and Pencil” series of the Religious Tract<br />
Society. The volume is very artistic, being<br />
illustrated by Walter Crane, Henry Whatley, and<br />
other artists who have travelled with the author<br />
in distant Bohemia; a country crowded with<br />
historical and picturesque and artistic surprises.<br />
The second work of Mr. James Baker is wholly<br />
historical, entitled “A Forgotten Great English-<br />
man.” It deals with the life of Peter Payne, a<br />
great leader of men in the 15th century, who, as<br />
principal of an Oxford college, had to flee for his<br />
opinions, and became a chief in Bohemia of the<br />
powerful Hussite movement, being first always in<br />
debates, in councils, and in treaties; a man with<br />
whom Pope, Kaiser, and kings had to reckon; a<br />
leader of thought of his century, and yet forgotten<br />
|by his own country, as the letters embodied in the<br />
volume from such authorities as the late Pro-<br />
fessor E. A. Freeman, Professor J. A. Froude,<br />
Mr. W. E. Gladstone, Professor James Rowley,<br />
and others fully prove. This volume, like the<br />
first, is the outcome of Mr. Baker’s travels and<br />
researches in Bohemia.<br />
Readers and students of Scandinavian litera-<br />
ture and history may note that they may obtain<br />
catalogues of Scandinavian books at the Skandi-<br />
navisk Antiquaria, 49, Gothersgade, Copen-<br />
hagen.<br />
Mr. Robert Sherard has now completed his<br />
biographical study of Alphonse Daudet. It will<br />
be published this autumn with a portrait, a fac-<br />
simile letter, and other illustrations.<br />
Mr. John Codman Roper, author of “The<br />
Campaign of Waterloo,” has written the “Story<br />
of the American Civil War.” It will be pub-<br />
lished by Putnams in three volumes.<br />
Mr. James Field has collected his papers, which<br />
appeared originally in Scribner's, into a volume,<br />
which will be published by the same house.<br />
Max O’Rell's new book “John Bull and Co. :<br />
the Great Colonial Branches of the Firm,” will<br />
be issued simultaneously in England, America,<br />
and France.<br />
Mr. John Burroughs has a new volume of<br />
“Outdoor” essays in the press (Houghton,<br />
Mifflin, and Co.). Three other “Outdoor” books<br />
are announced in the New York Critic from the<br />
same firm.<br />
The “Book Hunter in London,” by W.<br />
Roberts, will appear in the autumn. It will form<br />
a companion to M. Octave Uzanne’s “Physio-<br />
logie des Quais de Paris,” better known under<br />
the title of the English translation of “The<br />
Book-Hunter in Paris.” In this contribution<br />
to the history of book-collecting the results<br />
of many years’ inveterate book-hunting will<br />
be chronicled, and the experiences not only<br />
of the compiler but of many past and present<br />
distinguished “hunters” will be laid under con-<br />
tribution. The introductory chapter takes the<br />
form of an essay on “The Theory and Practice of<br />
Book-Hunting.” This is followed by a disserta-<br />
tion on book-hunting in London from the<br />
earliest times to the eighteenth century. Other<br />
chapters deal with book auctions and auctioneers;<br />
with some famous collections and collectors;<br />
with book thieves; with bookstalling in London;<br />
with famons booksellers; with lady book-col-<br />
lectors; with the prices paid for particular books<br />
in past and present times, booksellers' catalogues,<br />
and other interesting matters connected with the<br />
subject. In a book covering such a wide field<br />
it is naturally impossible for the efforts of one<br />
man to gather into his net all the numerous<br />
incidents and anecdotes connected with book-<br />
hunting in London. The author, therefore,<br />
invites any information or suggestion sent without<br />
delay to him, as well as the loan or indication<br />
of rare or curious pictorial illustrations of the<br />
subject, at 86, Grosvenor-road, S.W.<br />
A new method of publication is about to be put<br />
to the test by the Roxburghe Press, of 3, Victoria-<br />
street, Westminster, and 32, Charing-cross, S.W.,<br />
who announce a “time ’’ limited edition of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 135 (#149) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 35<br />
“Phantasms,” a volume of original stories,<br />
illustrating posthumous personality and character,<br />
by Wirt Gerrare, author of “Rufus's Legacy.”<br />
Instead of confining the edition to a predeter-<br />
mined number of copies, the publishers will<br />
supply booksellers until Dec. 31 next, after which<br />
date all sales by the publishers will be stopped,<br />
and no other edition will be issued during the<br />
continuance of the copyright. The sole edition<br />
will be popular and modern in price and form, and<br />
the limit is made with a view to guard booksellers<br />
from deterioration in value of any stock carried<br />
over at the end of the season, and as affording a<br />
safer investment than offered by the purchase of<br />
first editions, subject to cheap reissues and<br />
remainder sales.<br />
The Roxburghe Press have in preparation “The<br />
Magistracy,” being a directory and biographical<br />
dictionary of the justices of the peace of the United<br />
Ringdom, revised to date and edited by Charles<br />
F. Rideal; “Evolution,” a retrospect by the<br />
Marquis of Salisbury, K.G., being the address<br />
(slightly revised by the author) recently delivered<br />
before the Royal British Association; a second<br />
edition of the “Law and Lawyers of Pickwick,”<br />
by Frank Lockwood, Q.C., M.P., slightly revised,<br />
with an original drawing by the author of Mr.<br />
Sergeant Buzfuz; a third edition of “Wellerisms”<br />
from “Pickwick” and “Master Humphrey's<br />
Clock,” selected by Charles F. Rideal,” with an<br />
introduction by Charles Kent and an entirely<br />
original drawing of “Sam Weller,” by George<br />
Cruickshank, jun. ; “Woman Regained,” a novel<br />
of artistic life by George Barlow; a second<br />
revised edition of “Charles Dickens' Heroines<br />
and Women Folk,” some thoughts concerning<br />
them, by Charles F. Rideal, with original<br />
drawings or Edith Dombey and Dot ; “The<br />
Reunion of Christendom,” by Cardinal Vaughan,<br />
being the slightly revised address recently<br />
delivered before the Catholic Truth Society;<br />
“Young Gentlemen of to-day,” by Charles F.<br />
Rideal, illustrated by “Crow’”; “Phantasms,”<br />
Original stories illustrating posthumous character<br />
and personality, by Wirt Gerrare, a time-limited<br />
'edition ; “The Mountain Lake and other Poems,”<br />
from the works of Friedrich von Bodenstedt,<br />
translated by Mrs. Percy Preston, an edition<br />
limited to 450 copies; “Told at the Club,” some<br />
short stories, being No. 1 of the “Pot-boiler”<br />
series, by Charles F. Rideal; “Accidents,” by<br />
I)r. G. M. Lowe, lecturer and examiner to the St.<br />
John Ambulance Association; “Young Babies,<br />
their Food and Troubles,” by Mrs. Truman and<br />
Miss Edith Sykes; and a second edition of 5000<br />
copies of “Food for the Sick” by the same<br />
authors; “The Reminiscences of a Septuagenarian<br />
Citizen,” by Edward Callow.<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—PRoof SHEETs.<br />
AY I suggest to writers, especially writers<br />
of fiction, that it would be a kindness to<br />
- send their proof sheets to any hospital<br />
they may choose, for the use of the patients P<br />
The lightness of the sheets is a distinct advantage<br />
for those who have to read in bed.<br />
F. M. PEARD.<br />
II.-PERSONAL.<br />
Will you allow me, through the medium of The<br />
Author, to thank the Society of Authors and<br />
their secretary for aiding me to obtain an<br />
acknowledgment from two papers of infringe-<br />
ment of my copyright in title and matter. The<br />
first, a paper, boldly adapted my title of “By the<br />
Western Sea.” The second, a case of a reprint<br />
of a Canadian article entitled “ British v.<br />
German,” which is bodily taken from pages 25,<br />
27, 31, 33, 34, 45, 46, and 95, of my “Our<br />
Foreign Competitors.” Individually I doubt if<br />
I could have obtained these public acknowledg-<br />
ments, as one editor laughed at my first very<br />
polite note suggesting an infringement of copy-<br />
right had been committed; but the letters from<br />
the Society’s secretary had a salutary effect, and<br />
tardy and reluctant justice was done to my little<br />
book and title, and the acknowledgment given<br />
as wished. JAMES BAKER.<br />
III.-GEORGE ELIOT.<br />
It is a matter of wonder to me that Miss<br />
Gilchrist's remarks on George Eliot in the July<br />
Author have remained unchallenged. As a lover<br />
of George Eliot let me say that I cannot discover<br />
the “barren fatalism” in her work. Why, the<br />
great difference between the ancients and George<br />
Eliot stands in the fact that the former depicted<br />
mortals at the mercy of a predestined fate outside<br />
their own personality, and independent of it<br />
altogether, men and women like CEdipus or<br />
Helen being “sculptured in black marble on the<br />
wall of their fate,” while the George Eliot made<br />
man master of his fate. Let me refer you to<br />
Sidney Lanin's masterly essays on the English<br />
novel on the subject of George Eliot : “An me<br />
peut €tre juste qu’envers ceux qu’en aime.”<br />
S. S.<br />
Will “Sans Souci.” be so good as to give<br />
the Editor an opportunity of answering her letter<br />
of Aug. 5*<br />
IV.-HEREDITARY GENIUS.<br />
The Rev. Dr. Bell, of Cheltenham, writes:<br />
“In your brief notice of Lady Dufferin's<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 136 (#150) ############################################<br />
<br />
136<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Memoirs, by her son, you ask : “Is not the<br />
Sheridan family the only family on record which<br />
has continued to hand down its best charac-<br />
teristics from one generation to another ?” May<br />
I in reply remind you that genius has shown<br />
itself to be hereditary in the family of the late Mr.<br />
Thomas Arnold, the eminent head master of<br />
Rugby, and author of “A History of Rome,”<br />
“Lectures on Modern History,” and other valu-<br />
able works. Mr. Matthew Arnold, the distin-<br />
guished poet, essayist, and critic, was his son,<br />
and his place in English Literature has become<br />
assured. Another son, Mr. Thomas Arnold, is<br />
well known in the literary world as the editor of<br />
Pope, the author of a volume on Literature, and<br />
is now engaged on a work, likely to add to his<br />
reputation, for the Rolls Office on the history of<br />
Bury St. Edmunds. His daughter, Mrs. Hum-<br />
phry Ward, has won herself a name in literature<br />
as the authoress of three novels which have<br />
commanded a large share of popular attention,<br />
and made their mark in the domain of fiction.<br />
Mr. Oakley Arnold Forster, a son of Mr. William<br />
Arnold, and grandson of Dr. Thomas Arnold, has<br />
a seat in the House of Commons for West<br />
Belfast, and has already shown distinct states-<br />
manlike qualities which augur well for his future,<br />
He also has proved himself possessed of literary<br />
powers. All who have the privilege of intimacy<br />
with the daughters of Dr. Arnold, one of whom<br />
is the widow of the eminent statesman the Right<br />
Hon. William Forster, will bear ready witness to<br />
their culture, charm, and intellectual powers, both<br />
of thought and expression, though those have<br />
been confined to the quiet sphere of home, and<br />
not sought the suffrages of the public. I may<br />
say, however, that Mrs. Forster has edited a new<br />
edition of her father's “Sermons on the Interpre-<br />
tation of Scripture and the Christian Life.”<br />
Surely you will allow that in the Arnold family,<br />
as well as in the Sheridan, literary genius is here-<br />
ditary. The great grandchildren are too young<br />
as yet to prove by their works what they can<br />
achieve.”<br />
W.—A NEW FoEM OF PAPER FOR TYPE-<br />
WIRITER.S.<br />
All who use a typewriter know what an amount<br />
of time is consumed in putting in, adjusting, and<br />
taking out the sheets of finished copy, particularly<br />
if one is duplicating by the use of carbon paper.<br />
I wish to suggest an improvement which I venture<br />
to think will save much time, particularly in MSS.<br />
of great length. Instead of the ordinary sheets<br />
of paper cut to 8in. by Ioin., or foolscap, why<br />
could we not have paper furnished us on rolls<br />
8in. wide, and in lengths that would make IOO or<br />
200 ordinary manuscript pages. The paper could<br />
then be put on a little adjustable reel and fed to<br />
the machine as the huge rolls of paper are fed to:<br />
printing machines. To make a duplicate copy<br />
two reels will be required, one placed above the<br />
other, and between these a long strip of carbon<br />
paper may be inserted. The sheets may be after-<br />
wards torn off as one tears off a cheque. I<br />
believe this to be perfectly practicable and intend<br />
to give it a trial, and will let your readers know<br />
the result of my experiment (with your permis-<br />
sion) later. J. H. H.ILL.<br />
*– ~ *-*<br />
*=s<br />
NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS,<br />
Theology.<br />
A KEY TO THE BIBLE. By an Oxford M.A.<br />
Marshall. Is.<br />
DAVIE, REv. G. J. John Maldonatus’s Commentary on<br />
the Holy Gospels. Translated and edited. St. Matthew’s,<br />
Gospel. Part IV. Paper covers. John Hodges. Is.<br />
net.<br />
GIRDLESTONE, CANON.<br />
New edition. R.T.S.<br />
HEDLEY, JOHN C. A Retreat, consisting of Thirty-three<br />
Discourses with Meditations, for the use of the Clergy,<br />
Religious, and Others. Burns and Oates. 6s.<br />
HOLLAND, REv. W. L. The Bible Hymnal. Compiled<br />
by. Edinburgh : R. W. Hunter. Is. and 2s. 6d.<br />
net.<br />
HUMPHREY, REv. W.M.<br />
and Sacraments. Second edition, enlarged.<br />
and Leamington Art and Book Company. 58.<br />
MEYER, KUNo. Hibernica Minora, being a fragment of an<br />
Old Irish Treatise on the Psalter, with a translation<br />
and facsimile, glossary, and an appendix. Edited by.<br />
Anecdota Oxeniensia, Mediaeval and Modern Series,<br />
Part VIII. Henry Frowde. 7s.6d.<br />
MONCKTON, REv. J. G. A Key to the Figures of the Bible,<br />
&c. Paper covers. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.<br />
MossMAN, REv. D. T. W. The Great Commentary of Cor-<br />
nelius à Lapide upon the Holy Gospels, Translated<br />
and edited. Fifth edition. Part I. Paper covers.<br />
John Hodges. Is. net.<br />
NYE, G. H. F. The Church and Her Story. New and re-<br />
vised edition. Paper covers. Simpkin, Marshall.<br />
Is. 6d. net.<br />
PALMER, JoBIN. Catechisms for the Yonng. Third Series:<br />
The Prayer Book. Church of England Sunday School<br />
Institute. Is. 4d<br />
PRYNNE, REv. G. R. The Truth and Reality of the<br />
Eucharistic Sacrifice. Longmans. 3s. 6d.<br />
RHYs DAVIDs, T. W. The Questions of King Milinda.<br />
Part II. Translated from the Pāli. Being Vol.<br />
XXXVI. of Sacred Books of the East, Edited by F. Max<br />
Müller. Henry Frowde. 12s. 6d.<br />
RocK, DR. DANIEL. The Hierurgia ; or the Holy Sacrifice.<br />
of the Mass. New and revised edition by W. H. J.<br />
Weale. Paper covers. Part II. John Hodges. Is..<br />
net. -<br />
WATson, REv. DR. R. A. The Book of Numbers. Expo-<br />
sitor's Bible, seventh series. Hodder and Stoughton-<br />
7s.6d. . ,”<br />
Simpkin,<br />
How to Study the English Bible.<br />
The One Mediator, or Sacrifice.<br />
London<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 137 (#151) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I37<br />
History and Biography.<br />
ACCOUNTS OF THE CoRPORATION OF THE CITY OF<br />
LONDON FOR 1893. Paper covers. Charles Skipper<br />
and East.<br />
AIYA, W. NAGAM. Report on the Census of Travancore.<br />
Boards. Vol. I., Report. Vol. II., Appendix. Madras:<br />
Addison and Co.<br />
ARNOLD ForsTER, H. O. Things New and Old, or Stories<br />
from English History Standard W., Modern School<br />
Series. Cassell. Is. 6d.<br />
BELL, MALCOLM. Sir Edward Burne Jones, Bart. A<br />
Record and Review. Third edition. In special binding<br />
designed by Gleeson White. George Bell and Sons.<br />
2Is. net.<br />
BROWN, ROBERT. The Story of Africa and its Explorers.<br />
Wol. III. Cassell and Co.<br />
CHANCELLOR, E. BERESFORD. The History and Antiquities<br />
of Richmond, Kew, Petersham, Ham, &c. Richmond :<br />
Hiscoke and Son.<br />
CowAN, PROF. HENRY.<br />
the Reformation.<br />
6d. net.<br />
CUNNINGHAM, MAJOR-GENERAI, SIR. A. Coins of Mediaeval<br />
India, from the Seventh Century down to the Moham-<br />
medan Conquests. B. Quaritch. I58.<br />
DUCREST, MME. Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, with<br />
Anecdotes of the Courts of Navarre and Malmaison.<br />
2 vols. Limited edition. H. S. Nichols and Co.,<br />
Soho-square, W. 281 Is... net.<br />
GASQUET, FRANCIs A., D.D.<br />
English Monasteries. Sixth edition.<br />
Hodges. IS. net.<br />
HADDON, T. W. and HARRIson, G. C. Caesar’s Gallic<br />
War, Books I. and II. Edited by. Edward Arnold.<br />
Is. 6d. net.<br />
HISTORICAL NOTICES AND RECOLLECTIONS RELATING TO<br />
THE PARISH OF SOUTHAM IN THE COUNTY OF<br />
WARWICK. With the Parochial Registers from 1539<br />
and the Churchwardens’ accounts from 1580. Paper<br />
covers. Part I. Elliot Stock.<br />
JONES, JAMES P. A History of the Parish of Tettenhall,<br />
in the County of Stafford. Wolverhampton: Steen<br />
and Co.; London : Simpkin, Marshall.<br />
MAssoN, PROFEssoR DAVID. The Life of John Milton,<br />
Narrated in Connection with the Political, Ecclesias-<br />
tical and Literary History of his Time. Vol. II., 1638-<br />
1643, new and revised edition. Macmillan. 16s.<br />
MUSGRAVE, C. A. German History, the Examination<br />
Series. Swan Sonnenschein.<br />
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LELY, J. M. AND CRAIEs, W. F. The Finance Act 1894.<br />
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Stevens and Sons. Is. net.<br />
LoNDoN HEALTH LAws: A Manual of Housing and<br />
Sanitary Law, issued by the Mansion-house Council on<br />
the Dwellings of the Poor. Cassell and Co.<br />
WILL, J. SHIRESS, Q.C. Michael and Will on the Law<br />
relating to Gas, Water, and Electric Lighting. Fourth<br />
edition. Butterworths. 32s. -<br />
WILLIAMS, Josh UA. Principles of the Law of Personal<br />
Property, intended for the use of Students in Con-<br />
veyancing. Fourteenth edition, by his son, T. Cyprian<br />
Williams, of Lincoln’s-inn. Sweet and Maxwell. 21s.<br />
Educational.<br />
DIET AND COOKERY FOR CoMMON AILMENTs. Cassell<br />
and Co.<br />
LUKIN, JAMEs. Turning Lathes: a Manual for Technical<br />
Schools and Apprentices. Edited by. Fourth edition.<br />
Colchester : Britannia Company. 3s.<br />
LYTTELTON, HON. AND REv. E. A. Primary English<br />
Grammar and Exercises, with prefaces. Rivington,<br />
Percival and Co. 28.<br />
PLATTS, JoBIN T. A Grammar of the Persian Language.<br />
Part I.-Accidence. Williams and Norgate.<br />
SAMPSON, GEORGE. A Text Book of the Pianoforte. For<br />
use in schools and for students generally. Brighton,<br />
Chester; London, E. Donajowski. 28. 6d. net.<br />
The Sounds and Inflections of<br />
the Greek Dialects : Ionic. Henry Frowde. 24s. | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/269/1894-10-01-The-Author-5-5.pdf | publications, The Author |
270 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/270 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 06 (November 1894) | <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.+05+Issue+06+%28November+1894%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 06 (November 1894)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1894-11-01-The-Author-5-6 | | | | | 141–168 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1894-11-01">1894-11-01</a> | | | | | | | 6 | | | 18941101 | C be<br />
u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
Monthly.)<br />
CON DU CTED BY WA. L TER BES ANT.<br />
VOL. V.-No. 6.]<br />
NOVEMBER 1, 1894.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
For the Opinions earpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as eaſpressing the<br />
collective opinions of the committee unless<br />
they are officially signed by G. Herbert<br />
Thring, Sec.<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
important communications within two days will write to him<br />
without delay. All remittances showld be crossed Union<br />
Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered<br />
letter only.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on<br />
all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub-<br />
jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
*-<br />
r- - -,<br />
WARNINGS AND ADVICE,<br />
I. RAWING THE AGREEMENT.—It is not generally<br />
understood that the author, as the vendor, has the<br />
absolute right of drafting the agreement upon<br />
whatever terms the transaction is to be carried out.<br />
Authors are strongly advised to exercise that right. In<br />
every form of business, this among others, the right of<br />
drawing the agreement rests with him who sells, leases, or<br />
has the control of the property.<br />
2. SERIAL RIGHTS.—In selling Serial Rights remember<br />
that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that<br />
is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you<br />
object to this, insert a clause to that effect.<br />
3. STAMP YOUR AGREEMENTs. – Readers are most<br />
URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements<br />
immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected<br />
for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree-<br />
ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every<br />
case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter<br />
which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at no ea pense to themselves<br />
eaccept the cost of the stamp.<br />
4. AsCERTAIN what A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVES TO<br />
BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
WOL. W.<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself.<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTS.–Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom yow appoint as your<br />
agent. Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone.<br />
6. CosT OF PRODUCTION.--Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures.<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.—Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society. -<br />
8. FuTURE Work.-Never, on any accownt whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice.<br />
Io. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a M.S. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work.<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration.<br />
I2. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTs. – Keep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<br />
I4. 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 />
Society’s Offices :-<br />
4, Portugal, STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
*— - -*<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
O 2<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 142 (#156) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 42<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Awthor notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
*- ~ *<br />
& -s<br />
THE AUTHORS' SYNDICATE,<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
I. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. With, when<br />
necessary, the assistance of the legal advisers of the Syndi-<br />
cate, it concludes agreements, collects royalties, examines<br />
and passes accounts, and generally relieves members of the<br />
trouble of managing business details.<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors' Syndicate are<br />
defrayed solely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. Notice is, however,<br />
hereby given that in all cases where there is no current<br />
account, a booking fee is charged to cover postage and<br />
porterage.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiation<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least four days’<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. 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 />
7. 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 />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society ;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department' for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted * has been opened. Members anxious<br />
to obtain literary or artistic work are invited to com -<br />
municate with the Manager.<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 />
--sº<br />
e--- - -<br />
NOTICES,<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 />
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 Awthor 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 P<br />
or dishonest ?<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
£948. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 143 (#157) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 43<br />
as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 call it.<br />
* * =<br />
ELECTION OF MEMBERS.<br />
T the first meeting of committee after the<br />
vacation on Oct. 8, twenty-eight new<br />
members and associates were duly pro-<br />
posed and elected. There have been 196 new<br />
members elected since the beginning of the year.<br />
Against these, however, must be placed the<br />
number of those who are every year struck off<br />
the list either by death, or by resignation, or by<br />
neglecting to pay their subscription.<br />
Cases have arisen in which authors have joined<br />
for the purpose of obtaining aid and redress,<br />
and have then retired when their case has been<br />
won for them. In other words, they pay a guinea,<br />
put the Society to the expense of many guineas,<br />
and then retire.<br />
Authors are earnestly entreated to remember<br />
that the society exists for the common good;<br />
that to regard it as solely a means of obtaining<br />
individual advantage is contrary to the whole<br />
spirit of the association; that to carry a single<br />
case through often costs the subscriptions of a<br />
great many members, and that were it not for the<br />
subscriptions of those who are not likely to need<br />
its services at all, the Society would not be able to<br />
exist, or would be reduced to a powerless condition.<br />
><br />
c:<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—PAYING FOR PUBLICATION.<br />
HE advice of the Society with regard to<br />
payment for publishing is that a MS.<br />
which is refused by half a dozen good<br />
houses is probably without commercial value.<br />
The author, however, is too often persuaded that<br />
it possesses sufficient literary merit to justify him<br />
in paying for its production. He then receives<br />
an estimate from the firm to which he applies.<br />
In general this estimate is called Messrs. A. and<br />
B.’s “charge” for producing the work. It used<br />
to be called the “Cost of Production.” It is now<br />
Messrs. A. and B.’s “charge.” The charge<br />
includes a very liberal addition to the printer's<br />
bill—for themselves. It is a secret profit, and<br />
therefore absolutely indefensible. Of course a<br />
charge for services may be advanced, and may be<br />
granted, but it should be made openly. The<br />
following are quite recent examples of this<br />
method of giving estimates. They were brought<br />
to the Society, and through the machinery at the<br />
disposal of the Society the books were actually<br />
produced at the price given below, after that of<br />
the original estimate. It should be added that<br />
the actual publisher, not the person who sent in<br />
his “charges,” was in each case a fit and proper<br />
person, and that the books were produced in the<br />
best possible style of print and paper.<br />
First case.—Estimate for printing, paper,<br />
and binding ... ... ... 378<br />
Actual sum paid for produc-<br />
tion ... . . . . . . . ... 38<br />
Second case.—Estimate for printing, paper,<br />
and binding 39.18O<br />
Actual sum paid ... ... ... 8O<br />
Third case.—Estimate for printing, paper,<br />
and binding e tº ſº £220<br />
Actual sum paid I 50<br />
In the first case an overcharge was made of<br />
£40, in the second an overcharge of £IOO, and<br />
in the third of £70.<br />
In the first case the author was saved 50 per<br />
cent. On the first charge, in the second 55 per cent.,<br />
in the third 32 per cent.<br />
It seems, therefore, as if it were worth the<br />
consideration of authors about to pay for their<br />
own books, whether they should bring their<br />
estimates to the Society before signing their<br />
agreements.<br />
II.—CANADIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
The following letters have appeared in the<br />
Times. That by Mr. Lancefield may be fairly<br />
assumed to represent the Canadian view : that<br />
by Mr. Daldy the answer of one who has long<br />
worked upon the question. The subject has<br />
been referred by the London Chamber of Com-<br />
merce to a committee upon which the Society of<br />
Authors is properly represented. The letters are<br />
given at length for obvious reasons.<br />
I.—To the Editor of the Times.<br />
SIR,--I have only recently seen a letter<br />
which appeared in your valuable paper some<br />
time ago (May 3, 1894) from Mr. F. R. Daldy<br />
on the question of Canadian copyright. Some of<br />
Mr. Daldy's statements certainly require correc-<br />
tion, as the views he set forth in his letter (which<br />
letter, I understand, was printed in full in various<br />
literary journals in England) place Canadians in<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 144 (#158) ############################################<br />
<br />
144<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
a most misleading and unfair light before your<br />
readers.<br />
In the first place, Mr. Daldy writes, he has<br />
“reason to believe that Canada has asked the<br />
Imperial Government to repeal all British Copy-<br />
right Acts so far as it is included under them<br />
and also to denounce Canada's connection<br />
with the Berne Convention.” This is correct.<br />
And why not P<br />
The B.N.A. Act of 1867 gives Canada the right<br />
to legislate on copyright, the same as on tariffs,<br />
patents, &c. The Imperial Government allows<br />
us to pass such laws as we please with regard, for<br />
instance, to patents. We assert the same right<br />
with regard to copyright, and we maintain our<br />
position strengthened by the knowledge that every<br />
argument is in our favour.<br />
Mr. Daldy's second count deserves serious con-<br />
sideration. Not content with referring sneeringly<br />
to a royalty which the Canadian Government will<br />
collect for those who refuse or neglect to secure<br />
copyright in Canada as a “visionary” royalty, he<br />
says “no consideration whatever has been shown<br />
to artists and musical composers.” A serious<br />
indictment, if true. But what are the facts P<br />
I have before me the Canadian Copyright Act of<br />
1889, passed unanimously by sº the House of<br />
Commons and Senate of the Dominion of Canada,<br />
but to which the Imperial Government refuses<br />
sanction. This Act enacts that “Any person<br />
domiciled in Canada or in any part of the British<br />
possessions who is the author of any<br />
book, map, chart, or musical or literary composi-<br />
tion, or of any original painting, drawing, statue,<br />
sculpture, or photograph, or who invents, designs,<br />
etches, engraves, or causes to be engraved, etched,<br />
or made from his own design any print or engra-<br />
ving, and the legal representatives of such person<br />
or citizen,” may secure copyright in Canada for<br />
twenty-eight years. It would appear from this<br />
that Mr. Daldy is either grossly ignorant on this<br />
question of Canadian copyright, or that he is<br />
deliberately misrepresenting the action of the<br />
Canadian Government, presumably in order to<br />
create and foster ill-feeling in England.<br />
Again, Mr. Daldy says “that it is no more<br />
difficult for Canadian than for United States<br />
publishers to enter into contracts with authors<br />
and artists direct.” Very nice in theory, but<br />
under present conditions practically impossible to<br />
put into practice. Why? Because the United<br />
States publisher, in nine cases out of ten, when<br />
buying the market for a new book, insists on<br />
Canada being included.<br />
The Canadian people, therefore,<br />
present the satisfaction (?) of seeing their market<br />
quietly handed over by the British author or<br />
publisher to alien United States publishers.<br />
have at<br />
Surely you cannot blame us for making an<br />
earnest, decided, emphatic protest against such a<br />
practice. Canadians are not surprised at the<br />
alien United States publishers insisting on the<br />
Canadian market being included. That is their<br />
business—to get all they can, and more, too, if<br />
possible. But we are surprised at the British<br />
authors and publishers conceding to the demand<br />
of the United States publishers. And we are doubly<br />
surprised that the British authors and publishers<br />
are our principal opponents when we ask the<br />
Imperial Government for such legislation as will<br />
enable us to say to the United States publishers,<br />
“You cannot control the Canadian market except<br />
on our own terms.”<br />
We are proud of the fact that we are part and<br />
parcel of the great British Empire. The recent<br />
conference of Colonial delegates at Ottawa proves<br />
that we are alive to our responsibilities to the<br />
Empire. I submit that it is not an edifying<br />
spectacle to witness many of our brethren in<br />
England making desperate and, as I have shown,<br />
unfair attempts to create prejudice against us in<br />
our efforts to secure our book market from the<br />
grasp of alien publishers.<br />
In any case we intend to expose such attempts<br />
and to persist in our agitation, as we are con-<br />
vinced that the Imperial Government must soon<br />
see the justness of our case and grant the relief<br />
asked for. -<br />
Mr. Daldy signs himself “Hon. Secretary of<br />
the [British PJ Copyright Association.” Very<br />
many are apt to look upon him as an authority<br />
on copyright. I have already shown that his<br />
statement as to no consideration whatever being<br />
shown by the Canadian Government to artists<br />
and musical composers is untrue. He is equally<br />
unreliable when he tries to frighten British<br />
authors and artists by the statement that if the<br />
British Government yields to the Canadian<br />
demand the English relations on copyright with<br />
the United States would be upset. Mr. Daldy's<br />
argument, then, is that justice must be denied<br />
Canada because, if granted, English copyright<br />
arrangements with the United Sta'es will suffer.<br />
What utter nonsense !<br />
But Mr. Daldy reaches the height of absurdity<br />
when he gravely asserts that “the United States<br />
Government made the consent of Canada that<br />
American copyright should run in that Dominion<br />
a leading condition of their conceding it to the<br />
British nation.”<br />
This is news to us in Canada. Our consent<br />
was never asked to any such agreement. The<br />
British Government could not give the consent of<br />
Canada without first securing that consent.<br />
Neither the British Government, Mr. Daldy, nor<br />
the Copyright Association he represents need<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 145 (#159) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR,<br />
I 45<br />
think that Canada will recognise any arrange-<br />
ment without first consenting thereto.<br />
Mr. Daldy knows, without being told, that the<br />
day has gone by when the consent of Canada to a<br />
question so important as this of copyright can be<br />
taken for granted before formally securing said<br />
consent through the usual diplomatic channels.<br />
Thanking you for granting me space,<br />
I remain, Sir, yours in the bonds of Imperial<br />
Unity, RICHARD T. LANCEFIELD.<br />
Public Library, Hamilton, Canada September.<br />
II.—To the Editor of the Times.<br />
SIR,--The charges brought against me in<br />
Mr. Lancefield’s letter, published by you on<br />
the 11th inst., require, I think, an answer so<br />
far as the subject-matter of them is concerned,<br />
though I must respectfully decline to take more<br />
notice than is necessary of his personalities.<br />
He says, “I have placed Canadians in a most<br />
misleading and unfair light before your readers.”<br />
I certainly had no desire to do this, and I hope<br />
the following observations will satisfy your<br />
readers that I have not done so.<br />
He admits that Canada has asked the Imperial<br />
Government to repeal all British Copyright Acts<br />
so far as they include that Dominion, and says<br />
Canada has the right to legislate on copyright<br />
under the British North American Act of 1867.<br />
If Canada has that right, why ask England's<br />
help ? Lord Selborne and Lord Herschell, when<br />
at the Bar, on Nov. 7, 1871, advised the Copy-<br />
right Association that the above legislative<br />
authority “ has reference only to the exclusive<br />
jurisdiction in Canada of the Dominion Legisla-<br />
ture, as distinguished from the Legislatures of<br />
the provinces of which it is composed,” and they<br />
further said that the “Imperial Act 5 & 6 Wict.<br />
c. 45 (our principal Copyright Act), is still in<br />
force in its integrity throughout the British<br />
dominions.” This view is corroborated by the<br />
decision in “Smiles v. Belford ” of the Supreme<br />
Court of Upper Canada and the opinions of<br />
recent law officers of the Crown.<br />
Mr. Lancefield objects to my reference to the<br />
way in which Canada collects, or neglects to<br />
collect, the royalty due to British and Colonial<br />
authors under the Imperial Act of 1847 and the<br />
Canadian Act of Aug. 1850, approved by<br />
Imperial Order in Council made Dec. 12, 1850.<br />
Perhaps he will not be suprised to hear that this<br />
royalty has only been spasmodically collected,<br />
although the Act was passed for Canada's benefit,<br />
and she undertook to make the collection. It is<br />
notorious that many books were imported by<br />
Canada without payment of this royalty, and I<br />
have before me now a correspondence showing<br />
that a copyright owner, who was entitled to<br />
royalty since 1883, had to send an agent to<br />
Canada, who traced one payment in 1885, but<br />
the customs authorities in Canada could not<br />
even then discover the collection of royalty on<br />
any other occasion, although the work had been<br />
largely circulated throughout the Dominion<br />
before that time. The first payment of this<br />
royalty, not in full, but “on account,” was not<br />
received by the copyright owner till 1889. Can<br />
Mr. Lancefield be surprised at the incredulity of<br />
English authors as to her honestly carrying out<br />
her engagements?<br />
Mr. Lancefield quotes from the Canadian Act<br />
of 1889 to prove that artists have received due<br />
consideration. He quotes the 4th section of that<br />
Act, but omits any reference to the 5th, which<br />
says the condition of obtaining copyright under<br />
the Act is that such artistic work shall be repro-<br />
duced in Canada within one month of production<br />
elsewhere. Hence, to obtain copyright under the<br />
Canadian Act, Sir F. Leighton, or any artist,<br />
must go to Canada and reproduce his picture<br />
there within a month of publication here. A new<br />
opera must be represented there within the same<br />
time. Am I right in saying “no consideration<br />
whatever has been shown to artists and musical<br />
composers ?” Is it not a mockery to offer copy-<br />
right on such terms?<br />
Mr. Lancefield says Canadian publishers cannot<br />
acquire copyright from British authors because<br />
United States publishers buy the Canadian<br />
market with the American market. Why does<br />
not the Canadian purchaser come forward first<br />
and buy the two markets P It is all a matter of<br />
commercial competition. Mr. Lancefield seems<br />
to think authors hand over their works to United<br />
States publishers by preference. What they<br />
prefer, and what they are entitled to, is the best<br />
price for the two intermixed markets, because it<br />
is against their interests to sell either separately.<br />
This arises from American, not British, legisla-<br />
tion. Mr. Lancefield cannot expect authors to<br />
forego the value of their copyrights in America<br />
merely to help Canadian reprinters to get the<br />
printing of them. Let Canadian printers come<br />
forward earlier, before American arrangements<br />
are made, and buy both markets.<br />
I regret to say American copyright for British<br />
authors is jeopardised by the apprehension of<br />
our allowing Canadian printers to reprint copy-<br />
right books without the author's sanction, and<br />
that on most trustworthy authority.<br />
Perhaps my observation about the consent of<br />
Canada as to American copyright running there<br />
is rather unfortunately worded, as of course her<br />
consent was not required. The facts are that<br />
the United States Government asked if American<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 146 (#160) ############################################<br />
<br />
I46<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
copyright ran in all British possessions, and, on<br />
Lord Salisbury assuring the United States<br />
Government that it did, the United States<br />
Government issued its proclamation giving the<br />
authors, &c., of “Great Britain and the British<br />
possessions” copyright throughout the United<br />
States. (See United States Papers, No. 3 (1891),<br />
Correspondence on United States Copyright<br />
Act.)<br />
I am glad to find Mr. Lancefield proud of<br />
Imperial unity. Will he, in obedience to its<br />
requirements, advocate “copyright unity” as far<br />
as we are able to promote it? The laws of copy-<br />
right are too much mixed up with the commercial<br />
handling of copyright property. The one gives<br />
the title to the property; the other utilises it to<br />
the best advantage.<br />
I am, Sir, your obedient servant,<br />
FREDERIC R. DALDY.<br />
Aldine House, Belvedere.<br />
III.-LITTLETON ET AL. v. OLIVER DITSON Co.<br />
The inclosed judgment from one of the circuit<br />
courts in Massachusetts, supporting the decision<br />
recently published on musical copyright, may be<br />
of interest to the readers of the Author :<br />
LITTLETON ET AL. 27. OLIVER DITSON CO.<br />
(Circuit Court, D. Massachusetts. Aug. 1, 1894.)<br />
No. 3065.<br />
Copyright—Musical compositions—Manufacture<br />
in United States.<br />
The proviso in sect. 3 of the Copyright Act of<br />
March 3, 1891, that “ in the case of a book,<br />
photograph, chromo, or lithograph,” the two<br />
copies required to be delivered to the librarian<br />
of Congress shall be manufactured in this country,<br />
does not include musical compositions published<br />
in book form, or made by lithographic process.<br />
THIs was a suit by Alfred H. Littleton and<br />
others against the Oliver Ditson Company for<br />
infringement of copyrights.<br />
Lauriston L. Scaife for complainants.<br />
Chauncey Smith and Linus M. Child for<br />
defendant.<br />
CoLT, Circuit Judge.—This case raises a new<br />
and important question under the Copyright Act<br />
of March 3, 1891 (26 Stat. I IO6). The plaintiffs,<br />
subjects of Great Britain, and publishers of<br />
music, have copyrighted three musical compo-<br />
sitions, two of which are in the form of sheet<br />
music, and one (a cantata) consists of some ninety<br />
pages of music bound together in book form, and<br />
with a paper cover. Two of these pieces were<br />
printed from electrotype plates, and one from<br />
stone, by the lithographic process. The inquiry<br />
in this case is whether a musical composition is a<br />
book or lithograph, within the meaning of the<br />
proviso in sect. 3 of the Act, which declares that in<br />
the case of a “book, photograph, chromo, or litho-<br />
graph " the two copies required to be deposited<br />
with the librarian of Congress shall be manufac-<br />
tured in this country.<br />
The Act of March 3, 1891, is an amendment of<br />
the copyright law then existing. The principal<br />
change made is the extension of the privilege of<br />
copyright to foreigners by the removal of the<br />
restriction of citizenship or residence contained<br />
in the old law, and hence it is sometimes called<br />
“The International Copyright Act. Section I<br />
relates to the subject-matter of copyright, and<br />
delares that:<br />
The author, inventor, designer, or proprietor of any book,<br />
map, chart, dramatic or musical composition, engraving,<br />
cut, print, or photograph or negative thereof, or of a painting,<br />
drawing, chromo, statue, statuary shall, upon<br />
complying with the provisions of this chapter, have the sole<br />
liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing, &c.<br />
Section 3 recites the conditions which must be<br />
complied with, and says:<br />
No person shall be entitled to a copyright unless he shall,<br />
on or before the day of publication in this or any foreign<br />
country, deliver at the office of the librarian of Congress, or<br />
deposit in the mail within the United States, addressed to<br />
the librarian, a printed copy of the title of the book,<br />
map, chart, dramatic or musical composition, engraving, cut,<br />
print, photograph, or chromo, or a description of the paint-<br />
ing, drawing, statue, statuary, for which he<br />
desires a copyright, nor unless he shall also, not later than<br />
the day of the publication thereof in this or any foreign<br />
country, deliver at the office of the librarian • OT<br />
deposit in the mail within the United States, addressed to<br />
the librarian, two copies of such copyright book,<br />
map, chart, dramatic or musical composition, engraving,<br />
chromo, cut, print, or photograph, or in case of a painting,<br />
drawing, statue, statuary, model, or design for a work of the<br />
fine arts, a photograph of same : provided, that in the case<br />
of a book, photograph, chromo, or lithograph, the two copies<br />
of the same required to be delivered or deposited as above<br />
shall be printed from type set within the limits of the<br />
United States, or from plates made therefrom, or from<br />
negatives, or drawings on stone made within the limits of<br />
the United States, or from transfers made therefrom.<br />
From the language of these provisions it seems<br />
clear that “book” was not intended to include<br />
“musical composition.” In the section which<br />
enumerates the things which may be copyrighted,<br />
“musical composition ” is mentioned as something<br />
different from “book,” and we find this same dis-<br />
tinction twice observed in the preceding part of<br />
the section which contains the proviso. It is as<br />
reasonable to suppose that “book” and “musical<br />
composition ” were as much intended to refer to<br />
different subjects as “map, chart, engraving,”<br />
and other enumerated articles.<br />
If Congress, in the proviso, had intended to<br />
include a musical composition among those copy-<br />
righted things which must be manufactured in<br />
this country, it should have incorporated it in the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 147 (#161) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 47<br />
list of things subject to this restriction. The<br />
omission in the proviso of “musical composition,”<br />
as well as of “map, chart, engraving,” and other<br />
things before enumerated, is very significant, as<br />
intimating that Congress never intended to extend<br />
this provision to any of these articles. And so,<br />
with respect to “lithograph,” if Congress had<br />
intended to cover by that word a musical compo-<br />
sition made by the lithographic process, it should<br />
have expressed its meaning in clear and unam-<br />
biguous terms, in view of the language used in<br />
other portions of the statute.<br />
If there is any doubt as to the meaning of the<br />
statute, it is proper to examine the history of<br />
legislation on this subject, in order, if possible, to<br />
discover the intent of Congress. As the bill<br />
passed the House of Representatives, this proviso<br />
was limited to “book,” but when it reached the<br />
Senate an amendment was offered and passed<br />
extending the proviso to various other subjects of<br />
Copyright, as “map, dramatic or musical compo-<br />
sition, engraving, cut, print,” &c. A conference<br />
committee was appointed, and a compromise was<br />
agreed to enlarging the house provision by the<br />
addition of “photograph, chromo, or lithograph,”<br />
and the bill was finally passed in this form. In<br />
the debate in the Senate, reference was made to<br />
the fact that musical compositions had been<br />
eliminated from the proviso. The first and funda-<br />
mental rule in the interpretation of statutes is to<br />
carry out the intent of the Legislature if it can<br />
be ascertained, and I think an examination of<br />
the proceedings in Congress shows that it was<br />
intended to exclude musical compositions from<br />
the operation of this proviso: (22 Cong. Rec.<br />
pt. I, p. 32 ; pt. 3, pp. 2378, 2836; pt. 4,<br />
p. 3847.)<br />
“Book” has been distinguished from “musical<br />
composition ” in the statutes relating to copy-<br />
right since 1831 : (4 Stat. 436.) The specific<br />
designation of any article in an act or series of<br />
acts of Congress requires that such article be<br />
treated by itself, and excludes it from general<br />
terms contained in the same act or in subsequent<br />
acts: (Potter, Dwar. St. pp. 198, 272; Homer v.<br />
The Collector, I Wall. 486; Arthur v. Lahey,<br />
96 U.S. 112 ; Arthur v. Stephani, Id. 125; Vietor<br />
v. Arthur, IO4 U.S. 498.) If, in a popular<br />
sense, and speaking particularly in reference to<br />
form, “book” may be said to include a musical<br />
composition, the answer to this proposition is<br />
that where two words of a statute are coupled<br />
together, one of which generically includes the<br />
other, the more general term is used in a mean-<br />
ing exclusive of the specific one : (Endl. Interp,<br />
St. sect. 396; Reiche v. Smythe, 13 Wall. 162.)<br />
The reasoning upon which this rule of specific<br />
designation is based is that such designation is<br />
WOL. W.<br />
tions to the Survey of the Literature of the Reign.<br />
expressive of the legislative intention to exclude<br />
the article specifically named from the general<br />
term which might otherwise include it: (Smythe<br />
v. Fiske, 23. Wall. 374, 38o ; Reiche v. Smythe,<br />
13 Wall. 162, 164.) The English cases cited by<br />
the defendant to the effect that “book” includes<br />
“ musical composition '' are not material in the<br />
present controversy, because the statute law of<br />
the two countries is different. The early English<br />
statute of 8 Anne, c. 19, says, in the preamble,<br />
“books and other writings,” while, in the modern<br />
English statute (5 & 6 Wict. c. 45, s. 2), “book’’<br />
is defined to include various specific things, as<br />
“map, chart, sheet of music,” &c Nor do the<br />
American cases cited (Clayton v. Stone, 2 Paine,<br />
382, Fed. Cas. No. 2872 ; Scoville v. Toland,<br />
6 West. Law J. 84, Fed. Cas. No. 12,553; Drury<br />
v. Ewing, I Bond, 540, Fed. Cas. No. 4095) help<br />
the defendant. In none of these cases has the<br />
question ever been determined whether a musical<br />
composition is a book. It must also be<br />
remembered that the question now presented is<br />
not strictly whether a musical composition can<br />
ever be regarded as a book, but whether Congress<br />
meant in the Act of March 3, 1891, to include<br />
musical composition within the terms of the<br />
proviso referred to. Nor do I think the dictionary<br />
definitions of “book” render us much assistance,<br />
because the word is used in so many different<br />
senses. It may refer to the subject-matter, as<br />
literary composition ; or to form, as a number of<br />
leaves of paper bound together; or a written<br />
instrument or document; or a particular sub-<br />
division of a literary composition; or the words<br />
of an opera, &c.<br />
Looking at the natural reading of the statute,<br />
the intent of Congress, and the rules which<br />
govern the construction of statute law, I am of<br />
opinion that the plaintiffs have complied with the<br />
provisions of the Act of March 3, 1891, respect-<br />
ing the three musical compositions complained of,<br />
and that the defendant should be enjoined from<br />
reprinting, publishing, or exposing for sale these<br />
compositions, or any essential part of them, as<br />
prayed for in the Bill.<br />
Injunction granted.<br />
IV.-ContLNUATION BY ANOTHER HAND.<br />
The following advertisement appeared in the<br />
New York Critic : -<br />
MASTERPIECES OF ENGLISH LITERATURE.-Entirely<br />
New and Finely Illustrated Editions.—A History of Our<br />
Own Times, from the Accession of Queen Victoria to the<br />
General Election of 1880. By Justin McCarthy, M.P.<br />
With an Introduction, and Supplementary Chapters bring-<br />
ing the work down to Mr. Gladstone's Resignation of the<br />
Premiership (March, 1894); with a New Index, and Addi-<br />
By G.<br />
P<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 148 (#162) ############################################<br />
<br />
I48<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Mercer Adam, author of “A Précis of English History,” &c.<br />
Profusely illustrated with new half-tone portraits of states-<br />
men and littérateurs. 2 vols., 12mo, handsome cloth,<br />
$3.oo; or, in three-quarter calf, $5.00. Popular edition,<br />
2 vols., 12mo., without illustrations, cloth, $1.50.<br />
This advertisement was forwarded on to the offices<br />
of the Society by Mr. Justin McCarthy, M.P.<br />
Mr. McCarthy is indignant, and very naturally so,<br />
at the course the American publishers have<br />
thought fit to adopt, and all persons who are<br />
interested in the maintenance of literary property<br />
will no doubt support Mr. McCarthy's view as<br />
strongly.<br />
The work was published prior to the American<br />
Copyright Act, and therefore fell a lawful prey to<br />
the American reproducer.<br />
It has been selling in America for some years<br />
past in a cheap paper-bound edition.<br />
The author may perhaps have felt hurt that a<br />
work, the outcome of his brain, should be so<br />
freely circulated without bringing him in any-<br />
thing, but in those days, when books were pub-<br />
lished in England, the author produced his work<br />
with his eyes open to the possible consequences.<br />
But here insult has been added to injury, and<br />
Mr. McCarthy’s work has not only been appro-<br />
priated, but has also received the honour of an intro-<br />
duction, and several additional chapters to bring<br />
it up to date, from the pen of G. Mercer Adam.<br />
Surely it would have been an easy and<br />
courteous matter for the publisher to have written<br />
a line to the author or his English publisher to<br />
ask whether he had any views as to the continua-<br />
tion of the work. -<br />
Neither Messrs. Chatto and Windus nor Mr.<br />
McCarthy have had a line of notice, and the<br />
advertisement of the book in its present American<br />
form was the first intimation of what had taken<br />
lace.<br />
It is needless to say that there is no legal<br />
remedy, as the pnblishers have in their adver-<br />
tisement fully owned up to the additional chapters<br />
and their authorship. If this had not been done,<br />
but the work with added matter had been<br />
published under Mr. McCarthy's name—a pro-<br />
ceeding which has been known to take place with<br />
the works of other English authors—he might,<br />
perhaps, have had, some remedy under the<br />
American case quoted in last month's Author,<br />
p. 117, and the question might have been discussed<br />
under the law of trade marks and misleading the<br />
public.<br />
It is not worth while going into this side of the<br />
question, as even this point is doubtful. The<br />
American publisher has avoided this difficulty by<br />
openly avowing the facts. .<br />
But the unfortunate author, who has for some<br />
time been meditating the completion of his work,<br />
has had the American market taken away from<br />
him.<br />
Since the above was written Mr. McCarthy’s<br />
publishers, Messrs. Chatto and Windus, have<br />
received a letter from the American publisher,<br />
printed below. This letter bears out all the<br />
points put forward above, and explains how little<br />
regard is shown for the author and originator of<br />
a work, and how little thought or care may be<br />
bestowed upon the simple and familiar process<br />
of using for a man’s own profit the work of<br />
another man's brain—especially when there is<br />
no fear of legal consequences.<br />
Oct I I, 1894.—Dear Sirs, I am in receipt of your letter<br />
of the 1st. Oct., and am somewhat surprised that your<br />
remonstrance on behalf of the author of the “History of<br />
Our Own Times” should be addressed to us for issuing a<br />
continuation of the work. There are any number of editions<br />
of this work, which is not copyrighted, published in this<br />
country, and, therefore, it appears to me your remonstrance<br />
for continuing a non-copyright work is extremely ill-founded.<br />
Had I known that Mr. McCarthy intended to write a con-<br />
tinuation of his work, I should, of course, have been much<br />
pleased to have negotiated with him or his publishers for the<br />
American copyright, but under all the circumstances I can-<br />
not think that I have dome either him or you such an injury<br />
as entitles you to write me in the way you have, and I remain,<br />
—Yours very truly, CHARLEs W. Gould, Receiver.—<br />
Messrs. Chatto and Windus.<br />
-*--~~~~~<br />
--------<br />
LETTER FROM PARIS.<br />
AM writing this on the eve of my return to<br />
Paris, in a room full of the disorders of<br />
departure. The weather is so fine that it<br />
might be July rather than mid-October, and the<br />
sea is still very tempting for long and hazardous<br />
swims. But the vines are all leafless in my<br />
garden, and in the fields around the Indian corn<br />
has been harvested ; and, after all, as go one must,<br />
it is better to leave the country with a good im-<br />
pression and under smiling circumstances, than to<br />
outstay Nature's welcome and see in the farewell<br />
moment, a sullen face.<br />
“It is two days since we returned to Paris, and<br />
though my Parisienne is delighted to find her-<br />
self in her town once more, my little Edmée<br />
and I continue to regret the golden horizons of<br />
our peaceful Champrozay.” So writes Alphonse<br />
Daudet to me. In the same letter he says that he<br />
wishes to converse with me about “la perfide<br />
Albion,” which he has never seen, but wishes to<br />
visit before he “passes his rifle to the left.” I<br />
should not be surprised if, as a result of our con-<br />
versation, he were to pay a visit to England ere<br />
long.<br />
In looking over Daudet’s “Lettres de Mon<br />
Moulin’” the other day, I came across a quotation<br />
from his favourite Montaigne, which he applies<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 149 (#163) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I49<br />
to his friend the Provençal poet, Mistral. It<br />
occurred to me that the advice is so good, that for<br />
those of our readers who do not know, it may well<br />
be here reproduced : “Souvienne-vous de celuy<br />
à qui comme on demandoit à quoy faire il se<br />
peinoit si fort, en un art qui me powvoit venir à la<br />
cogmoissance de guére des gens. J'en ay assez de<br />
peu, repondict-il. J'en ay assez d’un. J'em ay<br />
assez de pas un.” No better consolation could be<br />
found by the man of letters, who, doing his best,<br />
does not secure a success of popularity. But he<br />
must do his best. He must peiner fort.<br />
A group of distinguished Frenchmen were the<br />
other day discussing in my presence the young<br />
littérateur of to-day, who, after setting forth<br />
some great idea for a book, will add, with a sigh,<br />
“If only some publisher would give me an order<br />
for it.” It never occurs to him to write the book,<br />
for the sake of writing it, with the conviction<br />
that when written it will surely find both a pub-<br />
lisher and a public.<br />
We were all surprised to read Mallarmé's name<br />
in connection with the proposal that the State<br />
should inherit all lapsed copyrights and republish<br />
books for the general profit. Surprised, because<br />
of all living men of letters, Stephane Mallarmé is<br />
perhaps the one who has ever least troubled<br />
about the property side of literature. His own<br />
magnificent writings he printed at his own<br />
expense, in a most luxurious fashion, for himself<br />
and a very few friends. He has probably never<br />
received a sum of forty pounds, all reckoned,<br />
from the publishers.<br />
The proposal seems an ill-considered one.<br />
Fancy what a bitter stepmother the State, moved<br />
by odious political considerations, would be<br />
towards the work of certain authors. The power<br />
granted by this proposal, if it were carried into<br />
effect, would be tantamount to one of life and<br />
death, and the immortality, after which most<br />
writers strive as their highest and best reward,<br />
would be at the disposal of Government officials.<br />
With what glee would these censors condemn<br />
to obscurity the works of all those whose opinions<br />
clashed with the opinions which the Government<br />
desired to promulgate, and how lavishly would<br />
the writings of Prudhomme and Company be<br />
spread abroad<br />
One power might, to my thinking, be granted<br />
to the Government, namely, the right of levying<br />
on the profits of those who publish an author's<br />
works after the copyright in these has become<br />
public property, a trifling sum, sufficient to keep<br />
the grave of this author in decent and respectable<br />
order. If out of all the money which the pub-<br />
lishers have gained by publishing Oliver<br />
Goldsmiths's works a few pounds had thus been<br />
exacted, London would not to-day have the<br />
WOL. W.<br />
shame of Goldsmith’s abandoned and ruined<br />
grave, which anyone may see in the Temple, and<br />
blush at our English sordidness.<br />
The De Maupassant memorial subscription,<br />
which had never attained a figure in any way com-<br />
mensurate to the very modest requirements of the<br />
committee, was handsomely increased the other<br />
day by a donation of £200, subscribed by a person<br />
who expressed a wish to remain unknown. Poor<br />
De Maupassant seems to have passed into<br />
oblivion. His books are little asked for, and the<br />
dealers in the photographs of celebrities have<br />
ceased to keep his portrait in stock. One dies<br />
fast in these days.<br />
Poor Henry Hermann. He spent some years<br />
in France, and was at one time the collaborator<br />
of D. C. Murray. His forte was in the creation<br />
of plots, but he was less successful in delineation<br />
of character, description, and elaboration. Owing<br />
to an infirmity of the eyes he was forced to<br />
dictate to a secretary, and would grow quite<br />
excited as he dictated. “That’s literature, my<br />
boy,” he would exclaim, after composing some<br />
passage which pleased him particularly. When<br />
I knew him he had fallen on penurious days, and<br />
it was mournful enough to see so old a man, who<br />
had been so liberal in his days of fortune, often<br />
worried for the wherewithal to pay his rent or to<br />
buy his dinner. His courage, his industry, his<br />
cheerfulness of spirits were unflagging, and an<br />
excellent example.<br />
. It occurs to me that we of the Society of<br />
Authors might subscribe the trifling sum neces-<br />
sary for restoring Goldsmith’s grave. The whole<br />
expense would barely exceed £20, so that one<br />
hundred admirers, at four shillings each, could put<br />
the matter right. -<br />
I was interested in Mr. Hill's suggestion for a<br />
new form of paper for the typewriter, because a<br />
few days before the Author for last month came<br />
into my hands I had had exactly the same idea.<br />
I admit that I had not thought of the double<br />
roller for duplicating purposes. On reflection,<br />
however, I had come to the conclusion that the<br />
loss of time in cutting the length of paper, after<br />
it had been written on, into suitable takes, would<br />
be greater than the time lost at present in filling<br />
the machine with the sheets as supplied by the<br />
manufacturers. Certainly for the writer who<br />
prides himself on great production it would be<br />
pleasant, on rising from his machine, to see<br />
coiled on the floor, say eight yards of copy, but<br />
the coils might be cumbersome, and I can even<br />
imagine a fin de siècle Laocoon writhing in the<br />
embrace of a paper serpent. As it is, the type-<br />
writer produces too fast for a man to use it for<br />
his best work, and it is only by careful revision that<br />
typewritten copy can be made fairly prºble<br />
P<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 150 (#164) ############################################<br />
<br />
150 THE<br />
AUTHOR.<br />
One would accordingly prefer to hear of the inven-<br />
tion of a drag or break to check its speed. At<br />
times, certainly, where speed is the requisite, the<br />
machine renders excellent service. One remembers<br />
T. P. O'Connor’s “Life of Parnell,” which was<br />
produced so quickly; and I myself, on a day when<br />
I was very hard pressed, achieved 25,000 words<br />
of a translation in twelve hours.<br />
Léon Daudet’s “Les Morticoles '' is now in its<br />
seventeenth edition, of a thousand copies to the<br />
edition. This mean £400 to the good already,<br />
apart from royalties to come, both from further<br />
editions and from republication in the provincial<br />
papers. As Léon is only twenty-seven years of<br />
age he may be said to have enjoyed exceptional<br />
good fortune. I know of no French writer of<br />
standing whose début can, in point of success, be<br />
compared to his. We will not speak of Xavier de<br />
Montépin, who from the age of twenty mever<br />
made less than two thousand a year, because we<br />
do not consider him a writer.<br />
A circumstance of which we English may be<br />
proud is that of all foreign novelists it is our<br />
great George Meredith who is most esteemed by<br />
the French. I don’t mean to say that his works<br />
have a large sale in France, but I can vouchsafe<br />
the fact that the cultured who know English have<br />
his books, and that those who cannot read English<br />
are always glad to hear him discussed. His name<br />
is constantly referred to in the literary papers, and<br />
he is very evidently an influence in France. Does<br />
George Meredith know this P. There is also great<br />
curiosity about Thomas Hardy, and at the<br />
Authors’ Club dinner to M. Zola last year, Zola<br />
told me that he should advise Charpentier to<br />
arrange for a French translation of Hardy’s<br />
works. I believe that a French publisher who<br />
would produce a cheap edition of translations from<br />
our best English authors would make money.<br />
The French are sick of pornography, and are<br />
hungering for more solid fare. Young Léon's<br />
success is a proof of this. Unfortunately the<br />
French writers who know English so perfectly as<br />
to be able to give an adequate version of Meredith<br />
say, or Hardy, are very few ; on the other hand,<br />
French publishers do not care to pay anything<br />
like a fair price for translation. Eight pounds,<br />
or, in a liberal moment, ten, are considered a fair<br />
price for translating an ordinary novel. Hachette<br />
bought “David Copperfield” for twenty pounds,<br />
and paid the translator a similar sum, and this<br />
was a great event in hackdoms<br />
Translating is good exercise for writers who<br />
are afflicted with the knowledge of other<br />
languages than their own. I use the word<br />
“afflicted ” advisedly, for it is an established fact<br />
that the linguist never writes his own language<br />
as well as the writer who knows no other tongue<br />
*-- -<br />
He loses the sense of value of words, he falls into<br />
curious constructions, and may even, unconsciously<br />
be guilty of laches in grammar. In translating he<br />
has to pull himself together, to strive after the<br />
genius of his own tongue, to remember its charac-<br />
teristics, forgotten in the Babel of his brain.<br />
Amongst recent publications I notice a volume<br />
of essays by Maurice Barrés, chez Charpentier.<br />
It is entitled “Du Sang, de la Volupté et de la<br />
Mort.” Well, well, well<br />
RoBERT H. SHERARD.<br />
*-- ~ *<br />
“DISCOUNT PRICES.” IN 1852.<br />
HE frugal book-buyer will have noticed that<br />
for some time past attempts have been<br />
made by publishers, not by any means of<br />
the smaller sort, to abolish the system of “dis-<br />
count prices.” This question is not to be re-<br />
garded as a formal business detail, affecting “the<br />
trade ’’ alone, it is closely connected with authors’<br />
and readers’ rights, and it seems not unlikely<br />
that a serious controversy may ensue upon this<br />
movement in the book trade. As the whole<br />
question was raised and discussed some forty<br />
years ago, it may be profitable to follow in some<br />
details the features of the older crisis. The<br />
practice of booksellers giving discount off<br />
publishers' prices was first commented on at<br />
the beginning of this century, and increased with<br />
the improvement in communications, till in 1848<br />
a Booksellers’ Association was formed to counter-<br />
act it. The prime movers in the scheme were<br />
not retail booksellers but publishers, and they<br />
were supported by nearly the whole body of book-<br />
sellers and publishers in London. In July, 1851,<br />
a stringent agreement was entered into ; the sub-<br />
scribing publishers, bound themselves to supply<br />
books at trade price to members of the Asso-<br />
ciation only; the booksellers agreed not to give<br />
more than IO per cent. discount to private<br />
Customers, or 15 per cent. to book societies. The<br />
trade discount being admittedly 33 per cent. on<br />
an average, it is evident that a considerable pro-<br />
fit was left for the booksellers. Anyone offending<br />
systematically against the regulations was to be<br />
expelled. The rule worked laxly from the first,<br />
for on the one hand members put a loose inter-<br />
pretation on the word systematically, and gave as<br />
much as 20 per cent. discount to large purchasers,<br />
without incurring the displeasure of the Associa-<br />
tion. Occasionally, however, the severest<br />
measures were taken against offending mem-<br />
bers, and, finally, one case threw the whole<br />
of the trade into a ferment. One member, an<br />
importer of American books, thought it would be<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 151 (#165) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
151<br />
*:<br />
more profitable, instead of disposing of his wares<br />
to “the trade” at the customary large discount,<br />
to sell directly to the public, charging them cost<br />
price, plus a percentage for profits. The matter<br />
was taken up by the Association, and the member,<br />
proving contumacious, was expelled (Jan. 1852).<br />
In his fall, however, he had with him the<br />
sympathies of the public and of part of the<br />
trade. Hereupon a fierce newspaper war sprung<br />
up, the Times and the Westminster Review<br />
particularly taking up the cause of the rebellious<br />
Associates in the public interest. Such was the<br />
heat of the quarrel that the “trade” became<br />
anxious, for their own sakes, to patch it up, and<br />
: was resolved to submit the matter to arbitra-<br />
1Oll.<br />
Lord Campbell, George Grote, and Dean<br />
Milman were selected as arbitrators “for the<br />
purpose of deciding whether the Booksellers'<br />
Association should be carried on under its then<br />
regulations or not, it being understood that the<br />
decision of Lord Campbell and the other literary<br />
gentlemen should be binding on the Committee,<br />
who agreed, if the decision were adverse, to<br />
convene the trade and resign their functions”<br />
(April 8).<br />
The arbitrators first met on the 15th of<br />
the same month, but the Association had it all<br />
its own way on that occasion, their opponents<br />
absenting themselves on the ground that they<br />
had been summoned only at the last moment;<br />
or, in some cases, that compromise was out of the<br />
Question. Lord Campbell refusing to sum up when<br />
only one side had been heard, the meeting was<br />
adjourned till May 17. Meanwhile, on May 8, a<br />
meeting was held at the rebellious member's house,<br />
with Charles Dickens in the chair, in opposition to<br />
the Association, when Lord Campbell, George Grote,<br />
and Dean Milman were selected as arbitrators<br />
(April 8). The Times report of this meeting is<br />
curious to read. The great novelist, in opening the<br />
proceedings, said that at first he had been disin-<br />
clined to associate himself with the agitation, as<br />
it appeared to be purely a booksellers' question,<br />
but that he had acceded, seeing that a<br />
principle was at stake on which he felt very<br />
strongly : “that every man should have free<br />
exercise of his thrift and enterprise.”<br />
Mr. Babbage (the “tabulator,”) appeared as the<br />
champion of “Manchester Chum,” and wanted to<br />
know why books should be excepted from the<br />
beneficent operation of Free Trade, and moved a<br />
resolution accordingly. Tom Taylor, “speaking as<br />
a book-worm, a mere consumer of books, inclined<br />
to think that the booksellers must follow the<br />
farmers, and give in to Free Trade. Professor<br />
Owen, seconded by Professor Lankester, put a<br />
resolution, which was unanimously passed, that the<br />
regulation of retail prices acted unfavourably by<br />
adding to the already high prices of books on<br />
science, which have a limited circulation. George<br />
Cruikshank had no practical suggestion to make,<br />
he merelv enjoined peace and goodwill.<br />
Mr. Dickens' letter, conveying the resolutions,<br />
was laid before the arbitrators, when proceedings<br />
were resumed to listen to the case against the<br />
Association.<br />
The able summing-up of Lord Campbell on<br />
behalf of the arbitrators affords a convenient<br />
summary of the views prevalent on either side.<br />
He thought the regulations enforced by the<br />
Association to be primá facie unreasonable, since<br />
to fix the price at which the retailer was to sell<br />
was a derogation from the right of ownership<br />
which he had acquired. Again, the regulations<br />
were said to be voluntary, but he believed, and<br />
had been assured by correspondents among the<br />
retailers, that they were not effective without<br />
coercion, which took the form of refusing to<br />
supply to non-members, and thus preventing<br />
them from earning a living. The advocates of<br />
the existing system had admitted that in order<br />
to prove the justice of the regulations, it would<br />
have to be shown that bookselling was different<br />
from other trades, and had attempted this by<br />
saying that the authors were protected (by the<br />
Copyright Acts) and so should the dealers be.<br />
Lord Campbell pointed out that the only pro-<br />
tection given to authors was that which the law.<br />
gave to property of every description. What<br />
weighed most with him, he said, was the peculiar<br />
mode in which the wares in the book trade was<br />
distributed. There was, no doubt, a great advan-<br />
tage to literature in the existence of respectable<br />
book shops all over the country, and, doubtless,<br />
their practice of having books in stock for<br />
inspection, which under a system of unlimited<br />
competition they might not be able to keep up,<br />
often produced purchases that would otherwise<br />
not have been thought of. He hoped, however,<br />
that the lessening of profits would be accom-<br />
panied by enhanced sales, and so by greater<br />
prosperity in the trade. It had also been asserted<br />
that although the removal of the regulations<br />
might not affect the sale of works by well-known<br />
writers, “that the meritorious, but second-rate,<br />
could not without a law against underselling, be<br />
ushered into the world.” Even so, said Lord<br />
Campbell, we should deny the justice of aiding<br />
dull men at the expense of men of genuis. -<br />
“For these reasons,” said the arbitrators, “we<br />
think that the attempt to allege the alleged<br />
exceptional nature of the commerce in books has<br />
failed, and that it ought to be no longer carried on<br />
under present regulations. We do not intend to<br />
affirm, however, that excessive profits are received<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 152 (#166) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 52<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
in any branch of the bookselling trade. . . .<br />
We likewise wish it to be distinctly understood<br />
that our disapproval of the “regulations °<br />
extends only to the pretension of the publisher<br />
to dictate the terms on which the retail book-<br />
seller shall deal in his own shop, and to the means<br />
adopted for enforcing the prescribed minimum<br />
price. They add further: “The publishers are<br />
not bound to trust anyone whom they believe to<br />
be sacrificing his wares by reckless underselling.”<br />
Within ten days from this decision the associa-<br />
tion was dissolved, and the practice of giving 2d.<br />
in the shilling discount for cash became imme-<br />
diately widespread. It seems not improbable that<br />
the facility thus afforded was one of the prime<br />
factors in the weakening of the credit system,<br />
which up till then held nearly all retail transac-<br />
tions in its enervating grasp.<br />
*- - -<br />
NOTES AND NEWS,<br />
R. SHERARD in his Letter from Paris<br />
suggests that the members of the Society<br />
should themselves subscribe to repair the<br />
tomb of Goldsmith. He estimates that £20 would<br />
cover the expense. If members between them<br />
will guarantee that sum an estimate shall be<br />
made. Perhaps a single member would be willing<br />
to pay the whole amount—it is not a great sum—<br />
and it would be a service to the honour of<br />
literature. Perhaps twenty would guarantee one<br />
pound each. Anyhow, I hereby invite the readers<br />
of the Author to send me a promise, not a cheque,<br />
of so much if necessary; and then I will try to<br />
ascertain what is wanted to be done and what it<br />
would cost, and whether the new Master of the<br />
Temple would give his consent to the thing<br />
being done in this way.<br />
It is late to speak of Oliver Wendell Holmes.<br />
But it is impossible for the Author to appear,<br />
even three weeks after his death, without a word.<br />
Our words shall not be many. Holmes was one<br />
of the very few authors who enjoyed the personal<br />
love of all his readers. Greater writers there<br />
are still living—greater poets, greater novelists,<br />
greater essayists. There are none who live so<br />
deeply in the affections of their readers. This<br />
kind of influence is a gift; it cannot be acquired<br />
or learned, or imitated. How many—how few—<br />
living writers possess this gift P. In Holmes’s<br />
Case it was accompanied, or caused, by a<br />
singularly sunny and cheerful disposition. He<br />
neither spoke ill, nor thought ill, of anybody.<br />
The little spitefulnesses which so largely enter<br />
into the literature of many writers, and effectually<br />
deprive them of personal charm, were entirely<br />
wanting in Holmes. He was the Goldsmith of<br />
his age. -**-*-<br />
The following is from the biography of Froude<br />
in the Times of Oct. 22 : -<br />
“Froude could not refrain from a<br />
few incidental thrusts at the insincerity which,<br />
according to him, is the besetting sin of the<br />
clergy of all denominations. It so happened<br />
that just about this time his friend and brother-<br />
in-law, Charles Kingsley, was resigning the chair<br />
of Modern History at Cambridge, and in his<br />
farewell discourse denounced historians for their<br />
partisanship, carelessness, and habitual mis-<br />
representation. The opportunity was too good<br />
to be lost, and an academical wit, said to be the<br />
present Bishop of Oxford, circulated some lines<br />
here which, though well remembered in University<br />
circles, have not often been printed, and may<br />
therefore be quoted here:—<br />
While Froude assures the Scottish youth<br />
That persons do not care for truth,<br />
The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries<br />
“All history's a pack of lies.”<br />
What cause for judgment so malign f<br />
A little thought may solve the mystery;<br />
For Froude thinks Kingsley a divine,<br />
And Kingsley goes to Froude for history.”<br />
The following verses have also been recovered<br />
by the writer of the paper in the Times. They<br />
are by Froude, and appeared in Fraser's<br />
Magazine for May, 1862. They were written<br />
to his wife:—<br />
Sweet hand that held in mine,<br />
Seems the one thing I cannot live without,<br />
The soul’s own anchorage in this storm and doubt,<br />
I take them as the sign.<br />
Of sweeter days in store,<br />
For life and more than life when life is done,<br />
And thy soft pressure leads me gently on<br />
To Heaven’s own Evermore.<br />
I have not much to say,<br />
Nor any words that fit such fond request;<br />
Let my blood speak to them, and hear the rest,<br />
Some silent heartward way.<br />
Thrice blest the sacred hand,<br />
Which saves e'en while it blesses; hold me fast;<br />
Let me not go beneath the floods at last,<br />
So near the better land.<br />
Sweet hand that stays in mine,<br />
Seems the one thing I cannot live without,<br />
My heart's one anchor in life’s storm and doubt,<br />
Take this and make me thine.<br />
I suppose that, if the modern school of history<br />
is right, the whole of English history will have<br />
to be re-written, thanks to the newly recovered or<br />
newly studied documents. The re-writing of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 153 (#167) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 53<br />
history will afford excellent occupation to a good<br />
many scholars now in their cradles. When one<br />
considers the immense accumulations of other<br />
historical documents — cuneiform bricks and<br />
tablets, inscriptions in all languages under the<br />
sun, letters, legal instruments, diaries, memoirs,<br />
and autobiographies, it is clear that all history<br />
will have to be re-written. As the public<br />
libraries will then be numbered by thousands,<br />
and as every library will have to take a copy of<br />
every new history, it is certain that the historian's<br />
lot will not be an unhappy one. Froude may<br />
cease, under these circumstances, to be an<br />
historical authority: so also may Macaulay,<br />
Freeman, and several others. But Froude will<br />
not cease to be a model of fine, picturesque, and<br />
vigorous English.<br />
There was a very pretty paper in the Spectator<br />
of Oct. 20th, called “The Literary Advantages of<br />
Weak Health.” The title was clumsy. It should<br />
have been called “The Bridle of Theages.” This<br />
bridle—as those who have read Plato's Dialogues<br />
ought to know—was the ill-health which kept<br />
Theages, the friend of Socrates, out of politics,<br />
and constrained him to follow philosophy. On this<br />
peg the writer points out very carefully how this<br />
same bridle has constrained others besides Theages<br />
to lead the retired life of meditation and experi-<br />
ment. Among those thus bridled he mentions<br />
Darwin, Pusey, J. A. Symonds among writers of<br />
our time; and of past time, Virgil, Horace, Pope,<br />
Johnson, Schiller, Heine, Pascal.<br />
hand, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Dryden, Milton,<br />
Scott, Tennyson were all men of healthy consti-<br />
tutions, and even more than the average strength.<br />
It is certain that a sickly frame does not make a<br />
good writer: it is also certain that some minds<br />
work better in the retirement which ill-health<br />
forces upon one, and the excitement of society<br />
and social engagements cannot be good either for<br />
one who pursues philosophy or for one who<br />
cultivates imagination. One would not desire the<br />
Bridle of Theages; still, if it is laid upon our<br />
shoulders, we may remember how it has been<br />
used by some as a stimulus for work.<br />
America has her monuments sacred to literary<br />
associations, and America, like England, is fond of<br />
pulling them down and destroying them. The<br />
cottage in which Edgar Allan Poe lived and<br />
worked, at Fordham, is for sale with its grounds.<br />
It is laid out in “4% city lots”—eligible lots,<br />
because they are “on one of the main thorough-<br />
fares of the ‘Greater New York,' within three<br />
minutes' walk of the railroad and the electric<br />
line, less than half an hour from Grand Central<br />
Depôt, and in the midst of a growing popula-<br />
On the other<br />
tion.” The whole has been offered to a certain<br />
literary man for 3500 dollars cash and 30OO<br />
dollars mortgage. The literary man unfortu-<br />
nately does not see his way to buy it.<br />
A suggestion has been made in the New York<br />
Critic that it would be a graceful thing for<br />
editors of magazines to bring out occasionally a<br />
“ consolation’ number, containing only papers<br />
which had been rejected. But unless the<br />
“consolation’’ number was of colossal dimensions<br />
there would be no consolation, except to a few<br />
dozen—and what are they among so many ?<br />
They are an experimental people in Chicago.<br />
They have started a publishing firm, of which<br />
the directors are called “Author-Publishers,” a<br />
double-barrelled name, which may mean either<br />
that they are authors as well as publishers, or<br />
that they are publishers of authors. We wait<br />
for information on this point; also on the special<br />
merits and methods of these publishers. But<br />
they have certainly improved on our methods,<br />
because they announce themselves as their own<br />
literary agents. They conduct a literary bureau,<br />
in which they offer to read, correct, and criticise<br />
MSS.; to select—i.e., we suppose, to invent—<br />
plots and dramatic situations; to aid in securing<br />
publishers—other than themselves?—to explain<br />
the meaning of agreements, cost of production,<br />
royalties, &c.; to look after copyright, and other<br />
useful things. In these pages I have always<br />
given my advice in favour of getting the business<br />
arrangements done by competent and trustworthy<br />
agents. Therefore one cannot but wish success<br />
to this agency. But that such an agency should<br />
form part of a publishing business is quite a new<br />
departure.<br />
The following from the Century Magazine is a<br />
dream of Poe concerning the future of magazines.<br />
He does not venture to dream of a circulation of<br />
more than 20,000. Yet it was a fine dream:—<br />
Before quitting the Messenger I saw, or fancied I saw,<br />
through a long and dim vista, the brilliant field for ambition<br />
which a magazine of bold and noble aims presented to him<br />
who should successfully establish it in America. I perceived<br />
that the country, from its very constitution, could not fail<br />
of affording in a few years a larger proportionate amount of<br />
readers than any upon the earth. I perceived that the<br />
whole emergetic, busy spirit of the age tended wholly to<br />
magazine literature—to the curt, the terse, the well-timed,<br />
and the readily diffused, in preference to the old forms of<br />
the verbose and ponderous and the inaccessible. I knew<br />
from personal experience that lying perdu among the<br />
innumerable plantations in our vast Southern and Western<br />
countries were a host of well-educated men peculiarly devoid<br />
of prejudice, who would gladly lend their influence to a<br />
really vigorous journal, provided the right means were taken<br />
of bringing it fairly within the very limited scope of their<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 154 (#168) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 54<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
observation. Now, I knew, it is true, that some scores of<br />
journals had failed (for, indeed, I looked upon the best<br />
success of the best of them as failure), but then I easily<br />
traced the causes of their failure in the impotency of their<br />
conductors, who made no scruple of basing their rules of<br />
action altogether upon what had been customarily done<br />
instead of what was now before them to do, in the greatly<br />
changed and constantly changing condition of things. In<br />
short, I could see no real reason why a magazine, if worthy<br />
the name, could not be made to circulate among 20,000<br />
subscribers, embracing the best intellect and education of<br />
the land. This was a thought which stimulated my fancy<br />
and my ambition. The influence of such a journal would be<br />
vast indeed, and I dreamed of honestly employing that<br />
influence in the sacred cause of the beautiful, the just, and<br />
the true. Even in a pecuniary view, the object was a<br />
magnificent one. The journal I proposed would be a large<br />
octavo of 128 pages, printed with bold type, single column,<br />
on the finest paper; and disdaining everything of what is<br />
termed “embellishment” with the exception of an occasional<br />
portrait of a literary man, or some well-engraved wood<br />
design in obvious illustration of the text. Of such a journal<br />
I had cautiously estimated the expenses. Could I circulate<br />
20,000 copies at $5, the cost would be about $30,000,<br />
estimating all contingencies at the highest rate. There<br />
would be a balance of $70,000 per annum.<br />
-º-º-º-º-<br />
Are we really returning to our old love—fair<br />
Poesy P. It almost seems so. Edition after<br />
edition comes out of certain young poets—Le<br />
Gallienne, Norman Gale, John Davidson, and a<br />
few others. A few years ago they would have<br />
had to pay for the production of their verse. Now,<br />
it is to be hoped, the payment is on the other<br />
side. It may be that the editions are very<br />
small—anything else “may be ;” one thing remains<br />
certain—that there is a revival of interest in new<br />
poetry; new poets are talked about ; as for the<br />
standard of modern verse, that is certainly high ;<br />
it is to the credit of poets born in a less happy<br />
time that they have handed down the lamp<br />
trimmed and burning bright. Is it necessary,<br />
one would ask, always to speak of young poets as<br />
“minor poets P” Surely a great poet is not neces-<br />
sarily one who produces long poems. The young<br />
men do seem to confine themselves almost entirely<br />
to short poems; but if these short poems can be<br />
placed beside those of a “great '' poet, without<br />
suffering from the comparison, surely they them-<br />
selves must also be great. Certainly I have read<br />
poems by one young poet at least which seemed<br />
to me worthy of being placed beside anything.<br />
Miss Frances Power Cobbe, in her book of<br />
recollections, speaks of the limitations of literary<br />
influence. She was disappointed at the apparent<br />
failure of her books and papers—all of which had<br />
a purpose—to move the hearts of people. What<br />
are the limitations, if any, of literary influence #<br />
Carlyle, for instance, has had an amazing in-<br />
fluence upon the thought of the last fifty years.<br />
His only limitation was in himself. He had a<br />
message; he proclaimed it; then proclaimed it<br />
again and again in book after book. When he<br />
went outside that message nobody heeded him.<br />
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe exercised an<br />
enormous influence over the whole English-<br />
speaking world. The reason was that her book<br />
was opportune; it came at a moment when every-<br />
body was thinking and talking of the slavery<br />
question. Sir John Seeley has exercised an<br />
enormous influence, first in placing old truths<br />
in new language, and next in making people<br />
realise the growth and the grandeur of the<br />
empire. The only limitation to his influence is<br />
himself. So long as he has a thing to teach, we<br />
shall listen. He gained that influence solely by<br />
showing in his books that he was a teacher. There<br />
is, in fact, no limitation at all to literary influence.<br />
It is only the first step that is troublesome. One<br />
has to persuade the world to listen, and one has<br />
to be provided with something to teach the world.<br />
This done, the rest is easy, and there is no bound<br />
whatever to the extent of the influence which<br />
follows. Of course, there is another point. The<br />
teaching must be adapted to the time and to the<br />
people. He who would preach Carlyleism in the<br />
eighteenth century would presently sit down with<br />
the sadness of one who feels that it really is no<br />
use going on. And if “Uncle Tom's Cabin’” had<br />
appeared in 1750, nobody would have read a work<br />
so low and grovelling. Then, if one is not a<br />
prophet, what is the good of advocating, preach-<br />
ing, or arguing P Because it is always useful to<br />
keep on teaching, however poorly or unsuccess-<br />
fully, the things that people should learn,<br />
because many things can only be taught by<br />
long and patient repetition, and by many teachers<br />
in different ways. And, again, no writer can<br />
estimate or learn the influence which his own<br />
work has possessed. Therefore, one may harm-<br />
lessly assume that it has been world-wide, and<br />
go on happy in that belief.<br />
=ººº-<br />
Another literary association. It is called the<br />
“Rose Club,” and it owns an organ called “The<br />
Briar Rose,” which appears every three months.<br />
Members are privileged to send in three papers<br />
every year for the editor's inspection and criti-<br />
cism. A critical notice of members’ papers will<br />
be published with every issue of “The Briar<br />
Rose.” Members lucky enough to be accepted<br />
are paid at the rate of two guineas for a story,<br />
and one guinea for an essay. The first number of<br />
“The Briar Rose” contains eighteen pages; two<br />
stories, two essays, and a poem. There are no<br />
critical notices in this number. The club is for<br />
women only.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 155 (#169) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 55<br />
Whatever Mr. Welch, Librarian to the Cor-<br />
poration of London, says on the subject of Free<br />
Libraries must be received with attention.<br />
Therefore, the whole subject of Free Libraries<br />
being most important and most interesting, I<br />
have printed in another column the report of .<br />
his recent address as given in the Times. For<br />
my own part, I think he fails to recognise the<br />
enormous educational value of fiction. It is from<br />
novels that a very large section of the com-<br />
munity derives its ideas, its standards, its<br />
manners, its respect for literature, art, and<br />
science. The Free Libraries may have been<br />
founded on the conventional theory that every<br />
reader is a student. This is not so ; every tenth<br />
reader—perhaps every hundredth reader—is a<br />
student; the rest are reading for amusement.<br />
If Mr. Welch will look round the circle of his<br />
own acquaintance and friends, how many will he<br />
find who follow a hard day's work with a hard<br />
evening's study? Perhaps, none. Why, then, does<br />
he expect or hope to find this phenomenon among<br />
working people P. It is in the power of every<br />
library—it is the duty of every library—to keep<br />
out trash, whether in the shape of novels or any<br />
other kind of literature. But the theory that public<br />
libraries should be maintained for students alone<br />
cannot for a moment be allowed. They are educa-<br />
tional and they are recreative. It is quite as useful<br />
a function for the libraries to provide a hundred<br />
men of the working class with an evening's<br />
recreation as it is for them to find books of<br />
reference for half a dozen students.<br />
We must reserve until next month the autumn<br />
announcements of American books. This list,<br />
considered with care, will suggest many points of<br />
interest. At present one only may be noted—<br />
the proportion of English to American books. It is<br />
impossible to escape the conclusion that the Copy-<br />
right Act has given a great impetus to American<br />
work. While English work could be had for<br />
nothing, the American author in every branch<br />
was fatally overweighted. This obstacle removed,<br />
we begin to see what we expected—the great bulk<br />
of the literature of the States written by their<br />
own people, and only the exceptionally useful and<br />
popular authors of this country being published<br />
there. This proportion we may expect to find every<br />
year greater in favour of American writers. At<br />
the same time there will be found on both sides<br />
of the Atlantic a great and always increasing<br />
demand for the work of the first and best.<br />
An analysis in advance of the list shows the<br />
following numbers and comparative authorship :<br />
History, thirty-three works; seven by English<br />
writers, twenty-six by American.<br />
Biographies and Memoirs, thirty-four works; ten<br />
by English writers, twenty-four by American.<br />
General Literature, forty-eight works; fourteen<br />
by English writers, thirty-four by American.<br />
Poetry, thirty-four works; seven by English<br />
writers, twenty-seven by American.<br />
Fiction, seventy-seven works; twenty-one by<br />
English writers, fifty-six by American.<br />
Art and Music, thirteen works; four by English<br />
writers, nine by American.<br />
Travel, Adventure, and Description, thirty-three<br />
works; twelve by English writers, twenty-one<br />
by American. -<br />
Education and Text-book, eighty-five works; all<br />
by American editors and writers.<br />
Politics, Sociology, and Law, twenty-one works;<br />
five by English writers, sixteen by American.<br />
Theology and Religion, fifty-two works; sixteen<br />
by English writers, thirty-six by American.<br />
Science and Nature, thirty-six works; three by<br />
English writers, thirty-three by American.<br />
Mechanics and Engineering, twenty works; nine<br />
by English writers, eleven by American.<br />
Medicine and Hygiene, ten works; three by<br />
English writers, seven by American.<br />
Games and Sports, seven works;<br />
English writers, four by American.<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
three by<br />
SPRING TIME IN THE WIKING DAYS,<br />
NORWAY.<br />
SPRING and the sun are returning and winter is past; Aoi<br />
The bonds he has flung round the earth are loosened at<br />
last; Aoi<br />
Soft blows the breeze o'er the mountain tops, melting the<br />
Snow ;<br />
Swoln are the rivers and, foaming and frothing, they flow<br />
Seaward. Right weary are we of the land and it's, Oh<br />
For the creak of the wind in the cordage aloft, and the<br />
flap of the sale by the mast ! Aoi !<br />
Seaward the breezes blow, bidding us idle no more, Aoi !<br />
Curling and flecking with foam-flakes the wide ocean<br />
floor. Aoi !<br />
Earth was our sojourn awhile, but the sea is our<br />
home.<br />
Hark! how he calls us on viking-cruise over the foam,<br />
As, surging and seething, he grinds at the beach. We<br />
will roam,<br />
And our longship no longer shall yearn for the waves,<br />
as she frets high and dry on the shore. Aoi<br />
Gather and run her down over the rollers of pine, Aoi !<br />
Down to the foam-tossing breast of the welcoming brine. Aoi!<br />
Upward to clasp her he flings his white arms in wild glee ;<br />
Downward she plunges, till knee-deep we stand, with<br />
the sea<br />
Laughing and leaping and curling round ankle and knee.<br />
Oh! sweeter the smell of the salt sea-waves than the scent<br />
and the savour of wine ! Aoi !<br />
From “Sagas and Songs of the Norsemen.”<br />
- By ALBANY F. MAJOR<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 156 (#170) ############################################<br />
<br />
I56<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
FREE PUBLIC LIBRARIES,<br />
N Thursday evening, Oct. 18th, a meeting<br />
of the Library Association of the United<br />
Kingdom was held at the Mansion-house,<br />
when a paper was read by Mr. Charles Welch,<br />
librarian to the Corporation of London, on “The<br />
Public Library Movement in London; a review<br />
of its progress, and suggestions for its consoli-<br />
dation and extension.” Mr. Richard Garnett,<br />
LL.D., presided, and delegates attended from<br />
numerous public libraries in the metropolis.<br />
Mr. Welch observed that it seemed at first that<br />
London would vie with the great municipalities<br />
in the kingdom in supporting free public libraries,<br />
when, in 1857, only two years after the passing of<br />
Ewart's principal Act, the parishes of St. Margaret<br />
and St. John, Westminster, united to establish a<br />
public library. Twenty-four years elapsed, how-<br />
ever, before another library was started, this time<br />
by the suburban parish of Richmond, to be<br />
followed by Twickenham in 1882. The year of<br />
her Majesty's jubilee gave a great impulse to<br />
what had then become a popular movement, and<br />
its subsequent progress inspired the hope that, in<br />
spite of the remarkable obduracy of certain<br />
parishes, the time was not far distant when every<br />
district of our great metropolis would enjoy the<br />
blessing of a well-stored library. Taking the<br />
whole fifty-four divisions of the county of London,<br />
they found that twenty-seven parishes, or divisions,<br />
had established public libraries, while twenty-six<br />
had hitherto declined to do so. In the remaining<br />
district, Southwark, the divisions of St. Saviour<br />
and Christ Church only had established libraries,<br />
the remaining parishes having, up to the present,<br />
held aloof from the movement. The City had<br />
been provided by the Corporation of Londom with<br />
an excellent reference library at Guildhall, and<br />
had also been furnished, by endowment from<br />
the City Parochial Charities Commission, with<br />
three other admirable institutions in Bishops-<br />
gate, Cripplegate, and St. Bride's, Fleet-<br />
street, to which extensive lending libraries<br />
were to be attached. With reference to the<br />
prejudices in London against the movement,<br />
beyond the question of any increase in<br />
taxation there was a stronger and more deep-<br />
seated objection, which was held very widely<br />
among men of culture and lovers of good litera-<br />
ture and loyal promoters of education. Their<br />
opposition was based, not upon the principle under-<br />
lying free library legislation, but upon its develop-<br />
ments as seen in the present condition and manage-<br />
ment of the public libraries throughout the<br />
country. Having quoted from the debates during<br />
the passage through Parliament of the measure<br />
for establishing free public libraries, he said he<br />
thought it would be clearly evident that the inten-<br />
tion of Mr. Ewart himself, and of his supporters<br />
in Parliament, was to provide for the education<br />
and intellectual advancement of the people<br />
and only in a subsidiary degree for their<br />
“innocent recreation.” At the request, however,<br />
of the editor of London, the librarians of seven-<br />
teen free public libraries in the metropolis made<br />
a return in April last, showing the classes of<br />
books read in the homes of the people. From<br />
this it appeared that the issue of fiction, as com-<br />
pared with other classes of literature reached a<br />
general average of 75 per cent., and in nine<br />
districts over 80 per cent. of the total issues.<br />
In connection with the management of the lending<br />
libraries established under the Free Libraries<br />
Acts in London, they were struck by the fact that<br />
the student had been ousted from his rightful<br />
place by the inordinate favour afforded to the<br />
demands of the general reader and the devourer<br />
of fiction. The principles of management which<br />
had made possible the statistics which he had<br />
brought under their notice had, he was convinced,<br />
alienated from the free library cause in every<br />
district the support of many friends of intel-<br />
lectual progress, and were at present a serious<br />
hindrance to the growth of the movement<br />
in the metropolis. Would it be too much to<br />
ask the novel reader to provide himself with the<br />
current fiction of the day and resort to the library<br />
for the masterpieces of fiction of the present and<br />
bygone times P Should Parliament be approached<br />
for permission to raise the limit of the library rate<br />
to 2d. (a course which he thought seemed most<br />
desirable), any such measures should undoubtedly<br />
be accompanied by a compulsory proviso that a<br />
definite proportion of the amount available for the<br />
purchase of books should be devoted to the pur-<br />
poses of a reference library. The present con-<br />
dition of the free library movement in London,<br />
and the erection of new libraries, which was<br />
continually proceeding in every district, suggested<br />
most strongly the need of some scheme for con-<br />
verting this aggregation of institutions into a<br />
systematic and harmonious system to provide for<br />
the needs of the metropolis as a whole. The<br />
popularity of the two existing free public libraries<br />
—those of the British Museum and the Guildhall<br />
—prove that similar institutions, placed in the<br />
midst of the homes of the people, would prove a<br />
boon of the highest kind. He felt most strongly<br />
that the present haphazard system in which our<br />
London libraries were growing up, owing to the<br />
different extent and circumstances of the various<br />
districts which maintained them, must end in<br />
confusion, perhaps (in some cases) in partial or<br />
complete failure; while, on the other hand, a<br />
well-considered scheme of mutual help and effort,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 157 (#171) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHO/8.<br />
I 57<br />
the details of which might well be evolved from<br />
a general conference of the metropolitan library<br />
authorities, would result in placing London in a<br />
position second to no city in the world in respect<br />
of facilities for literary reference and research.<br />
—The Times.<br />
*— — —”<br />
AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS.<br />
M*: SAMIPSON LOW AND CO.<br />
announce twenty-five new books, to-<br />
gether with several new volumesin Low’s<br />
Half-Crown Series of Boy’s Books, and a half-a-<br />
crown series of famous books of travel. Among<br />
the new works are “The Life of J. Greenleaf<br />
Whittier,” by S. T. Pickard ; “Lord John<br />
Russell,” by S. J. Reid; “Strange Pages from<br />
Family Papers,” by T. F. Thiselton Dyer; and<br />
fourteen novels.<br />
The Clarendon Press announce forty-seven<br />
new works and editions. These are mostly works<br />
of scholarship and education. Among them is<br />
the final volume of “Realm of India,” “Russell<br />
Colvin,” by Sir Auckland Colvin ; two more<br />
volumes of Professor Skeat's edition of<br />
Chaucer; two more letters of the New English<br />
Dictionary; and Mr. Hastings Rashdall’s<br />
“ Universities of the Middle Ages.”<br />
Messrs. Rivington, Percival, and Co. announce<br />
thirty-three works, nearly all are educational.<br />
Among them is Canon Taylor's “Names and<br />
their Histories.”<br />
Messrs. Dent and Co. announce sixteen works,<br />
chiefly reprints and new editions. Among the new<br />
books are “Annals of a Quiet Valley in the<br />
Wordsworth Country,” by Mr. William Watson;<br />
“Overheard in Arcady,” by R. Bridges; and<br />
“Studies in Literature,” by Mr. Wright<br />
Mabie.<br />
Messrs. T. and T. Clark announce ten new<br />
works, all theological.<br />
Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden announce<br />
twelve new books, besides a reprint of Henry<br />
Ringsley's novels, and a new volume of the<br />
Waverley novels. Among the new books is Mr.<br />
Douglas Sladen’s “On the Cars and Off”; Mr.<br />
Bertram Mitford’s “Curse of Clement Wayn-<br />
flete; ” and Mr. George Meredith’s “Tale of<br />
Chloe.”<br />
Mr. Elkin Mathews announces seventeen new<br />
books, chiefly essays and poems. Among the<br />
authors are Mr. Wedmore, Mr. Lionel Johnson,<br />
Mr. Selwyn Image, Mr. Dowson, Mr. A.<br />
Galton, Mr. S. Hemingway, Mr. Quilter, Mr. W.<br />
B. Yeats, Mr. Rothenstein, Mrs. Radford, Mr.<br />
Bliss Carmen, and Mr. R. Hovey. “Revolted<br />
Woman: Past, Present, and to Come,” is by Mr.<br />
C. G. Harper,<br />
Messrs. Bemrose and Sons announce two<br />
books.<br />
Messrs. W. Blackwood and Sons announce<br />
fifteen new books. Among them are three<br />
biographies and five novels, including two by<br />
Mrs. Oliphant, and the “Son of the Marshes.”<br />
Messrs. Allen announce nine new works, inclu-<br />
ding a book on the “Portuguese in India,” by<br />
F. C. Danvers; on “Buddhism in Thibet,” by<br />
Surgeon-Major Waddell; a Bengali Manual; new<br />
volumes of the Naturalist's Library; and two<br />
novels.<br />
Messrs. Bliss, Sands, and Foster announce mine<br />
books. There are two novels by Mrs. Caird and<br />
Miss Clementina Black; the continuation of the<br />
“History of the United States Navy,” and a book<br />
on Strikes.<br />
Messrs. Nelson and Sons have eleven new<br />
books, besides new prize books and atlases. The<br />
most important are Dr. Wright's book on<br />
Palmyra ; a new Concordance to the Bible, by<br />
the Rev. J. B. R. Walker; the “Voyages and<br />
Travels of Capt. Basil Hall,” and five stories.<br />
Messrs. Luzac have four learned works.<br />
Messrs. W. Andrews have seven works, mostly<br />
antiquarian.<br />
Messrs. Warne and Co. announce twenty-six<br />
new editions or new works, without counting<br />
many children’s books. Among the new editions<br />
are the Waverley Novels, “Cameos of Litera-<br />
ture,” which will be a reprint of Knight's famous<br />
“Half Hours with the best Authors; ”a new library<br />
edition of Wood’s “Dictionary of Quotations; ”<br />
a revised edition of Lears “Nonsense Songs<br />
and Stories; ” and four or five reprints of<br />
novels.<br />
Messrs. Jarrold and Sons announce eleven new<br />
books; additions to certain series; the “Green-<br />
back; ” “Elashes of Romance; ” and “Unknown<br />
Authors; ” uniform editions of the novels of<br />
Helen Mathers and Fergus Hume ; and their<br />
novels outside the series.<br />
Messrs. Skeffington and Co. announce fourteen<br />
books, of which twelve are religious. There are<br />
two novels.<br />
Messrs. Browne and Browne, of Newcastle,<br />
announce a “History of the Chartist Move-<br />
ment.”<br />
In the “Autumn Announcements” of our last<br />
number we attributed to Messrs. Chapman and<br />
Hall the production of fifteen new books. The<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 158 (#172) ############################################<br />
<br />
I58<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
chairman of the company points out that they<br />
are producing thirty-one instead of fifteen new<br />
books. The mistake was caused by the<br />
“announcements” of that firm being entered in<br />
three different columns of the Athenaeum, of<br />
which only one was seen by our compiler.<br />
The complete list of thirty-one is exclusive of<br />
new editions, nor does it include reprints of<br />
“stock” books, such as Dickens, Carlyle, and<br />
Meredith, of which an unusual number are this<br />
year published.<br />
In the October number of the Author it was<br />
stated as remarkable that out of fifty-one books<br />
announced by the Cambridge University Press<br />
there should be not one mathematical or scientific<br />
book among them all. The mathematical and<br />
scientific books were in another list. There are<br />
twenty-four of them. Among them are the<br />
seventh volume of the collected Mathematical<br />
Papers of Arthur Cayley ; the Scientific Papers<br />
of John Couch Adams; a Treatise on Spherical<br />
Astronomy, by Sir Robert Ball; on Electricity<br />
and Magnetism, by Prof. Thomson ; on Hydro-<br />
dynamics, by Prof. Lamb; the tenth volume of<br />
a Catalogue of Scientific Papers, compiled by the<br />
Royal Society of London; the Practical Phy-<br />
siology of Plants, by F. Darwin and E. H. Acton;<br />
on a Practical Morbid Anatomy, by H. O.<br />
Rolleston and A. A. Kanthack ; on the Dis-<br />
tribution of Animals, by F. E. Beddard; on<br />
Physical Anthropology, by Alexander Mac-<br />
alister; and the Elements of Botany, by F.<br />
Darwin.<br />
In this and in the last number of the<br />
Author we have classified the announcements<br />
made in the Athenæum by various publishers of<br />
their autumn books. The list seems somewhat<br />
smaller than that of last year, which was to be<br />
expected from the general depression everywhere<br />
reported. At the same time not so much<br />
shrinkage in production as shrinkage in sales<br />
would be the first result of such a depression.<br />
Almost all the better known names are repre-<br />
sented in the list. For instance, of historians,<br />
Critics, travellers, philosophers, and antiquaries,<br />
we find the names of Canon Atkinson, Rev. Robert<br />
Burn, Justin McCarthy, T. F. Thiselton Dyer,<br />
W. Cunningham, Archdeacon Farrar, J. T.<br />
Jusserand, Dean Hole, Frederick Harrison, Pro-<br />
fessor Freeman, Professor Froude, Professor<br />
Gardiner, Canon Liddon, Max Müller, Professor<br />
Maspero, Henry Norman, Sir Frederick Pollock,<br />
Professor Flinders Petree, Bishop of Peter-<br />
borough, J. Addington Symonds, Sir J. R.<br />
Seeley, Leslie Stephen, Colonel Malleson, John<br />
Westlake, Robertson Smith, Professor Skeat,<br />
Canon Taylor, H. Traill. Among the novelists<br />
and poets there are, among others, Sir Edwin.<br />
Arnold, Mrs. Alexander, F. Barrett, Amelie Barr,<br />
Robert Barr, Walter Besant, William Black,<br />
Clementima Black, R. D. Blackmore, Marion<br />
Crawford, S. R. Crockett, Mrs. Caird, R.<br />
Bridges, Mrs. Charles, Sir H. Cunningham,<br />
Egerton Castle, Sarah Doudney, George du<br />
Maurier, Conan Doyle, G. M. Fenn, Baring<br />
Gould, Edmund Gosse, Dorothea Gerard, R.<br />
Lehmann, G. Meredith, G. MacDonald, Christie.<br />
Murray, John Oliver Hobbes, Anthony Hope,<br />
Mrs. Lynn Linton, Helen Mather, L. Pendered,<br />
W. E. Norris, Gilbert Parker, Standish O'Grady,<br />
“Rita,” Adeline Serjeant, G. A. Sala, Hesba.<br />
Stretton, Sarah Tytler, Stanley Weyman, Douglas<br />
Sladen, William Watson. -<br />
BOOK TALK,<br />
R. R. B. MARSTON'S new work on.<br />
“Walton and the Earlier Fishing<br />
Writers ” (Elliot Stock, The Book<br />
Lover's Library) will certainly add to his repu-<br />
tation as an authority on the literature of the<br />
angler, and will form an instructive companion<br />
to the magnificent edition of “The Compleat.<br />
Angler,” published by him some years ago.<br />
From A.D. 1420, when Piers, of Fulham, wrote a<br />
curious tract on the subject, through the works<br />
of Dame Juliana Berners, Leonard Mascall<br />
(pioneer of fish culture in England), Blakey,<br />
John Denny, Gervase Markham, William Lawson,<br />
and Cotton, down to the ever-famous work of<br />
“Old Izaak,” Mr. Marston takes his readers<br />
in the pleasantest manner possible. He tells us<br />
that the “Compleat Angler” was published<br />
originally in 1653 at the price of Is. 6d.<br />
What is a first edition worth nowadays P. It<br />
would appear that 3235 is about a fair figure,<br />
though as much as 33 IO has been paid. In 1816.<br />
a “first" could be bought for four guineas As<br />
Mr. Marston pointedly asks, “What will such a<br />
one be worth, say, in 1993 P” Not the least<br />
interesting feature of an extremely interesting<br />
work is the modest preface in which our author<br />
tells us something of his own early days as an<br />
angler, and of his youthful acquaintance with<br />
fishing writers. He also takes the opportunity of<br />
warning would-be collectors against spurious first.<br />
editions, of which he declares that there are many<br />
in the market, mostly “made in Germany.”<br />
Truly a charming work, and one deserving a place<br />
in every fisherman’s library. It is got up with<br />
great care on wide margined paper, and is a<br />
credit to the publisher by whom it is issued.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 159 (#173) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 59<br />
In another column will be found certain lines<br />
taken from a new volume of verse by a new poet—<br />
Mr. Albany F. Major. The whole volume is full<br />
of strong and spirited verse. We have had<br />
plenty of verse in the minor key, let us welcome<br />
one who can sing of life in action and in battle,<br />
and in enjoyment of both action and battle.<br />
The little book is published by “David Nutt<br />
in the Strand.”<br />
A bard of a lighter kind is Mr. Anthony C.<br />
Deane, who has just republished, under the title of<br />
“Holiday Rhymes,” a collection of very sprightly<br />
verses, which have already appeared in Punch<br />
and many other papers and magazines. It is<br />
as pleasant a collection as one could wish. Mr.<br />
Deane can command laughter, which is a truly<br />
admirable gift; he is always cheerful and always<br />
genial; he can be sarcastic without the least<br />
discoverable touch of bitterness. Greatly to be<br />
envied is the man who can stand outside, look on,<br />
and laugh, and make even the combatants laugh.<br />
Even when Anthony Deane laughs at that sacred<br />
institution, the Author, he can laugh with a<br />
sympathetic light in his eye.<br />
Mrs. Spender's new novel, “A Modern<br />
Quixote,” has been published by Messrs. Hutch-<br />
inson in three volumes. The same publishers<br />
have issued a cheap edition, at 2s., of her last<br />
novel, “A Strange Temptation.”<br />
Mrs. Edith E. Cuthell’s one volume story—a<br />
yachting story—called “The Wee Widow’s<br />
Cruise,” will be issued by Messrs. Ward and<br />
Downey. Mrs. Cuthell has also written a chil-<br />
dren's story called “Only a Guardroom Dog.”<br />
which is to be illustrated by Mr. W. Parkinson,<br />
and published by Methuen and Co.<br />
Miss Clara Lemore's new novel—in three<br />
volumes—called “Penhala, a Wayside Wizard,”<br />
is now ready at all the libraries. It is published<br />
by Hurst and Blackett.<br />
Mr. Standish O'Grady’s Irish romance of the<br />
Elizabethan period, entitled “Red Hugh's<br />
Captivity,” will begin to run in the weekly Irish<br />
Times in January, 1895.<br />
“What is Education ?” Mr. Walter Wren<br />
asks (Simpkin and Marshall) the question, and<br />
answers it, giving his own ideas on the subject.<br />
Education is, to begin with, a thing personal. No<br />
man can be educated; he can be shown the way<br />
to educate himself, it depends upon himself<br />
whether he ever does become an educated man<br />
For instance, the first law of education is to<br />
notice things; things that you read, things that<br />
you hear, things that you see ; not to pass over<br />
things without understanding them. This then<br />
is education of the body, the mind, and the spirit.<br />
As regards the second. Education of the mind<br />
must do two things—(1) bring out, develop, and<br />
strengthen the powers of the mind, just as a<br />
proper course of training in games and athletics<br />
brings out and strengthens the powers of the<br />
body; and (2) it should teach useful know-<br />
ledge. These notes are worthy of expansion into<br />
a book.<br />
Before closing up his work on the old A.B.C.<br />
Hornbook which is to contain something like two<br />
hundred illustrations, Mr. Andrew Tuer, of the<br />
Leadenhall Press, E.C., asks to be favoured with<br />
notes from those who may remember the horn-<br />
book in use, or who may have in their possession<br />
examples which he has not yet seen Information<br />
about spurious hornbooks, from the sale of which<br />
certain persons are at present said to be reaping<br />
a golden harvest, is also sought. -<br />
John Gladwyn Jebb—Jack Jebb—was not born<br />
in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and he did not<br />
seek the Spanish Main with Drake. He was born<br />
fifty years ago, and he died last year. During<br />
his fifty years of life he had more adventures<br />
than any novelist would dare to invent—not even<br />
Rider Haggard, who writes an introduction to<br />
the Life of Jack Jebb. Indeed, one is astonished<br />
that the novelist did not lay hands on the MS.,<br />
and bring it out with a few additions as a novel.<br />
The hero is wasted and thrown away in a mere<br />
biography. It is, indeed, an astonishing book,<br />
astonishing that in these days so much adventure<br />
and danger should be possible. There is still<br />
hope for the boy who desires the life of danger.<br />
Mexico lies open; and there is Central Africa.<br />
In the former the boy can follow the footsteps<br />
of Jebb ; in the latter, of Selous.<br />
Coulson Kernahan’s “Sorrow and Song” is a<br />
collection of essays originally written for the<br />
Fortnightly Review and other papers, and recast<br />
or re-written for this volume. They are papers<br />
on Heine, Rosetti, Robertson of Brighton, Louise<br />
Chandler Moultrie, and Philip Marston. Mr.<br />
Kernahan is the first writer, so far as I know, to<br />
draw attention to the beauty and purity of Mrs.<br />
Moultrie's verse. She has the rare poetic touch ;<br />
the thing that can never be imitated, or bor-<br />
rowed, or learned, or stolen. Of living American<br />
poets, Mrs. Moultrie stands in the first rank.<br />
There are not many, indeed, who are worthy to<br />
stand beside her. We neglect the American<br />
poets. Will Mr. Coulson Kinnahan undertake the<br />
pleasing task of presenting to English readers<br />
some who desire to be known in this country as<br />
well as their own P. Among these, for instance,<br />
are R. W. Gilder and Professor Woodberry, both<br />
of whom ought to be better known by us.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 160 (#174) ############################################<br />
<br />
I6O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I recommend “Baron Verdigris” as a topsy-<br />
turvy book. The author describes it as a romance<br />
of the reversed direction. He shows, in fact, a<br />
new and hitherto undiscovered danger in applied<br />
mathematics. The book is calculated to confirm<br />
in their prejudice all that large class which does<br />
not like “sums.” Speaking as one who does like<br />
sums, especially when they are in “X” and “y,”<br />
I found the book diverting and ingenious, but<br />
was saddened by the reflection that I might my-<br />
self have made similar discoveries.<br />
It is said that the sale of “The Manxman” has<br />
reached the number of 45,000 copies. This is<br />
probably the highest number ever attained in<br />
this country in so short a time by a six shilling<br />
volume. It is, however, surpassed by the sale of<br />
“Trilby’’ in the United States. The number<br />
reached by “Trilby’’ is said to be 100,000. In<br />
the three-volume form, in which it has been<br />
judged expedient to produce it here, it is in great<br />
demand.<br />
The St. James's Gazette has discovered that<br />
“Adam Bede,” which enjoyed a similar measure of<br />
success, ran through 16,OOO copies in nine months.<br />
The terms offered by Messrs. Blackwood to its<br />
successor were: £2OOO for 4000 copies of three<br />
volumes, 3150 for IOOO at 12s., and £60 for IOOO<br />
at 6s. These terms, the St. James’s Gazette<br />
points out, amount to royalties of 20 to 25 per<br />
cent. To be exact, the royalties are 31%, 25, and<br />
20 per cent. respectively.<br />
From the same paper we learn that Miss Wills,<br />
daughter of Dr. C. J. Wills, the author of<br />
“Persia as it is,” has written, from personal<br />
experience, a book on Eastern life called “Behind<br />
an Eastern Weil.”<br />
Mr. William Watson’s new volume will be<br />
called “Odes, and other Poems” (John Lane).<br />
William Westall, who is spending the winter<br />
at St. Moritz, in Upper Engadine, and may<br />
remain abroad for a year or two, has placed his<br />
literary interests in the hands of Messrs. A. P.<br />
Watt and Son, to whom all communications<br />
should be addressed.<br />
A short time ago a certain Swiss paper “ran’”<br />
“Josef im Schnei,” an old story by Auerbach,<br />
without making any preliminary arrangement<br />
with the publishers, or intending to pay for<br />
the serial use. But the publishers, getting wind<br />
of the piracy, demanded an honorarium of 200<br />
marks, to which the proprietors of the Swiss<br />
paper demurred ; whereupon the publishers<br />
brought an action against them and obtained<br />
a verdict for 200 francs. The incident is note-<br />
worthy, as showing the advantages to authors<br />
and publishers of international copyright treaties.<br />
Only a few years ago foreign authors had no<br />
protection whatever in Switzerland, their works<br />
could be reproduced without let or licence, and<br />
Swiss newspaper proprietors were not slow to<br />
take advantage of the fact. Some of them still<br />
obtain their feuilleton matter surreptitiously from<br />
foreign sources, and are not always, as in the<br />
present instance, brought to book and made to<br />
pay.<br />
“In Furthest Ind,” by Sydney Grier (Black-<br />
wood and Sons), is a remarkable tour de force by<br />
a young writer, whose work has hitherto been<br />
confined to short stories for the magazines. It is<br />
a finely-conceived romance of travel and adventure<br />
in the latter half of the seventeenth century, as<br />
told by the hero himself in the very language, as<br />
it were, of his own day. Edward Carlyon, whose<br />
father fought and bled for Charles I., goes out to<br />
Surat as a “writer’’ in the East India Company’s<br />
service, and spends twenty years in India, during<br />
which he meets with many strange adventures,<br />
and has more than one hair's-breadth escape<br />
from a cruel death. Every detail of the story<br />
and its local surroundings seems to have been<br />
studied with infinite care, and worked in with<br />
due regard to the general effect. The interest<br />
is well sustained on the whole, and some,<br />
at least, of the characters—especially Dorothy<br />
—are really alive. And, as one reads on, one<br />
seems to discover in the author's style a certain<br />
grace and harmony of its own which, as in<br />
“Esmond,” count for much more than a clever<br />
masquerade.<br />
A story which ran as a serial through The<br />
King's Own is now to be issued in book form<br />
by Parlane and Co., Paisley, under the title of<br />
“Covenanters of Annandale.” The book will be<br />
beautifully illustrated with views of the haunts<br />
of the Covenanters in the hills and glens of<br />
Upper Annandale. A short story, by the same<br />
author, will shortly be published by Hunter and<br />
Co., Edinburgh, as a Christmas booklet. It is<br />
entitled “A Swatch o' Hamespun.” The author,<br />
Agnes Marchbank, has, at present, serials in the<br />
Ladies’ Journal, Scottish Reformer, and the<br />
Plough. A new serial from her pen will<br />
shortly appear in Word and Work (Shaw<br />
and Co., London).<br />
Brig.<br />
One of the most important of the illustrated<br />
books which Mr. George Allen contemplates<br />
issuing this autumn is the limited edition de<br />
luate of Spenser's “Faerie Queene’’ in large<br />
post quarto form, with illustrations by Mr.<br />
Walter Crane. It is to be published in monthly<br />
parts.<br />
It is a tale of Bothwell<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 161 (#175) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
I6 I<br />
CORRESPONDENCE.<br />
I. – Nov ELS AT PopULAR PRICEs. – WILKIE<br />
CoLLINs’ OPINION.<br />
N the interesting compilation of novels issued<br />
from the year 1750 to 1860—which appeared<br />
in September's Author — during the first<br />
forty-two years of this period the ruling price<br />
was 3s. a volume. In those days, them—when, if I<br />
mistake not, there was a heavy duty on paper,<br />
now taken off—this price must actually have<br />
compensated author and publisher. And as the<br />
cost of production must have been more then<br />
than now, with no monster circulating libraries<br />
existing, it must be presumed that the novels in<br />
those days had a large circulation, and were pur-<br />
chased by their readers. At present novels are<br />
borrowed and not bought, on account of their<br />
high price. As readers now must be greatly<br />
in excess of those in the eighteenth century,<br />
it surely must follow, as “the night the<br />
day,” that good fiction at 28., 2s. 6d., and 3s, a<br />
volume would reach the masses, who are forced<br />
to amuse themselves with penny dreadfuls. In<br />
the year 1883 I had a long correspondence with<br />
the late Wilkie Collins on the subject, and I<br />
transcribe one of his letters, which will prove<br />
interesting just now, when one-volume novels<br />
threaten to supersede those in three volumes.<br />
Your views on the question of publication have been my<br />
views for years past. I have tried thus far in vain to<br />
induce publishers to see the advantages (to themselves as<br />
well as to literature) of effecting a reform already esta-<br />
blished in all other civilised countries. I can do nothing by<br />
myself. I should be powerless for this plain<br />
reason, that my time and energies are wholly absorbed in<br />
writing my books. I can only wait and hope for the coming<br />
man who will give me my opportunity. The vicious<br />
circulating library system is unquestionably beginning to<br />
fail, and the recent issue of sixpenny magazines shows an<br />
advance in the right direction. ' ' ' f<br />
It is superogatory for me to comment on<br />
the opinion of this great authority. To my mind<br />
a popular book must always be a cheap book, in<br />
spite of a prevailing prejudice that what is cheap<br />
cannot be good. The circulation of a favourite<br />
work of fiction would increase a hundredfold if it<br />
could be bought at 2s. or 2s. 6d. Everyone does<br />
not belong to Mudie's, and the purchasers<br />
amongst the inhabitants of Greater Britain<br />
number legion, and our novels would gain in<br />
excellence and interest by being shorter and<br />
crisper. In fact, one might actually look forward<br />
to a time when the novelist will actually write a<br />
story without having any need to garnish it with<br />
interminable descriptions, dull moralisings, or<br />
tedious conversations, when, instead of writing a<br />
novel with a purpose, his only purpose will be to<br />
write a novel. ISIDORE G. ASCHER.<br />
II.--—“NEw.”<br />
One of a coterie of “new” authors has lately<br />
advanced the idea that the “incident’’ novel is<br />
a product of to-day; that to our medical author<br />
more than anyone else we owe the modern<br />
“incident” novel. It seems, too, to be received<br />
in the new school of critics that a certain quality<br />
of dry wit now in vogue is “new” humour. Are<br />
not both these crude ideas fallacies?<br />
We might easily speak of a still living giant to<br />
prove the error of these “new * ideas, but we<br />
will be content with the dead. Between thirty<br />
and forty years ago—about the time our “new”<br />
author alludes to as that when “incident " was<br />
bad art—a book burst on the public : a book<br />
which is still read, and which is and will be con-<br />
sidered one of the masterpieces of the century—<br />
“The Cloister and the Hearth.” Will any<br />
“new” writer be bold enough to advance the<br />
statement that this is not a novel of “incident P”<br />
It brims over with it; with that strong dramatic<br />
incident which thrills the reader. Here also may<br />
be found the “new” humour. You say “no P’<br />
“Look else.” “He dearly loved maids of honour,<br />
and indeed paintings generally.” “Est ce toi<br />
qui l’a tu,” and what follows.<br />
But why particularise, the book teems with<br />
instances, of which the two mentioned happen to<br />
cross my memory first. Then incident . The fight<br />
upon the stairs with the Abbot and his gang, to<br />
pick out one amongst many; who can read this<br />
and his nerves not crawl?<br />
Was “Hard Cash,” with its pirate encounter,<br />
no book of incident P Or “It is Never too Late<br />
to Mend?” and do we not find the “new”<br />
humour flashing upon us from any one of these<br />
books? Ay! humour and incident too, yet so<br />
biended with scenes of touching pathos, and all<br />
else that goes to the making up of a novel, that<br />
each is a masterpiece.<br />
Is it necessary to mention Charles Kingsley<br />
and “Westward Ho; ” is “incident’’ wanting<br />
here * Would not any living writer be proud to<br />
have written that great chapter “How Amyas<br />
threw his sword into the sea P’’ Need we go<br />
further And yet we are to be told that because<br />
Thackeray and Trollope followed other methods,<br />
the “incident’’ novel is some new thing; the<br />
“incidentalist”, a new genius. We might go<br />
still further back towards the beginning of the<br />
century, and instance “Ivanhoe.” But enough.<br />
There is nothing, now, new under the sun any<br />
more than there was in Solomon's day. As in<br />
fiction so in music. Writers, even against their<br />
volition, plagiarise.<br />
So it is with the “incident’’ novel, and with<br />
the “new” humour. ALAN OsCAR.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 162 (#176) ############################################<br />
<br />
I62<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
III.-ARE THEY LosTP<br />
An acquaintance of mine sent some fifteen<br />
papers to a learned society now nearly four years<br />
ago, and from that day to this she has tried in<br />
vain to learn their fate. They were translations,<br />
and of their scientific value she was ignorant more<br />
or less ; but they had involved considerable<br />
labour, besides the writing of at least 20,000<br />
words. It was not a question of money, as she<br />
knew that the society was too poor to pay, even if<br />
they thought the papers worth using.<br />
It was something like two years before she<br />
discovered the member in whose hands they had<br />
been placed. He informed her that a selection<br />
was to be made by himself and the editor of the<br />
quarterly in which the selected papers were to<br />
appear.<br />
Another interval, and towards the close of the<br />
third year two of the papers actually made their<br />
appearance, prefaced by a long introduction,<br />
from which it appeared that they were of some<br />
value. --<br />
More months, more inquiries. Then five or<br />
six papers were returned without a word, and the<br />
remainder are—where P Nobody deigns to say.<br />
The publisher of the quarterly, who is in no way<br />
responsible, has kindly inquired for them more<br />
than once, but to no purpose.<br />
And yet one little post-card would relieve an<br />
anxious soul and settle the question of their fate.<br />
Are they lost, or burnt by accident, or committed<br />
to the waste-paper basket P Or—are they going<br />
to be used at the rate of two every four years P<br />
One would like to know, if only for curiosity’s<br />
sake; and the worst, however heartrending,<br />
would be better than prolonged uncertainty.<br />
Meanwhile, it is melancholy to reflect that some<br />
poor publisher might have been quite pleased to<br />
loring them out. &<br />
- IV.-SLIPSHOD ENGLISH.<br />
A correspondent (F. H. P.) writes to point out<br />
the following specimens of slipshod English in<br />
one number of an English magazine:<br />
“M. had succeeded to re-establish,” &c.<br />
“He eagerly pursues the aim to abolish.”<br />
“We advise to consult,” onitting the names<br />
or persons advised.<br />
“Have left definitely the country’ for “have<br />
definitely left.” -<br />
W.—ON CRITICAL AND EDITORIAL AMENITIES.<br />
I commit to paper, without fear or prejudice,<br />
my experience of the amenities of certain literary<br />
men in our boasted Nineteenth Century !<br />
Aw premier, a well-known critic, after praising<br />
my poems, and including me in a list of the<br />
poets of the day, suddenly showed his teeth and<br />
refused to read my last volume of poems, or to<br />
answer my letters. And this without the<br />
shadow of a reason for his change of front; on the<br />
contrary, I always wrote most warmly and giate-<br />
fully to him for his kindness, as he must admit.<br />
Again, I sent, not long ago, a poem to a<br />
monthly magazine, and, not hearing of its fate,<br />
about a month later I sent the editor a post card<br />
inquiring about it. This post card was returned<br />
to me with “Refused,” written across it. Why?<br />
Once more, a ballad of mine was recently<br />
inserted in a certain journal, which had appeared<br />
in another periodical six years ago, and also in<br />
one of my books, but was never paid for. As this<br />
book had been recently reviewed in this journal, I<br />
naturally thought they would have seen it there.<br />
The acting editor, on finding that it had appeared<br />
before, asked me to explain. On my doing so, he<br />
not only refused my apology, but wrote very<br />
rudely to me, as I considered. So much for the<br />
gentlemanly feeling and courtesy of this acting<br />
editor |<br />
Yet, again, there is a certain gentleman quite<br />
free from “prejudice ’’—we have his word for it<br />
—who cut up a fairy tale of mine in a journal<br />
now extinct. On my writing a line to him to say<br />
that I had heard that certain persons were<br />
enchanted with the same tale, and that I felt<br />
sure he would be pleased to hear it, he simply<br />
returned the printed extract I sent him without a<br />
single word of any sort or kind. How manly and<br />
generous, and how like a gentleman this was<br />
Without prejudice, forsooth !<br />
Again, the editor of a Radical evening country<br />
paper, for whom I have written many articles<br />
and poems gratuitously in days gone by, and<br />
others which were paid for, and who professed to<br />
value me as a contributor very highly, not only<br />
gave me no review of my last book of poems, but<br />
(though I wrote most courteously to him more<br />
than once) never sent me a line in reply<br />
These are only a few instances of the many<br />
discourtesies I have received. What must the<br />
shade of Thackeray (a true and courteous gentle-<br />
man) think of some of our modern editors P<br />
On the other hand, I would instance the<br />
Westminster Gazette, the Minstrel, Public<br />
Opinion, Fun, Vanity Fair, the Weekly Sun,<br />
and others as being most fortunate in having<br />
editors who are courteous and kind in the<br />
extreme.<br />
I may mention that the critic first referred to<br />
does notice books in the columns of a weekly<br />
journal, so he could have mentioned mine had he<br />
chosen to AN AUTHOR.<br />
[Our correspondent’s complaints, it seems to<br />
us, unless the facts are not all stated, may be<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 163 (#177) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I63<br />
answered offhand without reference to the<br />
editors referred to. For instance, (I) a critic<br />
may change his opinions and may not see the<br />
necessity of explaining at length why he has<br />
done so. (2) An editor must decline hundreds<br />
of papers every year, but it would be absolutely<br />
impossible for him to write his reasons to every<br />
contributor. (3) No journal likes to publish<br />
verses which have already appeared elsewhere.<br />
The writer should have stated the fact in sending<br />
the poem. (4) Next, a reviewer who has expressed<br />
an opinion on a book would certainly not change<br />
it because somebody else was said to hold an<br />
opposite opinion. (5) An editor might resent<br />
being asked for a review of a book. It is a pity<br />
that politeness is not everywhere observed towards<br />
contributors. But in the cases quoted our corre-<br />
spondent apparently complains without good<br />
reason. It is a common belief that an editor<br />
will consider unfinished, or half finished, work;<br />
that he will sit down and point out where a paper<br />
is deficient; that he will act as a judicious coach;<br />
that he will give his reviewer's written justifica-<br />
tion for his review. Let it be remembered that<br />
an editor can do none of these things. If our<br />
correspondent would consider the position of the<br />
editor, he would withdraw at once half the above<br />
complaints.—ED.<br />
*-- * ~ *<br />
r- - -<br />
NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS,<br />
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the agreement.<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 />
Society's Offices :-<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
*-- - -*<br />
r- - --w<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY,<br />
I , VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
Q 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 170 (#184) ############################################<br />
<br />
170<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society's solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel's opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
*- --"<br />
r- ºr ~,<br />
THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE,<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
I. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. With, when<br />
necessary, the assistance of the legal advisers of the Syndi-<br />
cate, it concludes agreements, collects royalties, examines<br />
and passes accounts, and generally relieves members of the<br />
trouble of managing business details.<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors' Syndicate are<br />
defrayed solely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. Notice is, however,<br />
hereby given that in all cases where there is no current<br />
account, a booking fee is charged to cover postage and<br />
porterage.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiation<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least four days'<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. 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 />
7. 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 />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department" for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted ” has been opened. Members anxious<br />
to obtain literary or artistic work are invited to com-<br />
municate with the Manager.<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 />
*- - -e<br />
a- - -º<br />
NOTICES.<br />
HE Editor of the Awthor 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 />
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 Awthor 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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c. - -<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
£948. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 171 (#185) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
171<br />
as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at. .<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 call it.<br />
*-i- * ~ *<br />
g- > -s;<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—CANADIAN CoPYRIGHT.<br />
N Thursday, Oct. 18, a meeting of the sub-<br />
committee on Canadian copyright was<br />
held at 4.15 p.m. at the offices of the<br />
Incorporated Society of Authors, 4, Portugal-<br />
street, W.C. Mr. F. R. Daldy took the chair,<br />
and the other members were all present. The<br />
secretary read over the minutes of the former<br />
meeting, and they were signed by the chairman.<br />
Mr. Daldy then proceeded to give a statement of<br />
what took place during his visit to America and<br />
Canada. He informed the committee that un-<br />
fortunately he had arrived too late for the Ontario<br />
Conference, but that he had taken the opinions<br />
of a good many people in Canada, and, with the<br />
exception of a small ring of printers, he found<br />
that the people were ignorant of the steps that<br />
were being taken with regard to Canadian copy-<br />
right. In America, the opinion was very strongly<br />
opposed to the change in the law, and Mr. Daldy<br />
stated that he was informed on good authority<br />
that any such change as was suggested by the<br />
Canadians would be likely to prejudice American<br />
copyright in the British Dominions. Mr. Thring,<br />
the Secretary of the Society of Authors, confirmed<br />
this statement through a letter he had received<br />
privately from America. Mr. Daldy then stated<br />
that he had made a few observations on Sir John<br />
Thompson's report at the end of each paragraph,<br />
and he handed the members of the committee a<br />
copy of these observations, and requested that<br />
they would look carefully into the matter and<br />
make their own additions, so that at the next<br />
meeting the whole question could be finally gone<br />
into and settled. The meeting was then<br />
adjourned until the following Thursday to<br />
enable the sub-committee to study the report<br />
and formulate their reply.<br />
At two subsequent meetings of the sub-com-<br />
mittee an exhaustive answer to the report, taken<br />
paragraph by paragraph, was prepared, and also<br />
a covering letter, both of which documents were<br />
to be approved by the general committee and for-<br />
warded to the Government Department com-<br />
mittee.<br />
At a full meeting of the general committee,<br />
held at Mr. Murray's house in Albemarle-street,<br />
on Oct. 30, when Mr. Murray was voted into the<br />
chair, the report and covering letter were dis-<br />
cussed and finally approved, and it was resolved<br />
that they should at once be forwarded to the<br />
Colonial Office.<br />
It is hoped that at a later date the Marquis<br />
of Ripon will receive a deputation representing<br />
all the copyright interests.<br />
The committee of the Society will be careful<br />
that authors’ interests are adequately cared for<br />
on this deputation.<br />
II.-DEPUTATION ON CANADIAN CoPYRIGHT.<br />
Lord Ripon received at the Colonial Office, on<br />
Monday, Nov. 26, an influential deputation from<br />
the London Chamber of Commerce, and its four<br />
publishing trade sections, the Society of Authors,<br />
the Copyright Association, and the Printsellers'<br />
Association, which were represented by the<br />
following gentlemen: Mr. H. O. Arnold-Forster,<br />
M.P., Mr. E. M. Underdown, Q.C., Mr. Walter<br />
Besant, Mr. W. H. Lecky, Mr. G. Herbert Thring,<br />
Mr. F. R. Daldy, Mr. John Murray, Mr. T.<br />
Norton Longman, Mr. E. Marston, Mr. Edwin<br />
Ashdown, Mr. H. R. Clayton (Novello, Ewer,<br />
and Co.), Mr. Arthur Lucas, and Mr. A. Tooth.<br />
Sir ALBERT K. Ro1.1.1T, M.P., president of the<br />
London Chamber of Commerce, in introducing<br />
the deputation, expressed their thanks to Lord<br />
Ripon for the opportunity which had been<br />
afforded them of considering the despatch from<br />
Sir John Thompson, the Canadian Premier,<br />
demanding Imperial legislation which would<br />
explicitly confer upon the Parliament of Canada<br />
the power to legislate on all matters relating to<br />
copyright and to repeal the Imperial statutes in<br />
force on the subject. There was no feeling of<br />
hostility towards the Canadians on the part of<br />
the deputation; but while Canada had the right<br />
to legislate on those points which concerned her<br />
own printers and publishers, it was strongly felt<br />
that the proposed legislation was of a much wider<br />
character, and violated established principles upon<br />
which the whole copyright law of the empire had<br />
hitherto been determined. Prior to the Berne<br />
Convention the colonies were consulted, and each<br />
gave its consent to joining it. They therefore<br />
felt that this was an Imperial matter, and could<br />
not be satisfactorily dealt with on the lines<br />
suggested by Canada. They wished to protect<br />
literary property, in which the rights of authors<br />
and publishers, though not, perhaps, so tangible<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 172 (#186) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 72<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
as in the case of trade marks, were nevertheless<br />
quite as real, and the violation of which would<br />
involve injustice to them. Besides these con-<br />
siderations, the feeling with regard to the<br />
Canadian Act of 1889, which Sir John Thompson<br />
desired her Majesty’s Government to assent to,<br />
was that if it were passed it might create a<br />
precedent the effect of which would be almost<br />
unlimited.<br />
Mr. E. M. UNDERDown, Q.C., said the<br />
Canadians appeared to take the view that<br />
Imperial copyright infringed the rights of<br />
certain publishers in their country. There was<br />
no question as to copyright being property, and<br />
a most valuable one, and it seemed impossible to<br />
realise at this time of day that any nation should<br />
desire to disregard the rights of that property.<br />
It was to be regretted that the United States<br />
should have attached a manufacturing profit as<br />
a condition of copyright, an example which was<br />
sought to be followed by one of our own colonies.<br />
He was afraid they must characterise Sir John<br />
Thompson's demands as a pure attempt to<br />
further a particular trade—the Canadian re-<br />
printers—and he saw no reason which would<br />
justify her Majesty's Government in breaking<br />
away from a convention affecting the whole of<br />
the Empire. France, as a member of the Berne<br />
Convention, might also have cause of complaint<br />
because two millions of the Canadians were<br />
French and spoke that language. They should<br />
jealously guard the principle of copyright as<br />
property.<br />
Mr. WALTER BESANT pointed to the present<br />
condition of literary property in the English-<br />
speaking countries, and the effect which would be<br />
produced by such changes as were contemplated<br />
by the Canadians. They had at last succeeded,<br />
after fifty years of struggle, in obtaining from<br />
the United States an Act granting international<br />
copyright. By that Act they had obtained the<br />
protection of their works from piracy; they could<br />
bring them out in America, just as they did here;<br />
they could make arrangements and agreements<br />
with American publishers just as they did here<br />
with English publishers, and American authors<br />
had equal rights in this country. So what was<br />
ours became theirs by legal contract, and in the<br />
same way what was theirs became ours. We<br />
must remember that the new condition of things<br />
made the literature of the whole English-speaking<br />
world a common possession. It was an enormous<br />
possession. It was the possession of I2O million<br />
people, and as education spread and more readers<br />
came in every year—more by hundreds of<br />
thousands—it would become far more important<br />
for all concerned. Therefore it was above ail<br />
things necessary to watch over and guard with<br />
the utmost jealousy those newly-acquired rights.<br />
From the author's point of view the question was<br />
most serious, Where the foreign author had no<br />
rights he became a most deadly rival to the<br />
native author, because he could be produced for<br />
nothing. The American authors had only ceased<br />
to suffer from this cause during the three years<br />
since the Act was passed. They were already<br />
showing the increase of vitality and strength<br />
which was to be expected when they could com-<br />
pete with English authors on fair terms. Again,<br />
great as was the audience of our own Empire, the<br />
American audience was greater still. In a very<br />
short time, when the American publishers had<br />
settled down to the new conditions, a popular<br />
English author would find his best audience in<br />
the States. If, however, Canada had a separate<br />
Copyright Act of her own, what would happen?<br />
The separation of Canada from the States was by<br />
a long and imaginary frontier. It was impossible<br />
to keep Canadian books out of the States, or books<br />
printed in the States out of Canada. Then would<br />
begin again the old miserable game of cheap<br />
reprints vying with other cheap reprints. The<br />
American proclamation which gave English<br />
authors copyright would be torn to pieces. The<br />
piracies would go on again. Once more the<br />
Americans would publish our books for nothing.<br />
American authors who were now enjoying the<br />
new system which allowed them open competi-<br />
tion with each other and with British authors on<br />
fair terms would fall back upon the old state of<br />
things in which they used to compete against the<br />
book got for nothing. Worse still, all the old<br />
bitterness and recriminations would be revived.<br />
The question was, in short, should a country of<br />
five millions be allowed to wreak all this mischief<br />
and wrong upon a world of 122 millions in order<br />
to enrich two or three publishers by underselling<br />
the Americans?<br />
Mr. H. R. CLAYTON said that musical com-<br />
posers and publishers were specially affected by<br />
copyright questions. While the fact of there<br />
being 2,OOO,OOO French-speaking Canadians was<br />
important, the language of music was universal.<br />
The music publishers had availed themselves to<br />
a large extent of the Canadian Copyright Act of<br />
I875, which authorised the exclusion of American<br />
editions, but in spite of that they could not keep<br />
them out. He specially addressed himself to Sir<br />
John Thompson’s arguments in regard to the<br />
collection of authors’ royalties, and pointed out<br />
the great difficulty of collecting them. Sir John<br />
had suggested that English publishers preferred<br />
the American to the Canadian market; but the<br />
fact was that it was impossible to divide the two.<br />
Mr. F. R. DALDY said he had had an oppor-<br />
tunity while in America this year of consulting the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 173 (#187) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 73<br />
American Authors’ Association and the leading<br />
publishers, and he found that the feeling against<br />
the Canadian view was such that the American<br />
Minister in this country had been requested to<br />
ascertain officially what course Great Britain<br />
intended to adopt. It was declared that to<br />
accede to Canada’s request would more than<br />
jeopardise the President’s proclamation. What<br />
they said was, “We have given you a great boon;<br />
we gave it to you on the faith of the statements<br />
of the British Government that the copyright<br />
privileges which you gave us would run through-<br />
out the British dominions.” The difficulty of<br />
collecting the authors’ royalty under the proposed<br />
Act would be almost insuperable, especially in<br />
connection with stories passing through periodi-<br />
cals and newspapers, or even given away gratis.<br />
Mr. H. O. ARNOLD-TORSTER, M.P., concurred<br />
with previous speakers, and pointed out what<br />
would be the consequences if other parts of the<br />
Empire were allowed the privileges sought by<br />
Canada.<br />
The MARQUIs OF RIPON, in reply, said they<br />
would not expect him to give any opinion on the<br />
question at the present time. He was very glad<br />
to receive the deputation, because it was his duty<br />
to hear both sides. Sir John Thompson was now<br />
in England, and he proposed to have a full dis-<br />
cussion with him at the earliest opportunity; but<br />
he was anxious, before he entered into that dis-<br />
cussion, to hear the views of such important<br />
bodies as those which were represented by the<br />
deputation. Of course they would understand<br />
that the desires expressed by one of the great<br />
colonies were entitled to the most serious con-<br />
sideration of the Imperial Government, while, on<br />
the other hand, that the Government was bound<br />
not to overlook the interests of persons to whom<br />
the world was so much indebted as the repre-<br />
sentative authors and publishers who formed<br />
that deputation. He had no hesitation in pro-<br />
mising them that the views that had been<br />
expressed, and which might be expressed on the<br />
other side, would receive the serious consideration<br />
of her Majesty's Government.—Times, Nov. 27.<br />
III.-CAPE TOWN COPYRIGHT.<br />
T.<br />
Some change in the Cape copyright law, as it<br />
affects the sale of books, is an imperative neces-<br />
sity, and we trust that steps will be taken to<br />
make the desirable amendment without the loss<br />
of another session. Under the present law the<br />
sale of pirated editions of books is not prohibited,<br />
and, consequently, unscrupulous booksellers are<br />
able to do a lucrative business in this unholy<br />
traffic of men's brains, The existing law is a<br />
farce, and it would be interesting to ascertain<br />
what purpose the Legislature sought to serve by<br />
it. The Customs levy a special duty of 20 per<br />
cent. On foreign reprints of British copyrighted<br />
works, half of the proceeds to go to the owner of<br />
the copyright. We have never known of any<br />
account of this curious impost being rendered to<br />
the public, or of any list of remittances to authors<br />
being published. But supposing the system to<br />
be fully carried out, see what an inane system<br />
it is. A copyright work of Ruskin's is worth<br />
let us say, Ios. It is kept out of the colony<br />
by the substitution of a pirated edition at Is. 6d.<br />
We levy one shilling, and send sixpence out<br />
of it to Mr. Ruskin to compensate him for<br />
the loss of sale of a Ios. book on which the<br />
author's profit—Mr. Ruskin is generally his own<br />
publisher--would be no small part of the price.<br />
Nothing could be simpler than to prohibit alto-<br />
gether, as in the United Kingdom, the importa-<br />
tion of pirated books, photographs, or pictures.<br />
Nothing less will prevent what may be seen in<br />
Cape Town windows to-day — the unblushing<br />
vending of pirated matter. If nothing else will<br />
avail, let us invoke the great name of Imperial<br />
Federation in aid of reform. — Cape Argus,<br />
Wednesday, Oct. 17.<br />
II.<br />
Since our remarks appeared in Wednesday’s<br />
issue on the above matter, we have ascertained<br />
that the 20 per cent. ad valorem duty levied by the<br />
Customs on foreign reprints of British copyright<br />
books and music amounted in the years 1892 and<br />
1893 (according to the Statistical Register) to the<br />
magnificent total of £17 and £27 respectively,<br />
and that not half but the whole thereof is gene-<br />
rously distributed among the owners of the<br />
copyright—in number some dozen or score of<br />
persons or firms. We also learn that this 20 per<br />
cent, duty is levied on the value of the pirated<br />
editions themselves, costing in America often no<br />
more than a few cents. per volume, so that<br />
instead of Ruskin receiving, as his share, 20 per<br />
cent. on the value, Ios., of one of his books, that<br />
is—2s., he would actually receive no more than<br />
2O per cent. on the American cost of, say, 20<br />
cents. Of the pirated volume, or 5 cents.-a truly<br />
tuppenny ha'penny kind of compensation. It is a<br />
marvel that such a state of things has been tole-<br />
rated so long. It may also well be questioned<br />
whether the Customs really secure the payment of<br />
the 20 per cent. duty on all copyright works that<br />
enter the Colony. In fact we do not see how<br />
they can, unless they search through every case<br />
imported from Europe and America, which in prac-<br />
tice is impossible; nor would importers stand it<br />
and at the same time they would be required to<br />
have the titles of everyone of the thousands of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 174 (#188) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 74<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
copyright works at their finger ends.-Cape<br />
Argus, Friday, Oct. 19.<br />
IV.-PHOTOGRAPHIC CoPYRIGHT.<br />
(Before Mr. Justice CoILINs, without a jury.)<br />
ELLIS v. OGDEN.<br />
Mr. Alfred Ellis, the plaintiff in this action, is<br />
a well-known photographer in Baker-street. The<br />
defendants, Messrs. Ogden, Smale, and Co., are<br />
the publishers of the Ludgate Monthly. The<br />
action was brought for an injunction to restrain<br />
the defendants from publishing certain photo-<br />
graphs, taken by the plaintiff, in their magazine,<br />
and for damages. There appeared for the plain-<br />
tiff Mr. Scrutton ; and for the defendants Mr.<br />
Ruegg.<br />
Mr. Scrutton, in opening the case, said that the<br />
persons the publication of whose photographs<br />
was complained of were Mr. Harry Nicholls and<br />
Mr. Charles Kenningham. Both of these gentle-<br />
men were well-known actors, and, at the request<br />
of the plaintiff, they (at different times) went to<br />
his studio to be photographed in character. There<br />
was no suggestion of payment. At the end of<br />
each sitting Mr. Ellis asked them to sit in plain<br />
clothes. This they did. They received copies of<br />
all the photographs taken, as a present, and each<br />
of them had subsequently bought copies of the<br />
plain clothes photographs, for which they had<br />
paid “reprint” prices. Mr. Nicholls had sent<br />
one of these to the Ludgate Monthly, and it had<br />
been published in a number containing an article<br />
upon him. Mr. Scrutton referred to section I of<br />
the Copyright (Works of Art) Act of 1862<br />
(25 & 26 Vict. c. 68), and maintained that on<br />
those facts the copyright in these photographs<br />
was the property of the photographer.<br />
Mr. Ellis gave evidence in support of the above<br />
facts, but Mr. Nicholls and Mr. Kenningham<br />
were both called by Mr. Ruegg, and they stated<br />
that it was they who asked for the plain clothes<br />
sitting. They went with the intention of being<br />
photographed on their own account when the<br />
character photographs were finished. The plain<br />
clothes photographs sent them previous to those<br />
paid for they regarded merely as proofs.<br />
Mr. Ruegg argued that these photographs<br />
were not, as were the character photographs,<br />
taken by the photographer for himself, but they<br />
were “made or executed for or on behalf of<br />
another person, for good or valuable considera-<br />
tion ” within the words of the above-mentioned<br />
statute.<br />
The learned judge said that he had before him<br />
a pure question of fact. Looking at the evidence,<br />
he had no doubt that the account given by Mr.<br />
Nicholls and Mr. Kenningham was correct. It<br />
was really not material who first suggested the<br />
plain clothes sitting. These gentlemen went to<br />
the studio intending to take the opportunity of<br />
being photographed in plain clothes. They were<br />
so photographed, they received proofs, and they<br />
paid for copies. Nothing was said or done to<br />
give the copyright to the plaintiff, Judgment<br />
must be for the defendants, with costs.—Times,<br />
Nov. 16, 1894.<br />
W.—ELLIS v. OGDEN—OPINION OF Counse:L.<br />
I write on the assumption that the Author<br />
will contain a report of the case of Ellis v.<br />
Ogden, recently tried before Mr. Justice Henn<br />
Collins.<br />
In that case a theatrical celebrity, having gone<br />
to a photographer to be taken in costume, was<br />
also photographed in plain clothes, either at<br />
his request or at that of the photographer, was<br />
subsequently presented with copies of his portrait,<br />
and later on bought others; and the question at<br />
issue on the trial of the action was whether the<br />
copyright in the portrait so produced belonged<br />
to the photographer, or whether it became the<br />
property of the sitter, the photograph having<br />
been “made or executed” on his behalf “for<br />
good or valuable consideration.”<br />
In the case before him, and from the facts<br />
given in evidence, Mr. Justice Collins drew the<br />
conclusion that the photograph was so executed<br />
as to give the celebrity in question the copyright<br />
in it. No doubt the learned judge was right;<br />
he had, according to the Times, conflicting testi-<br />
mony before him, and he believed one side and<br />
not the other. What I venture to question is<br />
the justice of the dictum attributed to him in the<br />
Times report that “It was really not material<br />
who first suggested the plain clothes sitting.”<br />
I venture to submit to you, and to your<br />
readers, that it is absolutely material who<br />
makes the first proposal in such a case. To put<br />
it broadly, I say that one of two things happens.<br />
Either the celebrity says (in substance) to the<br />
photographer, “Take me and give me copies of<br />
my portrait, and you may sell other copies as<br />
your reward,” in which case the former employs<br />
the latter and acquires the copyright; or the<br />
photographer says to the celebrity, “Let me take<br />
you and sell copies of your portrait, and I will<br />
give you copies of it as your reward ;” in which<br />
latter instance I submit that the photographer<br />
employs the celebrity as a sitter; or purchases<br />
permission to photograph him, and so should<br />
acquire the copyright in the production. If I am<br />
wrong, does not the following anomaly result P. A<br />
photographer takes a “snap shot ” at a celebrity<br />
without “by your leave or with your leave,” and<br />
thereby gets a picture of which he will own the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 175 (#189) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 75<br />
copyright. Another photographer who takes the<br />
same celebrity, but courteously asks permission<br />
first, and in acknowledgment of it presents some<br />
copies to the sitter, loses thereby the copyright<br />
in the picture he takes; that is, he loses it, if the<br />
inference of fact in his case follows the lines of<br />
Ellis v. Ogden, and that will be the case if the<br />
question “Who first suggested the sitting P” is<br />
disregarded.<br />
In any case photographers will do well to get<br />
agreements drawn and submit them for signature<br />
to celebrities who visit their studios before they<br />
proceed to take their pictures. E. A. A.<br />
VI.--THE Cost of PRODUCTION.<br />
A paper appeared on Nov. 3rd in a penny<br />
weekly on the production of novels. It took the<br />
form of an interview with a publisher, and it<br />
presented all the appearance of a genuine inter-<br />
view with an honourable man ; that is to say,<br />
not one who falsifies his accounts or charges for<br />
advertisements for which he has not paid. In<br />
the course of this interview the question of cost<br />
arose. The following is the publisher's estimate:—<br />
The book contains 482 pp., crown 8vo., pica<br />
type. The cost for composition, printing, and<br />
paper would be £68 IOS., author's corrections<br />
extra; binding, 319 15s. per IOOO copies; blocks<br />
for binding, 383 Ios.<br />
On referring to our own “Cost of Production,”<br />
we find the figures come out as follows:–<br />
£ s. d.<br />
Composition—3 I sheets, at<br />
19s. 6d. a sheet ... ... 29 I4 9<br />
Printing, at Ios. 5d. a sheet 16 2 II<br />
IPaper & © º 24 16 O<br />
Binding . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 I I O<br />
£IOI 14 8<br />
We shall have to revise our “Cost of Pro-<br />
duction.” Our estimate for such a book is<br />
£IOI 14s. 8d. Compared with £9 I I 5s., the pub-<br />
lisher's estimate. The secretary also reports that<br />
he has had in his hands estimates the items of<br />
which were much below those in our volume.<br />
WII.-A LETTER FROM I)R. JoHNSON.<br />
The New York Critic (Nov. Io, 1894) pub-<br />
lishes, under the heading of the “Boston Letter,”<br />
by Mr. Charles Wingate, a hitherto unpublished<br />
letter by Dr. Johnson. It was sold by Messrs.<br />
Puttock and Simpson in the year 1886 and was<br />
bought by an American. The following is<br />
tendered by Mr. Wingate as a correct copy:—<br />
“SIR,--I will tell you in a few words, what is,<br />
in my opinion, the most desirable state of copy-<br />
WOL. W.<br />
right or literary property. The Authour has a<br />
natural and peculiar right to the profits of his<br />
own work. But as every man who claims the<br />
protection of Society must purchase it by resign-<br />
ing some part of his natural right, the Authour<br />
must recede from so much of his claim, as shall .<br />
be deemed injurious or inconvenient to Society.<br />
It is inconvenient to Society that a useful book<br />
should become perpetual and exclusive property.<br />
The judgment of the Lords was therefore legally<br />
and politically right. But the Authour's term of<br />
his natural right might without any inconvenience<br />
be protracted beyond the term settled by the<br />
statute, and it is, I think, to be desired :<br />
“I. That an Authour should retain during his<br />
life the sole right of printing and selling his<br />
work. This is agreeable to moral right and not<br />
inconvenient to the publick. For who will be so<br />
diligent as the Authour to improve the book, or<br />
who can know so well how to improve it P<br />
“2. That the Authour be allowed by the present<br />
Act to alienate his right only for fourteen years.<br />
A shorter time would not procure a sufficient<br />
price, and a longer would cut off all hope of<br />
future profit, and consequently all solicitude for<br />
correction or addition.<br />
“3. That when after fourteen years the copy-<br />
right shall revert to the Authour, he be allowed to<br />
alienate it again only for seven years at a time.<br />
After fourteen years the value of the work will be<br />
known and it will be no longer bought at hazard.<br />
Seven years after possession will therefore have<br />
an assignable price. It is proper that the<br />
Authour be always invited to polish and improve<br />
his work, by that prospect of recovering it<br />
which the shorter periods of alienation will<br />
afford him.<br />
“4. That after the Authour's death his work<br />
should continue an exclusive property, capable of<br />
bequest and inheritance, and of conveyance by<br />
gift or sale for thirty years. By these regula-<br />
tions a work may continue the property of the<br />
Authour, or of those who claim for him, a term<br />
sufficient to reward the writer without any<br />
loss to the publick. In fifty years far the<br />
greater number of books are forgotten and<br />
annihilated, and it is for the advantage of learn-<br />
ing that those which fifty years have not destroyed<br />
should become bona communia, so to be used by<br />
every scholar as he shall think best.<br />
“In fifty years almost every book begins to<br />
require notes, either to explain forgotten allusions<br />
and obsolete words; or to suggest those dis-<br />
coveries which have been made by the gradual<br />
advancement of knowledge, or to correct those<br />
mistakes which time may have discovered.<br />
“Such notes cannot be written to any useful<br />
purpose without the text, and the text will fre-<br />
I&<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 176 (#190) ############################################<br />
<br />
176<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
Quently (?) be inspected while it is any man’s<br />
property.<br />
“I am, Sir, your humble servant,<br />
“SAM JOHNSON.”<br />
*– ~ *-*.<br />
- - -<br />
THE “NET’” SYSTEM.<br />
T has been decided by the Committee to ask<br />
the opinion of every member of the Society<br />
upon the great and important change pro-<br />
posed by certain publishers in their dealings with<br />
booksellers. It is to be hoped that every member<br />
will take the trouble to consider the question, and<br />
will forward his opinion to the Secretary. Mem-<br />
bers will, of course, understand that it is a question<br />
very materially affecting their interests. It has<br />
been, so far, suggestive that the approval, or the<br />
opinion, of authors on the subject has not even<br />
been mentioned. Certain publishers are writing<br />
about it, the rest prudently abstain ; certain book-<br />
sellers hold one opinion, others hold the contrary.<br />
No one seems to consider that the opinion of<br />
the persons who should be principally concerned<br />
is worth the trouble of asking or inquiring. The<br />
following letters are submitted as containing the<br />
views of three out of the four parties concerned<br />
in the proposed change.<br />
The first two are written by authors of repute ;<br />
the “Publisher ” belongs to a very important<br />
house; the booksellers are what they represent<br />
themselves to be, dependent upon the business<br />
which they carry on.<br />
T.—FROM AN AUTHOR.<br />
I am very glad to hear that the committee<br />
propose to ascertain the consensus of opinion<br />
among members of the Authors’ Society on the<br />
question of “met” prices. I presume that a<br />
general meeting will be held for the purpose.<br />
The very decided opinion which I myself enter-<br />
tain on the matter has two grounds. In the first<br />
place I hold that all such restrictive interferences<br />
with freedom of contract are inevitably mis-<br />
chievous in the end; and, in the second place, I<br />
hold that the particular restriction now sought for<br />
will be detrimental alike to authors and to the<br />
public.<br />
Those authors who have not carefully con-<br />
sidered the question might, I think, not unfitly<br />
be guided by the decision which authors arrived<br />
at in 1852. If at that time, after inquiry and<br />
consultation, it was decided by a number of<br />
leading authors, literary and scientific, that the<br />
system of fixed prices from which no discounts<br />
were allowed was detrimental to them, the con-<br />
clusion that such a system, if now re-established,<br />
would be detrimental, is at any rate a highly<br />
probable one; for there have, so far as I know,<br />
taken place no changes which may be supposed<br />
to make the conclusion held valid in the one case<br />
invalid in the other.<br />
But it need not take long to form an inde-<br />
pendent judgment. There is often an irrational<br />
cry against middlemen, though middlemen are, in<br />
the majority of cases, very useful persons.<br />
But in all cases middlemen must be kept in<br />
order. They, of course, pursue their own<br />
interests, and, if allowed, will satisfy those<br />
interests at the expense of those they serve. This<br />
is obviously the case with the middlemen who<br />
constitute the various classes of the book trade as<br />
with all others. On the face of it, therefore, any<br />
proposal of change made by them must be looked<br />
upon with great suspicion.<br />
That a disadvantage is threatened in the<br />
present case will at once be seen when the essen-<br />
tials are divested of all details. It is contended<br />
that retail booksellers must have greater profits<br />
assured to them. These greater profits must be<br />
at the cost of some among the several parties<br />
concerned. At whose cost then P Those con-<br />
cerned are the writers, the readers, and the<br />
several classes of traders who come between<br />
them. Of these classes of traders one is to have<br />
greater gains. Will these greater gains come<br />
from the other classes of traders ? Will the<br />
publishers, for instance, sacrifice part of their<br />
profits for the benefit of retailers ? Certainly<br />
not. They can practically make their own terms,<br />
and will sacrifice nothing, if they do not even<br />
take a share of the extra gains. Will the sacri-<br />
fice be made by the wholesale bookseller? It is<br />
unlikely; for he, too, has power in his hands to<br />
make his own bargains, and can take care he<br />
does not lose by the change. There remain then<br />
the public and the authors, one or both of whom<br />
must suffer a loss that the retailers may gain.<br />
That the public will suffer a loss is clear, if the<br />
discounts now made from advertised prices are<br />
denied to them; for it is absurd to suppose that<br />
advertised prices will be lowered to balance the<br />
absence of discounts. If that were done publishers<br />
would gain nothing. Clearly, then, the loss<br />
would be borne directly by the public. But<br />
eventually a loss would also be borne by the<br />
authors. It is impossible that the prices of books<br />
can be raised to buyers without to some extent<br />
restricting the sales. “This book is advertised<br />
at 12s.,” says the buyer to the retailer. “That is<br />
too much ; I must go without it.” “But,” says<br />
the retailer, “you can have it for 9s.” “For 9s.,<br />
you say. I can afford 9s. You may let me have<br />
it.” Conversations of this kind, or thoughts<br />
corresponding to such conversations, must be of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 177 (#191) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
177<br />
continual occurrence. Obviously, therefore, if<br />
discounts are given many more copies of a book<br />
are sold than would be sold in the absence of dis-<br />
counts, and of course diminution in the number<br />
of copies sold is diminution of the author's profit,<br />
though the rate of profit remains the same.<br />
Alike, then, on our own behalf and on behalf<br />
of the public, we are, I think, bound to oppose<br />
the attempt to establish “met ’’ prices.<br />
-->e--> --<br />
II.-FROM ANOTHER AUTHOR.<br />
The question must be considered from four<br />
points of view.<br />
1. That of the book-buying public:—<br />
At present the buyer obtains all books for cash<br />
at a reduction of 25 per cent. For a book<br />
advertised at 6s. he pays 4s. 6d. In fact, it is<br />
with books as with everything else, a large<br />
discount has to be made in selling them. It is<br />
now proposed that no discount at all shall be<br />
allowed. It is not proposed, however, that a<br />
book now published at 68, shall be published<br />
hereafter at 4s. 6d. It is only stated that a book<br />
which would have been published at 7s. 6d. will<br />
in future be published—say, at 6s. It has also<br />
been suggested that the 6s, book shall henceforth<br />
appear at 5s., without any discount at all. In<br />
other words, the immediate effect upon the public<br />
will be to raise the price of books.<br />
It is a time of trade depression, likely to become<br />
worse. Is it probable that the public will continue<br />
to buy what they can do without, when the price<br />
is raised ?. It does not seem probable.<br />
Again, there are only a certain limited number<br />
of people who can afford to buy books or anything<br />
else outside the mere necessaries of life. Between<br />
them they can only afford to spend a certain<br />
amount of money every year on books. The<br />
amount varies somewhat from year to year with<br />
good years and bad years, but there it is. If the<br />
price of books is raised the amount spent every<br />
year will perhaps be the same, but the number of<br />
books bought will be less. Who is benefited,<br />
therefore ?<br />
Another way to comsider the subject is this:<br />
For many years we have been gradually diminish-<br />
ing the price of books; this diminution has been<br />
helped by the discount bookseller; people have<br />
become accustomed to the cheapness of books;<br />
they are attracted by their cheapness; they are<br />
becoming, as their means allow, a people of book<br />
buyers. But if the books which are cheap<br />
become dear, the growing spirit of book buying<br />
will receive a check that may throw us back for<br />
years. And there is no doubt that the desire of<br />
the promoters of this movement is to make books<br />
dearer than they are,<br />
"WOL. W.<br />
2. From the author's point of view :—<br />
Since the first effect of the change will be to<br />
increase not only the price to the public, but also<br />
the price to the bookseller, the author will have<br />
to revise his system of royalties, or his method of<br />
sale should he sell his book outright. This may<br />
be a gain to him. But if fewer books are sold on<br />
account of these high prices, the change may be<br />
a loss to him. It will be for him personally to<br />
decide whether he will consent to an application of<br />
the “net ’’ system to his own work.<br />
3. From the publisher's point of view:—<br />
He will undoubtedly gain on every book. But<br />
will he dispose of so many P This doubt will<br />
probably make many publishers hesitate before<br />
they adopt the hard and fast “net” system.<br />
One may also ask why, seeing that of all trades<br />
publishing is the most lucrative, its followers<br />
should not be satisfied with what they have, and<br />
forbear the risk of losing it in the hope of getting<br />
Ill Ol’62.<br />
4. From the bookseller's point of view:—<br />
We may leave the booksellers to regulate their<br />
own business. But there are one or two points, apart<br />
from those urged above, which should make them<br />
hesitate. They will undoubtedly, like the pub-<br />
lisher, gain something on each book sold. But<br />
will they sell so many ? And if their customers<br />
are going to get no discount for cash, will they<br />
not decline to buy at all P A shrinkage of the<br />
trade will most certainly follow the adoption<br />
of the “met ’’ system, whether it will be perma-<br />
ment shrinkage or not remains to be seen. And<br />
who is to prevent a bookseller from giving dis-<br />
count P No one. It will be impossible to prevent<br />
him. He may not advertise the fact, but he will<br />
have to do, and then the bookseller will be in<br />
the pleasing position of paying more and getting<br />
less. At present he pays, probably, 38, 7#d. apiece<br />
on taking a dozen copies of a 6s. book. He<br />
sells them at 4s. 6d. each. There is a profit of<br />
Io; d. on each. If the 6s. book were reduced to<br />
5s. net, he would give the publisher, say, 3s. I Id.<br />
for it, and would sell it at 5s. Increased profit,<br />
2#d. But the discount would inevitably come in.<br />
The customer who has always before had 25 per<br />
cent. will not be contented with less than 15 per<br />
cent., or 9d, on each book, which he carries off<br />
for 4s. 3d. Decreased profit, 3d.<br />
Another consideration is the fact that by this<br />
change, if it is effected, the bookseller becomes<br />
the slave of the publisher. Books are put into<br />
his hand which he is to sell if he can at a certain<br />
stipulated price. There is no longer left any<br />
elasticity of trade, any freedom, any enterprise.<br />
Every bookseller will become a mere clerk, distri-<br />
buting and collecting. |<br />
R 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 178 (#192) ############################################<br />
<br />
178<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
In whatever way the change may work, there<br />
can be no doubt that trade restrictions are<br />
injurious, oppressive, and must in the long run be<br />
broken through. Meantime great mischief may<br />
be done to author, bookseller, and the book-<br />
buying public.<br />
III.-FROM A PUBLISHER.<br />
The question of net prices is far more important<br />
to the bookseller and to the author than to the<br />
publisher. To the majority of the booksellers<br />
the matter is one of life and death, of existence<br />
or extinction; but the publisher can accommodate<br />
himself, more or less, to this or any system.<br />
The matter has been sufficiently threshed out in<br />
the newspapers for every business man, at least,<br />
who has read the articles and correspondence, to<br />
understand the financial and trade bearings of<br />
the question; I need not, therefore, trouble your<br />
readers with a repetition of these details. It is,<br />
perhaps, well to state that the free-trade principle<br />
is hardly involved on either side of the question. It<br />
would be if the price of a book under the discount<br />
system were not a purely fancy and artificial<br />
price, fixed by the author through his agent, the<br />
publisher. In other words, the price of a book is<br />
not necessarily settled by the cost of production,<br />
as the price of tea, coffee, wheat, or other natural<br />
productions is fixed. It is fixed arbitrarily, at<br />
present, at a higher figure than the mere cost of<br />
production and the expectation of a fair profit<br />
would justify, in order to meet the tremendous<br />
reduction which the existing artificial discount<br />
system and the ordinary and concurrent trade<br />
allowances make compulsory.<br />
The buyer, therefore, who thinks that he gets<br />
his book cheaper because he gets an enormous<br />
discount reduction is under a delusion. He gets<br />
it neither dearer nor cheaper. He does not buy<br />
a commodity under cost price—which, of course,<br />
is economically impossible—he only gets an<br />
artificial reduction on a commodity whose price<br />
has already been artificially raised. The argu-<br />
ment, therefore, of a writer in a leading news-<br />
paper, who signs himself “Free Trader,” that<br />
the discount system helps the reader to cheap<br />
books, is fallacious. It is founded on an entire<br />
economical misconception of the facts.<br />
The present system of selling books was no<br />
doubt an excellent system when conditions were<br />
quite different to what they are now. The net<br />
system, which it is sought to substitute for it,<br />
is an attempt to replace a system which has<br />
become antiquated by one which is in every<br />
respect consonant to the doctrines of economical<br />
science. The selling price will, if the net system<br />
be introduced, be nearer the figure representing<br />
the cost of production than it now can be, and,<br />
what is of infinite importance to author, publisher,<br />
and reader, it is a system by which the average<br />
bookseller can make a fair living.<br />
In this lies the crua of the question. The<br />
present discount system is killing out the small<br />
bookseller. Some of the very large firms in the<br />
trade thrive by it, for reasons that are obvious<br />
enough to commercial men, and, of course, one<br />
great firm that holds the railway monopoly<br />
thrives by the system, but it is extinguishing the<br />
country bookseller. Mr. Collier, of the very im-<br />
portant firm of Stanford, of Cockspur-street, in<br />
the course of a recent interview in the Daily<br />
Chronicle, stated that, approximately, some 200<br />
country booksellers survive out of I2OO that did<br />
business in books some twelve or fifteen years<br />
ago. This is a most pregnant fact. It means<br />
simply this: that twelve or fifteen years ago an<br />
author, without spending a penny in advertise-<br />
ments, could, through a strong publisher, bring<br />
his wares into the hands of the reading public<br />
through 1200 channels. This for a good book<br />
might easily mean the sale of a handsome<br />
edition. Now all books—good, bad, and in-<br />
different—mustincura preliminary expense of from<br />
£15 to £60 in advertisements, simply in order<br />
that they may be known. It is a direct loss of<br />
so much in money to the author, and it is, of<br />
course, an indirect loss, to be counted in hundreds<br />
and thousands of pounds, to the publisher; but<br />
to the booksellers—to the majority of booksellers—<br />
it is worse than loss—it is ruin. That is why<br />
publishers wish for the ending of a system which<br />
is interfering with their best and cheapest channel<br />
of distribution.<br />
All other objections to the discount system are<br />
feeble in comparison to this one : that it is<br />
pushing out of existence the tradesman who is<br />
acting as distributing agent to the author.<br />
-<br />
IV.-FROM A DISCOUNT BOOKSELLER.<br />
I think it is Mr. Andrew Lang who has a “pet<br />
growl" that no bookseller knows his business.<br />
I have the misfortune to have a shop in a main<br />
thoroughfare in London, and had I ten times the<br />
amount of brain even of Mr. Andrew Lang I should<br />
not be able to know, to remember anything like,<br />
the names of a part only of the books that exist.<br />
I wish Mr. Andrew Lang would take my place for<br />
one week, to listen to the hundreds of books that<br />
are asked for daily, and to which at least 60 per<br />
cent I have to give the negative answer, that I<br />
have not got the book in stock. After the week's<br />
experience I think Mr. Andrew Lang would have<br />
a better opinion of booksellers. There can be no<br />
question but that all the grievances of both the<br />
bookseller and the publisher lie in the fact that<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 179 (#193) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I 79<br />
there are a very great deal too many books pro-<br />
duced. If we booksellers could turn over our<br />
stocks once a week, like the butchers and the<br />
bakers, or once a month, or even once a year, we<br />
should have no cause to complain that, after giving<br />
25 per cent. discount to the public off the published<br />
price of the book, it does not leave us a living<br />
profit. I buy my books so that I am quite con-<br />
tent with the profit I make even after selling them<br />
at 3d. in the Is. discount. “A London Book-<br />
seller,” writing in the Athenæum on Nov. 17th,<br />
says, “That it gives no pleasure to the bookseller<br />
to sell his books at a discount of 25 per cent., or<br />
any other per cent. ; his gorge rises at it.” Rather,<br />
my gorge rises when I sell a book at its net price,<br />
because I know I am not selling in the cheapest<br />
market, and that my customer, when I tell him<br />
the book is issued at a net price, and no discount<br />
is allowed, is incredulous, and doubts by his<br />
manner that I am making a larger profit. No<br />
Englishman likes to be “dome.” If you go into a<br />
chemists, or grocers, or anywhere, and buy an<br />
article marked at Is. for Is., and passing along<br />
the street see in another window the exact article<br />
marked at Io;d., you feel you have been “had "<br />
or “dome,” and your gorge rises at it, and you<br />
mentally determine not to patronise that first<br />
shop again. It will be the same with this net<br />
system in the publishing of books, which, I regret<br />
to see, so many booksellers are inclined to hail as<br />
a salvation of their business. They will find, as<br />
“An Author’’ writes in the Athenæum of Nov. 24<br />
“that the unforeseen always occurs,” so that their<br />
last state will be worse than their first. To be<br />
despotically told by the publisher that such and<br />
such a book is published at Is. net, and if you sell<br />
it below that price you shall not have any other<br />
of his books, is a system of tyranny that cannot<br />
be quietly submitted to.<br />
W.—FROM A RETAIL Books ELLER.<br />
That the present movement for the introduction<br />
of books published at net prices and the abolition<br />
of all discount is decidedly retrogade, and instead<br />
of having the effect of placing the new book trade<br />
on a firmer basis will prove the indirect means of<br />
making it worse than ever, as everyone who thinks<br />
of the matter seriously will own, as the public,<br />
finding they cannot get their books from the<br />
bookseller (who is the middleman) at a less price<br />
than the publisher will supply them, will<br />
naturally write direct to the publisher to have<br />
the book they require promptly sent to their<br />
homes post paid, quicker and much more ex-<br />
peditiously than their bookseller would deliver it.<br />
Publishers who are most in favour of the net<br />
system state that a book now published, say, at<br />
7s. 6d. net would, under the old system, have<br />
been issued at IOS. This, I fear, is not the case.<br />
It is merely said to delude the public. Take the<br />
following instance, and see whom this extra<br />
profit benefits. Recently a book was issued by<br />
Professor Drummond called “The Ascent of<br />
Man,” and which is published at 7s. 6d. net. The<br />
bookseller has to pay 6s. 3d, net for every copy;<br />
thus he makes a profit of Is. 3d. Under the old<br />
system the book would have been 7s. 6d., subject<br />
to 25 per cent, discount=5s. 8d., and would have<br />
been bought by the bookseller at 5s. 4d., thirteen<br />
copies as twelve, and a discount of 5 per cent. On<br />
settlement of his quarterly account. This would<br />
make its net cost 4s. 8d., giving a profit to the<br />
bookseller of Is., which is quite as much as he<br />
can expect. Now, under the old system the<br />
bookseller gets Is. profit, sells his book more<br />
readily, and satisfies his customer, who knows<br />
he is buying in the cheapest market (which is<br />
itself an indispensable consideration). Under the<br />
met system the bookseller gets Is. 3d. profit (3d.<br />
more) and does not satisfy his customer, who<br />
imagines he is not buying at the cheapest<br />
market, and goes away doubting and dissatisfied.<br />
On the other hand, the difference to the<br />
publisher is very considerable, under the old<br />
system he gets 4s. 8d. net from the bookseller,<br />
under the net system he gets 6s. 3d. net, which<br />
is Is. 7d. more in his pocket. Undoubtedly the<br />
publisher would like such a system established,<br />
which all goes to enrich him, unless the author<br />
demands a share of the plunder in the shape of<br />
increased royalties, which are rightfully his.<br />
Again, in these days of excessive competition,<br />
will the public tamely submit to this increased<br />
price on their books P Certainly not. Already<br />
many publishers are sending their printing, &c.,<br />
to the continent. Messrs. Nester, of Nuremburg,<br />
have so successfully competed with all English<br />
producers of children's colour printed and other<br />
books, that they have practically ousted all others<br />
from the field, and have this especial market<br />
entirely in their own hands. What then is to<br />
prevent (if all books are to be published at net<br />
prices) some energetic continental firms printing<br />
and flooding the English market with cheap<br />
editions of non-copyright books, &c., and by their<br />
success, which will be indisputable, they will be<br />
able to approach our English authors and pro-<br />
duce copyright books in such a way as to upset<br />
the whole system of publishing. Our publishers<br />
may find their headquarters for the production of<br />
English books will be in Berlin rather than<br />
London.<br />
Under these circumstances would it be wise for<br />
us booksellers to sell our books at published<br />
prices P Decidedly not; the more discount given,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 180 (#194) ############################################<br />
<br />
I8O<br />
TIIB, AUTHOR.<br />
the cheaper the books are offered to the public,<br />
the brisker will be the trade, and the better for<br />
everyone.<br />
VI.—FROM A LoNDON Books ELLER.<br />
That certain books may with advantage be<br />
issued at net prices, such as professional and<br />
technical books and books of a special character,<br />
for which there can be no large demand, every<br />
bookseller will I think agree, but it is much to be<br />
regretted that any bookseller should be in favour<br />
of the abolition of all discount for cash purchases.<br />
Until very recently there was a great outcry<br />
against the Civil Service, and Army and Navy,<br />
and kindred stores marking not only books, but<br />
goods of every kind, down so that by very serious<br />
competition to all small traders it was said that<br />
their “occupation was gone,” and they would<br />
have to shut up shop; time has shown that these<br />
stores have built up enormous businesses by<br />
simply supplying their goods at the lowest<br />
remunerative prices for cash payments. Their<br />
motto has been the very true one of “small profits<br />
and quick returns,” and now the booksellers of<br />
both London and the country at large are<br />
clamouring for higher prices, the abolition of<br />
discount, and that all books be published at net<br />
prices, and such prices strictly adhered to,<br />
whether their customer come into their shop cash<br />
in hand, and pays for and carries away his purchase,<br />
or has the purchase booked to his account, which<br />
he pays quarterly or half yearly, &c. Why,<br />
it is in direct opposition to all the principles of<br />
business: the cheaper you can sell your books, the<br />
more discount you offer to the public, the greater<br />
will be your turnover, and the better it will be<br />
for publisher, author, and bookseller, because<br />
for both publisher and bookseller the more copies<br />
of a book sold, even at a low profit, will pay<br />
better than few copies at a higher profit, and will<br />
cause the public to buy with more confidence and<br />
with brisker demand; and the better for the<br />
author, because the greater the number of copies<br />
sold the more royalties he will receive. The<br />
present state of the trade is not to be much in-<br />
proved, a bookseller can give 25 per cent. discount<br />
and then have quite as much profit (in fact much<br />
more than many trades) as he can reasonably<br />
expect; but it is not this question of discount<br />
that cripples the bookseller and makes him find<br />
his trade so unprofitable, it is the great multi-<br />
plicity of books that are published, and conse-<br />
quently the tremendous stock he has to keep ; in<br />
no other trade has so much capital to be invested<br />
in stock, and much, alas ! dead stock. The book is<br />
subscribed to him by the publisher, he has to<br />
use his own judgment if it will take, he may<br />
order seven copies to get the half copy, or thirteen<br />
to get the odd copy. If the book takes, and goes<br />
off readily, he has to buy many other dozens, but<br />
for one success there are how many failures; the<br />
bookseller sells six or nine of his dozen copies,<br />
and the rest remain on his shelves, taking up<br />
much room and increasing stock in a decidedly<br />
undesirable manner, thus he finds year after year<br />
his stock growing, and every day, especially at<br />
this season of the year, scores of new books<br />
coming out, and of which he must take a certain<br />
proportion of the known authors into stock, so<br />
that he finds all his capital and profit has to be<br />
put into his stock, and he cannot make any head-<br />
way in improving his position in the world. This,<br />
I cannot help thinking, is the real cause of the<br />
dissatisfaction of my brother booksellers, not the<br />
question of discount; sell your books as cheaply<br />
as you can, and sell as many copies as you can, is<br />
my advice to all booksellers. Neither publisher<br />
Inor author can do without us, the very best adver-<br />
tisement a book and its author can have is to be<br />
“on view º' on the shelves of every book shop in<br />
the kingdom, where the public can take it down<br />
and look at it ; it is half the sale. Sell cheaply<br />
and avoid met books is my advice.<br />
> * r3<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
R HALL CAINE has very kindly sent<br />
me his recent address delivered before<br />
the Philosophical Institution, Edin-<br />
burgh, on Nov. 17, with permission to use any<br />
part of it for this paper. The pressure on our<br />
limited space prevents any use of it in this<br />
number, but I hope to avail myself of Mr. Hall<br />
Caine's permission next month.<br />
It is impossible to know or to ascertain the<br />
reasons which guide a Prime Minister in his<br />
award of pensions in the Civil List. We will<br />
suppose that, unlike most of his predecessors,<br />
he is anxious to administer the grant in the<br />
interests of literature, science, and art, and not<br />
to foist upon the list widows and daughters of<br />
the Naval, Military, and Civil Services, for whom<br />
provision should be made elsewhere. It is true<br />
that an unfortunate clause—“ and other persons<br />
who may be worthy of Her Majesty's bounty’—<br />
or words to that effect, seems to justify the<br />
placing of all the world on this list; but the fact<br />
remains that the grant was intended for<br />
literature, science, and art, and that the claims<br />
of persons belonging to these three branches<br />
of intellectual effort must precede all others.<br />
Now here is a case which has recently<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 181 (#195) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
I81<br />
been laid before Lord Rosebery. A petition<br />
was sent in to him signed not numerously, but by<br />
a dozen names commanding, one would think,<br />
respect and consideration. The petition was in<br />
favour of an old man, a very old man. He is eighty-<br />
five years of age : he has been working all his long<br />
life on literature. Fifty years ago a book was pub-<br />
lished by Charles Knight on some of the many<br />
aspects of Tondon. It was a huge book in six<br />
royal quarto volumes ; the book is a classic ; it<br />
has survived to the present day; no one who<br />
reads about London at all can afford to do with-<br />
out this book. Exactly half of it was written by<br />
this man. How many of us expect to be read in<br />
fifty years time? Again, he has written novels.<br />
Of his novels three or four survive, and are still<br />
in demand after thirty or forty years. How<br />
many novels iive for thirty or forty years? Can<br />
you, dear reader, conceive a case more loudly<br />
calling for a place upon the Civil List P Again,<br />
I say, that we know not what other cases there<br />
were under the consideration of Lord Rosebery.<br />
Whatever they were, it is clear that they were<br />
even more worthy of assistance than this case,<br />
because he has written through his secretaries<br />
to say that he will give this man nothing.<br />
It is worth noting that the letter signed by<br />
the twelve men and women of letters received no<br />
acknowledgment, and that the secretaries did not<br />
think it necessary to inform these people of the<br />
result of their unfortunate letter. These are the<br />
courtesies which the literary class are accustomed<br />
to receive from officials. Who are they P Literary<br />
chaps. Take no notice of them<br />
Modern Poets.—It seems quite a long time<br />
since we heard of a certain poetical journal, or<br />
treasure house of poetry, brought out monthly.<br />
It was formerly The Poets' Magazine, then it<br />
became Lloyd’s Magazine, after the name of the<br />
proprietor, Mr. Leonard Lloyd. It has now<br />
become Modern Poets, but the proprietor does<br />
not inform us whether the life of his magazine<br />
has been continuous, or interrupted by intervals<br />
of sleep, or, as it is a poetic magazine, of trance.<br />
However that may be, Modern Poets now appears<br />
quarterly; and if “sufficient good poetry and<br />
prose are received to fill its pages” the magazine<br />
is to appear monthly. The really attractive<br />
feature—that which separates the paper, and<br />
distinguishes it from commoner journals—is that<br />
while such mean spirited magazines as the Con-<br />
temporary, or Longman's, actually pay con-<br />
tributors—hire the poor degraded wretches—this<br />
magazine expects its contributors to pay the<br />
editor. Noble creature He will be hired by<br />
his contributors; in the interests of literature he<br />
will dare all and endure all. Every contributor,<br />
therefore, sends up a form signed. It is thus<br />
conceived:<br />
Sir, Wishing to contribute to your magazine, I send you<br />
M.S. entitled and in the event of its acceptance<br />
for an appearance in your next number I agree to purchase<br />
— dozen copies of the magazine (Signed)<br />
An appearance in this magazine will, doubtless,<br />
be highly prized by the contributor. Fifty<br />
dozen at least, at sixpence, which is £15, is not<br />
pay too high for a magazine article. One has<br />
heard of £50. Let the contributor value his<br />
article himself, and order as many dozen at<br />
sixpence each as will amount to that sum.<br />
In another place will be found a few observa-<br />
tions on the proposed “Net” system. It is<br />
very much to be hoped that all members will<br />
forward to the secretary their opinion and<br />
their reasons. The two points which seem to<br />
concern authors most are (I) whether the<br />
adoption of the “Net” system would materially<br />
raise the price of books; and (2) whether the<br />
rise in prices would not so far check the sale of<br />
books as to counterbalance any advantage gained<br />
by an increase in price. There are other<br />
questions, such as the danger of interfering<br />
with the great advance made during the last few<br />
years by the public as buyers of books; the<br />
danger of interference with the course of trade;<br />
the danger of making the bookseller a mere<br />
mechanical distributor—in other words, of con-<br />
verting what used to be a centre of literary<br />
information into a railway stall; and the doubt<br />
whether a “Net’ system can ever be enforced—<br />
in other words, whether the bookseller would not<br />
go on as before giving discount for cash.<br />
Mr. Sherard sends word that in his reference<br />
to the Goldsmith tomb he was mistaken. As<br />
for me, I was under the impression that some-<br />
thing was wrong with the tomb. So there is,<br />
but not what we supposed ; the name is clearly cut,<br />
but unfortunately it is not certain that the tomb<br />
is Oliver's. Under these circumstances one has<br />
only to express thanks to those who kindly offered<br />
their assistance.<br />
A new monthly magazine is to be started. It<br />
offers the unprecedented attraction of an astro-<br />
logical horoscope free for all subscribers, with the<br />
privilege of asking three astrological questions.<br />
After this we may expect another, which will tell<br />
the fortunes of every subscriber by the oracle of<br />
coffee grounds with the right of asking three<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 182 (#196) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 82<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
questions on the domestic omens, such as crossed<br />
knives, spilled salt, and the influence on fate of<br />
black cats, piebald horses, and the man with a<br />
squint.<br />
Mr. Gosse has arrived at a time of life which<br />
prompts to serious reflections on the flight of time.<br />
Everybody at forty gets these reflections. “Wait<br />
till you come to forty year.” They pass, these<br />
reflections; in the fifties one feels younger<br />
than in the forties. Perhaps, in the sixties, one<br />
may feel younger still. We ought to, considering<br />
how short a time remains for cheerfulness. How-<br />
ever, the motto to the new volume of verse, “In<br />
Russet and Silver,” is quite in the vein of the<br />
forties: -<br />
Life, that, when youth was hot and bold,<br />
Leaped up in scarlet and in gold,<br />
Now walks by graver hopes possessed<br />
In russet and in silver dressed.<br />
Whether in russet and silver or in scarlet and<br />
gold, it is the same music and the same musician;<br />
the certain touch and the unexpected phrase;<br />
the true word to fit the thought ; the perfect<br />
dexterity and mastery of the metre ; these are<br />
qualities which we have long since recognised;<br />
and as yet there is no sign of any younger poet—<br />
“in scarlet and in gold *-disputing the supe-<br />
riority of Mr. Gosse in these essentials.<br />
The Authors’ Club distinguished itself on the<br />
19th Nov. by holding its monthly dinner in<br />
honour of Anthony Hope. The room, which is<br />
too small for such festivities, was quite full, and<br />
there were but two speeches, that of the chair-<br />
man, Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, and that of the guest<br />
of the evening. Among the men of distinction<br />
who have thus been entertained are Zola and<br />
Rudyard Kipling. And now comes Anthony Hope.<br />
It is a pleasing feature of the club to pay this<br />
tribute to men who have risen or are certainly<br />
rising. Authors are too often accused of jealousy<br />
and spite. There was no show either of jealousy<br />
or of spite in the dinner of the 19th, but only the<br />
general desire to recognise and to honour good<br />
work wherever it is found.<br />
The club, which is now two years old, may be<br />
lcoked upon as established. The rooms are<br />
extremely pleasant, and have a position as central<br />
as can be desired. The members are all connected<br />
with literature. Up to the present it has been<br />
more of a lunching than a dining club. Every-<br />
body is supposed to know everybody else, and the<br />
club is essentially cheerful. As stated above, the<br />
rooms are too small, they will only accommodate<br />
fifty at a dinner. But if another hundred<br />
members were to come in additional rooms could<br />
be had, and there would be more elbow room.<br />
Clad in a garb of golden-green, with a charac-<br />
teristic portrait of the subject for frontispiece, is<br />
Mr. Robert Sherard’s book on Alphonse Daudet.<br />
It may be thought that Daudet exhausted the<br />
subject himself in his “Trente Ans de Paris; ”<br />
that, however, is not the case ; there is a great deal<br />
in this volume that is not in the “Trente Ans.”<br />
The author has received contributions from<br />
Madame Daudet, from Léon Daudet, from<br />
Edmond de Goncourt, from Ernest Daudet, and<br />
from Alphonse Daudet himself. The result is a<br />
full biography and a most interesting account of<br />
a most remarkable man. The best excuse for<br />
writing the book is found in the concluding words<br />
of the preface: “Since Alphonse Daudet has<br />
honoured me with his friendship, I may say, with-<br />
out exaggeration, that my life of exile has been<br />
transformed. It is, perhaps, also on account of<br />
my admiration and my affection for this great-<br />
hearted man of letters that I have worked to<br />
make others know him as I do.”<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
>e c3<br />
NOTES FROM PARIS,<br />
HE following letter, which I have just<br />
T received from my friend Alphonse Daudet,<br />
is the best answer that I can give to many<br />
questions which have been asked of me as to his<br />
intention of visiting London next year:<br />
Oui ; mon bon. Sherard, j’ai l'espoir au printermps prochain,<br />
si je ne suis pas trop invalide de venir voir londres, mais<br />
non pas de me montrer ä Londres, ce qui est bien différent.<br />
Je serais heureux de vous avoir pour compagnon et cicerone<br />
tº mais je vous demanderai de me mettre à l'abri des<br />
curiosités du reportage, ce sont des vacances que je compte<br />
prendre et je suis bien décidé à me pas donner de repré-<br />
sentation dans ce beau pays que je suis si désireux de<br />
connaitre.<br />
These things being so, we may hope to see<br />
M. Daudet in London in a few months.<br />
In my great admiration for Emile Zola, I feel<br />
sorry in saying that the opinion in Paris is one<br />
of doubt as to the possible value of a book on<br />
Rome, written on information collected during a<br />
fortnight's visit. It is generally thought that<br />
Rome, from all points of view, and as a whole,<br />
is a large subject, and that its comprehension<br />
can hardly be effected in a fortnight. It must<br />
be added, however, that Zola intends to spend a<br />
long time over this book, and that “Rome,” the<br />
second volume of “Les Trois Willes” series of<br />
novels, will not appear till 1896.<br />
We were all much shocked to hear of the death<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 183 (#197) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
183<br />
of Francis Magnard, the editor of Le Figaro, for<br />
he seemed in full strength, with years of life and<br />
activity before him. Yet certainly he looked very<br />
grey and worn when I last saw him. The Figaro<br />
was a fighting paper, and all fighting exacts nerve<br />
and muscle and uses and wears. He was a con-<br />
scientious and a most hard-working man, who<br />
gave himself up entirely to his paper. Most of<br />
his time was spent at the office in the Rue<br />
Drouot. I am afraid I cannot agree with those<br />
who have written in praise of his daily leaderette<br />
in the Figaro. It was writing after the style and<br />
in the manner of thought of Joseph Prudhomme.<br />
But good editors of large papers are rarely good<br />
writers. Willemessant, the founder of the Figaro,<br />
could not string six lines of tolerable prose<br />
together, yet he was certainly one of the best<br />
editors who ever lived. Magnard wrote very<br />
quickly, though his work seemed laboriously<br />
evolved. He told me once that he always asked<br />
himself, on sending the paper to the press, what<br />
Willemessant would have thought about the<br />
number, both as a whole and in detail, and felt<br />
quite nervous on the subject, so completely had<br />
he been disciplined by his former chief. I may<br />
add that Magnard used to deny being a Belgian<br />
by extraction, and used to get very angry when<br />
he was attacked as such in the rival papers.<br />
I may also add that M. de Rodays, the present<br />
editor, had been designated by de Villemessant in<br />
his will to succeed Magnard, in the case of the<br />
latter's retirement or death. M. de Rodays’<br />
successor was also named in the same clause.<br />
The biggest succés de librairie of the year in<br />
Paris has been Marcel Prevost’s novel “Les<br />
Demi-Vierges.” It is, I see, in its 15oth edition.<br />
Exceptionally these are editions of only 500<br />
copies, whereas the French edition usually con-<br />
sists of IOOO copies. The book is exceedingly<br />
well written, but the subject is a nauseating one,<br />
and this success is not one on which his friends<br />
can congratulate M. Marcel Prevost.<br />
J. H. Rosny, who is translating George Moore's<br />
novel “Esther Waters ” for publication in feuil-<br />
leton form in Le Gaulois, is by many, including<br />
Daudet, Zola, and de Goncourt, considered one of<br />
the first writers of French fiction living in France<br />
to-day. His “Le Bilateral” is undoubtedly a<br />
masterpiece, complicated as its style and bitter as<br />
is the author's philosophy. Rosny has had a<br />
very troubled and miserable life, and lives none<br />
knows where. He hides his address, and is under-<br />
stood to be in unfortunate circumstances. His<br />
books do not sell well, and he is indifferent to<br />
popularity, in which respect he may be compared<br />
to J. K. Huysman.<br />
I heard a story in Paris the other day of how a<br />
literary “ghost " revenged himself on a too<br />
WOL. W.<br />
unscrupulous employer. He had been engaged<br />
to write a feuilleton, for which his employer, a<br />
very well-known Parisian novelist, had received<br />
an order. The original arrangement was that<br />
the ghost should receive a penny a line—the well-<br />
known Parisian novelist, it may be mentioned,<br />
was to receive fivepence a line, and, of course, he<br />
signed the story with his own illustrious name;<br />
but after some instalments had been printed, the<br />
ghost was informed by his employer, who, in the<br />
meanwhile, had found out that his hack was in<br />
desperate circumstances, that in the future he<br />
would only be paid one halfpenny a line. He was<br />
forced to submit, but at once introduced into his<br />
story two fresh characters, whose names were<br />
simple transpositions of his employer's name and<br />
his own, of which one was a well-known novelist<br />
and the other a starving literary hack, and showed<br />
how the novelist engaged the hack to write a<br />
serial story at the rate of a penny a line, and<br />
afterwards reduced this to a halfpenny a line, and<br />
how the hack to revenge himself introduced,<br />
under transposed names, into this serial two fresh<br />
characters, one of which was a novelist and so on.<br />
The novelist sweater was away enjoying himself<br />
whilst these instalments were appearing, and<br />
one can imagine his feelings on his return to<br />
Paris. It is needless to add that the story was<br />
considerably revised before being republished in<br />
volume form.<br />
Why are almost all the books supplied to the<br />
public in England bound P Is not the French<br />
system of publishing all works merely in paper<br />
covers preferable? To begin with, an unbound<br />
book can be supplied cheaper than a bound book.<br />
Then, many book buyers like to bind their books<br />
according to their own taste in the matter of<br />
binding. Some like the bindings of their books to<br />
be in some degree symbolical of their contents,<br />
who would bind Haggard in red, George Ohnet<br />
in pale blue, Poe in black, and so on. Others<br />
like uniformity, and, indeed, so varied are the<br />
colours of book backs as sold to-day, that a library<br />
shelf often presents a ghastly combination of<br />
colours. There is, of course, a great deal to be<br />
said on both sides of the question. At the same<br />
time, I do not think that the bookbinders would<br />
lose by the change. . They would have less cheap<br />
binding to do, but far more reliures d'amateur,<br />
which are really profitable. --<br />
f have been told that my note on Oliver Gold<br />
Smith's grave in last month's Author is un-<br />
founded and uncalled for, that the grave is in<br />
good condition, and well kept. I am not of this<br />
opinion, nor am I alone in this respect. “What<br />
would you more?” I have been asked. Well, to<br />
begin with, a railing round the tomb. I saw a<br />
butcher's boy sitting on it the other day. * *<br />
S<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 184 (#198) ############################################<br />
<br />
184<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I have heard the strange story since I came to<br />
London of a high judicial functionary who many<br />
years ago published, with one of the most<br />
reputable firms in London on the half-profit<br />
system, an important work on an important<br />
political question. It is several years since any<br />
account was rendered, and though the book had<br />
then passed through eight editions, all that the<br />
high judicial functionary received as his share<br />
was Is. 7#d. The book has been selling since,<br />
but the author has never received another penny.<br />
And he is not very satisfied, and says things about<br />
publishers which are not judicial nor quite justi-<br />
fiable.<br />
Weyman has made up his mind to take a year's<br />
complete rest as soon as “The Red Cockade" is<br />
finished. I am told that this is the very best<br />
thing this genius has ever written, by people who<br />
have read the opening chapters, now in Jerome's<br />
hands.<br />
Apropos of the title of this book, are we about<br />
to pass from the “yellow * to the “red.” Every-<br />
thing was yellow a short while ago in matter of<br />
literature. And now, in matter of literature,<br />
things are mostly red. There are Weyman’s titles<br />
in red, there is Morley Roberts's “Red Earth,”<br />
there is Francis Gribble’s “The Red Spell,” there<br />
is a novel called “The Crimson Sign,” and, of<br />
course, there is Conan Doyle’s “Round the Red<br />
Lamp.” In the future all things may be green,<br />
as most bindings are, by the way, at the present<br />
hour, and so it shall go on.<br />
I am very glad to hear that John Davidson's<br />
last book of poems is selling exceedingly well;<br />
500 copies were taken before the book was pub-<br />
lished. Many people, as a mere commercial<br />
speculation, are buying up copies of the “Ballads<br />
and Songs.” All this is well, for John Davidson,<br />
a poet and a most genial man, has fought a hard<br />
fight, and merits success and ease. His life has<br />
been a life of heroism. R. H. SHERARD.<br />
*~ * ~ *<br />
r- - --><br />
NOTES FROM NEW YORK.<br />
New York, Nov. Io.<br />
HE death of Dr. Holmes not only caused<br />
the usual feelings of personal loss aroused<br />
when any honoured author leaves us," but<br />
additional sorrow was felt since with his decease<br />
the great New England group of authors ended.<br />
In the early part of this century, when Irving,<br />
Cooper, Bryant, and Fitz-Greene Halleck lived in<br />
New York, the literary centre was here, but<br />
before the middle of the century Emerson,<br />
Tongfellow, Whittier, Lowell, Hawthorne, and<br />
FIolmes revealed themselves, and the glory of the<br />
school as well as of a life that we deplore.<br />
New England group was greater than that of the<br />
Rnickerbocker school, as the New Yorkers had<br />
been called.<br />
Professor Norton, of Harvard College, recently<br />
remarked that, “they all wrote with a moral.<br />
They had, too, a touch of Puritanism. They<br />
were stirred to write often not so much from the<br />
impulse of the imagination as because they were<br />
impelled to teach some lessons and do some good<br />
that way. It was just at the war period, and all<br />
continued on the same side. They were all<br />
warriors in a sense.” Thus it is the closing of a<br />
Since<br />
Dr. Holmes wrote “Old Ironsides " the popula-<br />
tion of the United States has quadrupled, and the<br />
country can no longer be said to have one<br />
literary centre. In all directions have sprung up<br />
authors who write what has been called “ local<br />
fiction,” that is to say, they chiefly devote their<br />
efforts to depicting the life around them. This<br />
is a recent development, and, although there is<br />
now no one great group, there are many more<br />
accomplished authors than there were formerly,<br />
and the average of merit is undoubtedly higher.<br />
It is a sign that good times are coming when<br />
the fall publishing trade opens well, as it has this<br />
year. Whether or not publishers suffer much<br />
during a business depression is a question often<br />
debated. Some contend, that books being a<br />
luxury, people either go without in hard times or<br />
else use the free libraries. Others think that<br />
during financial depression books are sent as<br />
presents where expensive jewellery would have<br />
been purchased in prosperous years. This year,<br />
illustrated gift books, held back by hard times,<br />
make the list of announcements very large.<br />
Leading houses report that trade is at least<br />
normal. It seems to have recovered from the<br />
stagnation of the last two years, and bids fair to<br />
be better month by month as business revives.<br />
There is no boom yet, and probably will not be<br />
for a year or two longer, but the conditions are<br />
healthy. -<br />
Among the more important announcements are<br />
“The Warfare of Science,” by Mr. Andrew D.<br />
White, which has attracted much attention as<br />
the successive chapters appeared in the Popular<br />
Science Monthly; “Edwin Booth,” recollections<br />
of his daughter, with his letters to her and his<br />
friends, a part of the correspondence of which we<br />
have had a foretaste in the Century, and which<br />
revealed the great actor in a singularly noble and<br />
spiritual aspect ; “The Life and Art of Joseph<br />
Jefferson, together with some account of his<br />
ancestry and of the Jefferson Family of Actors,”<br />
by Mr. William Winter, a revision on the briefer<br />
biography published ten years ago; “Portraits<br />
in Plaster,” by Mr. Laurence Hutton, with<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 185 (#199) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
185<br />
seventy-two reproductions of death-masks of<br />
famous men and women from the author's own<br />
collection of these gruesome objects, which is<br />
the largest private collection in the world; “Ilife<br />
and Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier,” the<br />
authorised biography, by his literary executor, Mr.<br />
Samuel T. Pickard ; “The Sherman Letters,” a<br />
most interesting correspondence between General<br />
Sherman and his brother, Senator Sherman,<br />
covering the entire war period; “Familiar Letters<br />
of Henry David Thoreau,” edited by Mr. Frank<br />
B. Sanborn, who wrote the volume on Thoreau<br />
in the series of “American Men of Letters;”<br />
“Riverby,” another volume of delightful out-<br />
door papers, by John Burroughs, the gifted<br />
disciple of Thoreau; “In the Dozy Hours and<br />
other Papers,” by Miss Agnes Repplier, whose<br />
terse little essays have gained her wide fame;<br />
“Four American Universities,” Harvard, Yale,<br />
Princeton, and Columbia, by Professors Norton,<br />
Hadley, Sloane, and Brander Matthews;<br />
“Character and Development of the Universities<br />
of Germany,” a most illuminative account by<br />
Professor Paulsen, translated by Professor E. D.<br />
Perry.<br />
Roberts Brothers have just brought out the<br />
first two volumes of a new translation of<br />
“Molière's Dramatic Works,” by Miss Katharine<br />
Prescott Wormeley, whose admirable translation<br />
of Balzac, now nearly completed, has won for her<br />
wide commendation.<br />
Longmans, Green, and Co. announce a series of<br />
“College Histories of Art,” edited by Professor<br />
John C. Van Dyke, of which the first volume to<br />
appear is the editor's own on the “History of<br />
Painting;” and the Scribner's are going to bring<br />
out the “Art of the American Wood Engraver,”<br />
by the late Philip Gilbert Hamerton, who<br />
brought to this subject a most unusual breadth<br />
of knowledge.<br />
Stone and Kimball, of Chicago, are about to<br />
issue the first complete edition of the “Works of<br />
Edgar Allan Poe,” newly collected and edited,<br />
with memoir, notes, &c., by Mr. Edmund Clarence<br />
Stedman and Professor George Edward Wood-<br />
berry; of the ten volumes to which this edition is<br />
going to extend, three are ready, and to these<br />
very probably will be added a single supple-<br />
mentary volume containing the correspondence<br />
between Poe and his friends, which will be edited<br />
by Professor Woodberry. Mr. Edmund Clarence<br />
Stedman after two years' work has finished his<br />
“Victorian Anthology,” which contains represen-<br />
tative poems by the authors discussed in his<br />
“Victorian Poets.”<br />
Americans have always made a specialty of<br />
works of reference. Three important books of<br />
this class have been lately published here. One<br />
is a supplement to the “Century Dictionary"—a<br />
seventh volume—called the “Century Cyclopædia<br />
of Names,” a pronouncing and etymological dic-<br />
tionary of names in geography, biography, mytho-<br />
logy, history, art, fiction, &c., edited by Mr.<br />
Benjamin E. Smith, who was managing editor of<br />
the “Century Dictionary,” under the late Pro-<br />
fessor Whitney. In this great work, upon which<br />
the entire editorial force of the Century has<br />
long been engaged, for the first time all the<br />
varieties of information usually obtained in bio-<br />
graphical dictionaries, geographical gazetteers,<br />
lists of characters in fiction, &c., have been<br />
arranged in alphabetical order and gathered into<br />
One volume. The selections have been made with<br />
especial regard to the wants of the general public,<br />
thus the central facts are given in large type, and<br />
in Smaller type such information as will help to a<br />
more complete understanding of the subject.<br />
Another is “A New and Complete Concordance<br />
in the Dramatic Works of Shakespeare,” by Mr.<br />
John Bartlett, to whom we are already indebted<br />
for his admirable “Dictionary of Familiar Quota-<br />
tions.” The third is Mr. S. L. Whitcomb's<br />
“Chronological Outlines of American Literature,”<br />
the first attempt to set down the chronological<br />
sequence of American books. It is on the plan of<br />
Ryland’s “Chronological Outlines of English<br />
Literature,” but on a much more liberal scale.<br />
A fourth elaborate book of reference could not be<br />
got ready in time for the fall trade. This is the<br />
great “Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiqui-<br />
ties,” which Professor Peck, of Columbia College,<br />
is editing for Harper and Brothers. It is to be<br />
fully illustrated, and will probably appear in the<br />
Spring.<br />
The British novelist is to have better showing<br />
than usual next year in American magazines,<br />
although a large percentage of the serials will be<br />
by American authors. Mr. Thomas Hardy’s “Sim-<br />
pletons’’ is the chief serial of Harper's Monthly.<br />
In Harper's Weekly Mr. Stanley J. Weyman's<br />
romance, “The Red Cockade,” begins in the first<br />
January number, and will be followed in July by<br />
Mr. Brander Matthews's novel of New York,<br />
“His Father's Son.” In Harper's Bazar the<br />
first serial is Maarten Maartens’ “My Lady<br />
Nobody,” and the second is a southern story,<br />
“Doctor Warwick's Daughters,” by Mrs. Richard<br />
Harding Davis. In Scribner's will appear Mr.<br />
George Meredith’s “Amazing Marriage,” and<br />
Mr. Barrie's “Sentimental Tommy,” besides Mr.<br />
Howell's shorter serial, “The Story of a Play.”<br />
The Century's two serials are both by American<br />
authors—“Casa Braccia,” by Mr. Marion Craw-<br />
ford, and “An Errant Wooing,” by Mrs. Burton<br />
Harrison; and so are the two stories announced<br />
by the Atlantic, Mrs. Mary Halleck Foote's “The<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 186 (#200) ############################################<br />
<br />
186<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Thumpeter,” and Mrs. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps<br />
Ward’s “A Singular Life.” -<br />
It has never been the custom of our magazines<br />
to limit their serials to fiction alone; indeed,<br />
some of their greatest successes have been with<br />
works such as no British magazine ever ventures<br />
upon. The War series of the Century doubled<br />
its circulation in twelve months; and forty years<br />
ago a Life of Napoleon gave Harper's its first<br />
impetus. Now the Century begins a Biography<br />
of Napoleon, by Professor W. M. Sloane, which<br />
has been in preparation for five years, and during<br />
two of that period special agents have been ran-<br />
sacking Europe for illustrative material. The<br />
Century will also contain Mrs. Van Rensel-<br />
laer's series of papers on the French Cathedrals,<br />
for which Mr. Joseph Parnell has made many<br />
striking illustrations. Scribner's will contain,<br />
beginning in the January number, “The History<br />
of the Last Quarter-Century in the United<br />
States,” by President E. Benjamin Andrews, in<br />
which he has endeavoured to cover that period of<br />
history about which we are apt to know least—<br />
from the time school histories end (usually with<br />
the War of the Republic) up to the present year.<br />
The Atlantic will shortly publish a series of<br />
papers by Mr. John Fiske on Virginia, “The<br />
Old Dominion and her Sister Colonies.”<br />
An interesting copyright trial has just ended.<br />
A New York daily paper, the World, printed,<br />
before its official use, the ode written by Miss<br />
Harriet Monroe, of Chicago, for the dedication of<br />
the World’s Fair buildings, two years ago. The<br />
purloined version contained typographical errors,<br />
which the author claimed had injured her in<br />
purse and reputation. In his charge the judge<br />
told the jury that little pecuniary damage had<br />
been proved, but added that punitive damages<br />
might be awarded if the defendant had been<br />
guilty of disregard of property rights. The<br />
verdict of the jury fixed the damages at £IOOO.<br />
As Miss Monroe received £200 from the World’s<br />
Fair Commissioners for her ode, she will have<br />
gained £1200 by one brief occasional poem.<br />
We are often said to be a book-buying nation,<br />
and it is evidence in favour of this assertion that<br />
nearly 100,000 copies of “Trilby’’ have been sold<br />
in less than ten weeks. So enormous has been<br />
the demand for Mr. Du Maurier's book that the<br />
Harper's Christmas publishing has been greatly<br />
retarded by the fact that they have been obliged<br />
to keep thirteen presses on “Trilby’’ alone. A<br />
sale like that indicates that “Trilby’’ has con-<br />
quered not only the regular reading class and<br />
the broad general public, but also the absolutely<br />
unliterary public. A gentleman on the train the<br />
other day overheard a girl talking to three young<br />
men. “Oh I have you read “Trilby ?’” she<br />
asked one of the men. He admitted that he had<br />
not, whereupon the young woman declared that.<br />
it was “just too lovely.” Who wrote it?” in-<br />
quired the second man. “Well,” the girl replied,<br />
“it’s translated from the French of a man named<br />
Moriar, and it's illustrated by a man named<br />
* 5 y<br />
Whistler. HALLETT ROBINSON.<br />
*- ~"<br />
-* w wºrs<br />
PHILIP GILBERT HAMERTON.<br />
A PERSONAL REMINISCENCE.<br />
By Mr. Justice ConDí, WILLIAMs (of Mauritius).<br />
N spite of the blinds and the persiennes, the<br />
I afternoon September sun streamed into<br />
that little café at Autun, where we sat<br />
drinking bocks, and playing dominoes, and<br />
jabbering as only Frenchmen mostly jabber. g<br />
The ever watchful patron bustled up to me,<br />
and said, mysteriously—“See that gentleman<br />
who has just entered? He is a compatriot of<br />
yours.” There, at a table by himself, sat a<br />
brown-bearded, middle-aged man, looking cer-<br />
tainly, except for the flowing ends of his necktie,<br />
not one bit like a Frenchman.<br />
As the witty dean said, “One doesn’t go abroad<br />
to meet one’s compatriots.” As a rule, to tell the<br />
honest truth without affectation, I generally, for<br />
divers reasons, give mine a wide berth, But<br />
there was a wise and kindly look about this<br />
man's bronze and honest face, and withal a<br />
humorous twinkle in his eye as he calmly<br />
surveyed his noisy surroundings, which urged me<br />
to take the other place opposite to him at his<br />
small round table. So, when our game was over,<br />
I consoled my little Louise with a Monde Illustré<br />
and a groseille, and went and sat there.<br />
Of course, I knew the “Portfolio,” and Mr.<br />
Hamerton, by name, but I had forgotten that he<br />
lived in France, and near Autun; if, indeed,<br />
anybody had ever told me so. .<br />
However, the ice once broken, and it was very<br />
easily broken, we proved to have many friends<br />
and many sympathies in common ; and, although<br />
ten years my senior, he seemed to take quite a<br />
paternal interest in me when he heard that, at<br />
five-and-twenty years of age, I had become the<br />
editor of a daily newspaper in England.<br />
Next day I walked three miles out of Autun, to<br />
his pretty country place to breakfast, and made<br />
the acquaintance of his charming family—his<br />
wife, a French lady, two bi-lingual sons, and a<br />
little daughter. Afterwards we talked for a long<br />
time in his small study, or studio—literature and<br />
art equally well represented upon its bookshelves<br />
and in their surroundings. Had I understood<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 187 (#201) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
187<br />
more about etching and lithography, I should have<br />
been more deeply interested. But never was a<br />
more modest and less egotistical man than Philip<br />
Gilbert Hamerton, And seeing that newspapers<br />
and books mainly interested me, he talked little<br />
save of newspapers and books. But before we<br />
parted he placed in my hands, as a souvenir, an<br />
early copy (in the Tauchnitz edition) of “Mar-<br />
morne,” just then on the point of publication.<br />
As I grasped his hand I looked up to the wooded<br />
hills of Le Morvan, which formed a sombre back-<br />
ground to his cheerful country villa.<br />
“It must be lonely, here, in the winter P”<br />
“Yes,” he said “but what does that signify P<br />
I am always occupied.”<br />
“Any wolves or wild boars about P’’<br />
“There are some,” he replied, and laughed at<br />
a reminiscence. “One frosty moonlight night<br />
last January, I went out to lock the stable, and<br />
met a lean, grisly wolf, face to face, just upon the<br />
threshold of this door. We seemed both very<br />
vastly astonished, and we both drew back a pace<br />
or two involuntarily. Then I said to the wolf, on<br />
the impulse of the moment: What on earth are<br />
you doing here? Perhaps it was being addressed<br />
in English that frightened him, I don't know ;<br />
but without taking further notice of my query, he<br />
turned round and walked slowly away.”<br />
#: $: :}; $: $: $:<br />
Note that at same café at Autun, some fourteen<br />
years later, an Englishman entered just as two<br />
or three tradesmen, habitués of the place, were<br />
taking their post-prandial gloria,<br />
“Monsieur has doubtless come to inspect the<br />
antiquities?” volunteered one of them, after the<br />
pause which, in a small community, often follows<br />
the sudden entrance of a strange newcomer.<br />
“No ;” I said to the patron —not the same<br />
patron as of yore—“but, before I venture as far<br />
as the Maison du pré, I would ask you for news of<br />
Monsieur Hamerton.” 4.<br />
There was quite an excitement in the place.<br />
Hamerton, with his quiet sympathetic ways, a<br />
long resident, a distinguished Anglais, yet the<br />
husband of a Frenchwoman, was a popular man<br />
in Autun and all round it. Who else could have<br />
survived, scathless and untouched, as he did<br />
survive, all the jealous suspicion, and even overt<br />
antagonism, which were visited upon nearly every<br />
other Englishman living in provincial France<br />
during the closing months of the Franco-German<br />
struggle P<br />
“Ah ! it was most unfortunate. Monsieur had<br />
no luck. He had sustained a malheur epou-<br />
vantable, Monsieur 'Amerton (they never could<br />
manage that H), so respected as he was, and<br />
after so long a residence in the partage, had left<br />
that very day finally for Paris.” And it was a<br />
rather remarkable thing that, after so long an<br />
absence, having corresponded with my friend at<br />
very rare intervals, I should have dropped down<br />
upon Autun on the very eve of his final depar-<br />
ture. He had not actually gone—but his family<br />
and his furniture had, as I learned from good<br />
Monsieur Thomasset, of the Hotel des Negociants<br />
—and he himself was staying with a friend. I<br />
would not disturb him—I left a card for him, and<br />
on I sped to Santenoy to “assist” still older<br />
friends at their Burgundy autumn vintage. A<br />
telegram from Hamerton brought me back to<br />
Autun next day. Would I come and spend his<br />
last Autun night with him at Thomasset's<br />
interesting hotel, where you are escorted up to<br />
your bedroom walking over the gravestones of<br />
monks and abbots P Of course I went, and am<br />
thankful that I went. And a long, long talk we<br />
had over that extra bottle of Chambertin, de<br />
omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliis. He had had<br />
his share of misfortune, and sad misfor-<br />
tune. One of the two bright boys I had met<br />
at his table years before, a youth of high<br />
intelligence and promise, and Professor of<br />
English at a Lycée, had put an end to his life at<br />
his rooms in Paris, leaving behind him no sort of<br />
clue as to the why and the wherefore. So we were<br />
led to talk of the great mysteries of Life and<br />
Death—about matters concerning which men of<br />
middle age do not often open their hearts one to<br />
another. Later, when sauntering forth to the<br />
café, we drifted to more material subjects, and I<br />
spoke of his long career as poet, painter, and<br />
author. I remember that he said, not bitterly,<br />
but with a touch of mournfulness, after some<br />
remark of mine about the knighthood that certain<br />
distinguished English writers surely ought to<br />
have been offered, that he himself was weak<br />
enough to feel some touch of regret that he, whose<br />
work was the English work of an Englishman,<br />
could only, when the occasion demanded his<br />
wearing it, stand before the world the possessor<br />
of a French decoration for his services to art and<br />
to literature.<br />
He removed from Autun (the Augustodonum<br />
of the Romans) to Boulogne et Seine in Paris,<br />
and a friend of his in England was the recipient<br />
of his appreciative acknowledgment of these lines<br />
addressed to Hamerton in his new Parisian home :<br />
The Seine to Saone gives greeting ! O'er the sea<br />
I pen Lwtetia's welcome home to thee;<br />
And, with the wish, would fain the hand extend,<br />
Word-painter, picture-painter, poet, friend<br />
What though her vine leaves seared by autumn's blast,<br />
Awgwstodomºwm weeps her glories past—<br />
Though, “round the house ’’ thy graceful pen portrays,<br />
Fond mem'ries linger of departed days P<br />
The city’s joy outweighs the country’s pain–<br />
Awgustodomwm's loss is fair Lwtetia's gain!<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 188 (#202) ############################################<br />
<br />
I88<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
And the other day—not thirty days ago—the<br />
same friend received from him a warm letter of<br />
welcome on returning to England after many<br />
years of judicial work abroad. He wrote cheer-<br />
fully, yet spoke of illness, of diagnosis by a Paris<br />
doctor of “hypertrophy of the heart,” and of the<br />
necessity of “following a regimen for the rest of<br />
my days.” Not for long. In a fortnight he was<br />
dead,<br />
A_*— * -<br />
_*. s—º<br />
a------5 -<br />
BOOK TALK.<br />
HE REW. CANON CHARLES D. BELL,<br />
D.D., rector of Cheltenham, has produced<br />
a new volume of verses, called “Diana's<br />
Looking Glass, and other Poems.” Canon Bell’s<br />
verses are always, to use the words of one of his<br />
critics, “sweet and wholesome.” After the low level<br />
in which we are plunged by some of our younger<br />
poets, it is pleasant to stand once more upon the<br />
heights and to feel that there are higher levels,<br />
and still higher, to be reached.<br />
times the natural note of sadness, there is never<br />
despair. Let the poet speak for himself.<br />
Come let us wake sweet Echo with a song.<br />
Here she lies sleeping, waiting for our voice,<br />
So call her loudly with a courteous tongue,<br />
That coming forth she may with us rejoice.<br />
For Morning walks in beauty o'er the dale,<br />
And Night's bright glories 'fore her splendours pale.<br />
Nymph of the hills, awake, awake<br />
Melodious answer to us make.<br />
What shall we sing to please the maiden shy,<br />
And lure her from the secret solitude,<br />
In which she dwells, withdrawn from every eye,<br />
Amid the deep recesses of the wood<br />
In whose green boughs is heard the joyous lay<br />
Of merry birds that greet the dawn of day P<br />
Echo, sweet Echo, hear no strain,<br />
Thy voice is bliss ; thy silence pain.<br />
Or shall we sing of love P. How Corydon,<br />
The shepherd boy, the fair Althea woo'd,<br />
How beauteous Thyrsis fair Nerissa won,<br />
Or fleet Alpheus Arethusa pursued,<br />
Or Cynthia stooped from heaven with look of love,<br />
While slept Endymion in the Latmian grove.<br />
Hark, comrades, hark with such a theme<br />
Steal softly on the dreamer's dream.<br />
“A Swatch o' Homespun,” by Agnes Marchbank<br />
(Edinburgh, R. W. Hunter), is a little story of a<br />
weaver in a Scotch village. The writer should be<br />
able to do better than this with study and work.<br />
Meantime she is working with good materials,<br />
and in the true spirit.<br />
“Tales of Famous Men” is the title of a series<br />
of papers which Mr. Joseph Hatton is writing for<br />
the Idler. They will be of a reminiscent cha-<br />
racter, with plenty of anecdote to justify the<br />
general title; and Mr. W. H. Margetson will<br />
If there is some-<br />
illustrate them. Mr. Hatton’s new novel, which<br />
is running in the weekly press of the old world<br />
and the new, will be published in March by<br />
Messrs. Hutchinson, who have already sold four<br />
editions of this author's latest book, “Under the<br />
Great Seal.” Mr. Hutchinson told a St. James’s<br />
Budget interviewer recently that his first great<br />
success as a publisher was with Mr. Hatton's<br />
“By Order of the Czar,” which is now in its<br />
fifteenth edition.<br />
Mr. Walter Wren has had to inform the<br />
secretary that a person is going about pretending<br />
that he is a relative of Mr. Wren, and that he is<br />
a member of the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
There is no member of the society named Wren.<br />
“Maud Marian, Artist” (Religious Tract<br />
Society), is a very pleasing and delicately written<br />
story by Eglanton Thorne, author of the “Old<br />
Worcester Jug,” &c., &c. The scene is laid at<br />
Rome. It is a book written and chiefly intended<br />
for girls.<br />
“Cavaliers and Roundheads in Barbados,” by<br />
N. Darnell Davis (Argosy Press, Georgetown,<br />
British Guiana), is a chapter in colonial history<br />
that was well worth the trouble of writing. The<br />
early history of Barbados is practically unknown<br />
to us. For instance, had it been known, a<br />
hundred years ago, that the right to be taxed<br />
only by their own representatives was recognised<br />
in the case of Barbados in 1652, it would not have<br />
refused to the Americans in the year 1770. There<br />
would have been no Declaration of Independence<br />
and no war.<br />
Frank Stockton's new book, called “Pomona, ’’<br />
(Cassell), went through the first edition in<br />
advance of publication.<br />
Boys, and those who make Christmas presents<br />
to boys, are here with invited to make a note of<br />
Max Pemberton's book of adventure, “The Sea.<br />
Wolves.”<br />
“The Highway of Sorrow,” by Hesba Stretton,<br />
and * * * is a work to be noted either for buy-<br />
ing or borrowing, and certainly for reading.<br />
A second edition of Mrs. Oliphant’s new novel<br />
“Who was Lost and is Found” (Blackwood<br />
and Sons) is announced.<br />
In Mr. Fairman Ordish’s “Early London<br />
Theatres '' (Elliot Stock) we have a work of<br />
original and patient research. It is worthy of a<br />
long article in the Quarterly Review. The<br />
author has made himself the sole authority for<br />
the future on the subject of the earliest theatres<br />
of London.<br />
The Navy Records Society have in preparation<br />
a second volume of State Papers relating to the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 189 (#203) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
189<br />
Spanish Armada; they will next publish a volume<br />
of Naval Accounts of the Fifteenth Century.<br />
Mr. W. M. Conway has in preparation an<br />
account of the walk which he made last year from<br />
end to end of the Alps.<br />
Miss Frances Wood sends some extremely<br />
pretty Christmas cards. They are reproductions<br />
from Raphael, with verses under each. They are<br />
published by Messrs. Carr and Mason, Brunswick<br />
Works, Leamington.<br />
Mr. W. H. Besant, F.R.S., D.Sc., has in the<br />
press the ninth edition of his “Geometrical<br />
Conics,” and, as a supplement, his “Solutions of<br />
the Examples in the Geometrical Conics.”<br />
Certainly one of the most beautiful books of<br />
the season is Archdeacon Farrar’s “Life of<br />
Christ as Represented in Art.” It is illustrated<br />
by a long catena of early Christian symbols,<br />
mediaeval figures, pictures of the great masters,<br />
and by the painters of our own day, some of<br />
whom will perhaps be called great masters five<br />
hundred years hence. It is a book which should<br />
command a wide and immediate success. The<br />
publishers are Messrs. A. and C. Black.<br />
Readers are requested to make a note of<br />
“Robert Southey,” by John Dennis (Messrs.<br />
Bell.)<br />
Four biographies from one publisher (Edward<br />
Arnold). The first is “Alphonse Daudet,” by<br />
Robert Sherard; the others are Augustus Hare's<br />
“Maria Edgeworth,” Dean Hole’s “Memories,”<br />
and the Memoirs of Sir John Macdonald, by his<br />
Private Secretary.<br />
“The Memorials of St. James's Palace,” by<br />
Edgar Sheppard (Longmans), in two volumes, is<br />
really a splendid work. It is rather dear, but<br />
what is 36s. to one who loves his London P<br />
Another book for a student of the Great City<br />
is “London and the Kingdom,” by Reginald R.<br />
Sharpe, D.C.L. Dr. Sharpe is Records Clerk in<br />
the office of the Town Clerk of the City. The<br />
book is written from personal investigation of<br />
the City archives. It is a book for historians<br />
rather than itself a history.<br />
The second volume of Dr. Traill’s “Social<br />
England’’ is now ready. One is pleased to read<br />
that the book has already gone into a second<br />
edition.<br />
In translating Professor Errera’s “Russian<br />
Jews,” Miss Bella Löwy has executed a task<br />
of love. The book is an appeal for civilised<br />
treatment, fervid in its facts, which are startling,<br />
and convincing in its arguments, which are self-<br />
restrained in temper. One does not realise<br />
until the map is laid open how very small a<br />
space of the vast Russian Empire is open to the<br />
Jew for residence. He may live in Little Russia,<br />
West Russia, and South Russia; altogether over<br />
an area, very thinly populated, of one thousand<br />
miles in length by three hundred in breadth. In<br />
these pages one may read a story of persecution<br />
and oppression without parallel even in the<br />
Middle Ages. But there are charges brought<br />
against the Jews. They are moneylenders.<br />
“Yes,” replies Professor Errera in effect, “ some<br />
of them, no doubt. But four-fifths of them have<br />
no money to lend; and, besides, they are more<br />
honest than the Christian moneylender.” They<br />
sell spirits. They were made to do so. The<br />
nobles manufactured the spirit; the Jew was<br />
told to sell it. They are tricky in business.<br />
Their persecutions have made them so. And so<br />
on. The book is published by David Nutt,<br />
Strand.<br />
Professor Brander Matthews sends his new<br />
book, “Wignettes of Manhattan.” If for the<br />
pictures of New York alone, it would be a<br />
desirable volume. As a study for a stranger<br />
in New York manners, with their little differences<br />
compared with our own, the book is equally<br />
desirable. Perhaps, however, most desirable for<br />
the short stories and sketches which it contains.<br />
There is a most exciting story of a fire. There is<br />
the sketch of the broken-down man and his last<br />
dinner at Delmonico's ; and there is a visit to the<br />
slums, which is admirably done. There are more,<br />
but these will do.<br />
Here is a dainty little volume (Roxburghe<br />
Press, 3, Victoria-street, Westminster), dainty<br />
binding, dainty print, dainty paper—all to set off<br />
the translation by Julia Preston, of “The Moun-<br />
tain Lake, by the late Fredrich von Bodinstedt,”<br />
whose portrait is presented as a frontispiece.<br />
Von Bodinstedt is not widely known in this<br />
country. Indeed, of late years a strange indiffe-<br />
rence to German belles and lettres and poetry<br />
seems to have fallen upon us. The attempt of<br />
Miss Julia Preston to make a poet of meditation<br />
rather than action, and of emotion rather than<br />
passion better known, deserves encouragement.<br />
Her versification is simple and generally graceful.<br />
Here, for instance, is a little thing :<br />
When the Gates of Paradise wide open stand,<br />
Some pious souls for their reward drew near ;<br />
And a mingled multitude from every land<br />
IBow humbly down in hope, in doubt, or fear.<br />
I only of all the waiting sinners there,<br />
Shall at those portals without fear abide ;<br />
Long since on earth by thee, my Angel Fair,<br />
The Gates of Paradise were opened wide.<br />
“A Bread and Butter Miss,” by George<br />
Paston, author of “A Modern Amazon'' (Osgood,<br />
M“Ilvaine, and Co.), is a one-volume story, a<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 190 (#204) ############################################<br />
<br />
I 90<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
simple, pretty little story of a girl going to stay<br />
at a country house for the first time in her life,<br />
and her adventures there.<br />
“Three Generations of English Women,” by<br />
Janet Ross, tells the story of Susannah Taylor,<br />
Sarah Austin, and Tady Duff Gordon. This is a<br />
new and revised edition. Susannah Taylor was<br />
the wife of John Taylor, one of that remarkable<br />
family which has produced so many men<br />
and women distinguished for literary and<br />
scientific ability. Mrs. Austin, her daughter, was<br />
married to a man who began life in the army and<br />
became a lawyer. His health, however, decayed.<br />
and he retired from active life. Lucie, his only<br />
child, married Sir Alexander Duff Gordon. All<br />
three ladies were as lovely as they were accom-<br />
plished. The book principally consists of letters,<br />
as delightful as letters can be.<br />
Another little book of verses and translations<br />
—this time by William E. A. Axon. (The<br />
Ancoats Skylark. John Heywood, London and<br />
Manchester.) Here is a specimen. The French<br />
words are a folk-song current in Franche Comte.<br />
Ma pauvre enfant,<br />
Qui es dessous la terre ;<br />
Ma pauvre enfant,<br />
Soulève done ta pierre.<br />
Chère maman,<br />
Donnez m'y ma chemise;<br />
Chère maman<br />
IBien fort Souffle la bise.<br />
Ma pauvre enfant,<br />
Je n'ai pas la puissance,<br />
Ma pauvre enfant<br />
A toi toujours je pense.<br />
Chère maman,<br />
J'ai les deux mains gelées;<br />
Chère maman,<br />
Fit la langue sechée.<br />
Ma pauvre enfant,<br />
J'irai dessous la terre,<br />
Tout pres de toi<br />
Pour rechauffer la pierre.<br />
A string of sonnets on the death of a child.<br />
They are sonnets which are worth attention. The<br />
book is called “A Little Child’s Wreath.” If<br />
the treatment is suggested by “In Memoriam,”<br />
the form is different. The sonnets are of some-<br />
what unequal merit. The following, it will be<br />
seen, has the true ring:<br />
A quiet southern day; a quiet sea<br />
That scarcely breaks along the level sands.<br />
An ecstasy of little children's glee :<br />
A weight of grief that no one understands.<br />
My poor child,<br />
In thy grave alone;<br />
My poor child,<br />
Iłaise up thy stone.<br />
Oh! mother dear,<br />
I want my coat of green.<br />
Oh! mother dear,<br />
The wind whistles keen.<br />
My poor child,<br />
I have not the power ;<br />
My poor child,<br />
I think of thee each hour.<br />
Oh! mother dear,<br />
My hands are icy cold ;<br />
Oh! mother dear,<br />
So stiff they will not fold.<br />
My poor child,<br />
We will not live apart ;<br />
I'll creep into thy grave<br />
And warm thee on my heart.<br />
Slow moving sails with curves of grace complete<br />
As ever beauty-loving pencil drew ;<br />
A ceaseless play of pretty hands and feet;<br />
A want for ever deep, for ever new.<br />
Peace on the teeming earth, goodwill and peace<br />
In the clear blue and floating cloudlets white;<br />
Crownéd the land with joy of her increase,<br />
Crushed my desire and vanished my delight.<br />
A seabird said, “I know, I know the pain,<br />
He will not see the summer tide again.”<br />
Mr. John B. Mackie, Fellow of the Institute of<br />
Journalists, who writes from the North-Eastern<br />
Daily Gazette, Middlesbrough, has written a<br />
book called “Modern Journalism : a Handbook<br />
for the Young Journalist.” There is plenty of<br />
room for such a book at the present moment, when<br />
the rush into journalism is opening it to the most<br />
desperate competition. The first result, one fears,<br />
will be a lowering of salaries and pay; the next<br />
step, however, will be the establishment of new<br />
papers in every direction; thirdly, the competi-<br />
tion of proprietors will run up salaries again for<br />
the best men. Mr. Mackie's book takes a man<br />
into every branch of a newspaper—shorthand<br />
writing, reporting, sub-editing, leader writing, and<br />
editing. It seems a most complete book; it is<br />
certainly one which every young journalist should<br />
study till he has it by heart. Above all, let him<br />
read, mark, and learn what is said as to silence<br />
concerning the internal machinery of the paper,<br />
and what is said, and very well said, as to the<br />
power and the responsibilities of the Press.<br />
Mr. John A. Steuart's new novel, “In the Day<br />
of Battle '' (three vols., Sampson Iow, Marston,<br />
and Co.), belongs to the school of the older<br />
romance. But the tale of battle has an interest<br />
that never palls, and there are few whose pulse<br />
will not beat quicker as they read of the doughty<br />
deeds of the long lost Donald Gordon, who is<br />
discovered in the disguise of a Bedouin freelance.<br />
Mr. Steuart has succeeded in giving his tale an<br />
almost breathless realism ; and if it is success to<br />
drive his reader on from page to page until one<br />
reaches the last he has certainly succeeded. From<br />
beginning to end the interest never flags, and that<br />
is saying much. His plot, perhaps, is not very<br />
strong nor very novel, but it serves merely as the<br />
hinge on which to hang a succession of curdling<br />
adventures dear to the heart of all boys and<br />
ImOst men.<br />
Mr. F. B. Doveton's new volume of verse is<br />
now ready.<br />
e- * *-*.<br />
CORRESPONDENCE.<br />
I.—THE LAUREATESHIP.<br />
AM very glad to see that you have taken up<br />
the question of the failure of the Government<br />
to appoint a Poet Laureate. It is now nearly<br />
two years since the vacancy occurred, and surely<br />
it behoves all authors, whether poets or not, to<br />
prevent this single recognition of literature by<br />
the State being abandoned if they can prevent it.<br />
If chaplains or physicians to the Queen were to<br />
cease to be appointed, would not the discontent<br />
of the clergy and the doctors make itself felt P<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 191 (#205) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I9 I<br />
The salary is only £75 a year. It does not<br />
matter a penny postage to any of us except the<br />
person appointed, upon whom the choice of the<br />
Queen may fall; but I say that it is a slight to<br />
all of us that no appointment should be made.<br />
Nov. 19. A PROSE WRITER.<br />
II.-SPLITTING INFINITIVES.<br />
There is a point in connection with composition<br />
on which your advice might be of essential<br />
service to young writers. I wrote a book—<br />
the name of which I give for your private<br />
information—that was favourably reviewed by<br />
various papers, and very properly slated by a cer-<br />
tain critic; the unforgivable error I had com-<br />
mitted being the splitting of infinitives. But,<br />
discussing this matter with a literary friend, I<br />
inquired whether it was allowable ever to split a<br />
verb at all; the reply being promptly in the<br />
negative. I accepted this dictum, and proposed<br />
to myself an earnest study of the writings of our<br />
great masters, so that I might improve my own<br />
defective style. For it occurred to me, and it<br />
may have occurred to others, that it is often very<br />
difficult to give the proper sense to a sentence, by<br />
a too rigid and pedantic adherence to what, for<br />
all I know to the contrary, may be a very sound<br />
rule. I have, however, given up my proposed<br />
search, for by the merest chance I came across, in<br />
the Standard of the 7th inst., a letter from Mr.<br />
Froude to Dr. Fischer, of Armagh, dated the 5th<br />
May, 1882.<br />
Certainly Mr. Froude nowhere splits his infini-<br />
tives; but the accompanying extracts from that<br />
letter show that Mr. Froude was in the habit of<br />
repeatedly splitting his other tenses. The italics<br />
are my own, and are inserted merely to mark<br />
where it would seem to me that the infractions of<br />
an accepted rule have occurred:—“Your book<br />
which you have so kindly sent me,” &c.—“I have<br />
only to tell you,” &c.—“ and will, by and bye, be<br />
universally accepted,” &c.—“ which he was all<br />
his life insisting on,” &c.—“that he alone in the<br />
British empire saw,” &c.<br />
Thus in a letter of thirty-four printed lines,<br />
the great historian five times splits his verbs.<br />
The question then is, whether this practice is or<br />
is not permissible?—Your obedient servant,<br />
1588.<br />
III.-CRITICAL AND EDITORIAL AMENITIES.<br />
The editor has, I fancy, rather misunderstood<br />
my drift in my letter on “Editorial Amenities,”<br />
in last Author. (1) I complained of the lack of<br />
common courtesy in no eaglanation being given of<br />
the change of front. (2) I did not want reasons.<br />
I only wished to know the fate of MSS. (4) I<br />
did not expect the critic to change his opinion,<br />
but I reckoned on his having generosity enough<br />
to be glad his verdict was falsified in re the<br />
Fairy Tale, and to tell me so. (5) An editor<br />
who professed to value highly his contributor—<br />
as was the case here—would have been compli-<br />
mented by being asked for a review by him.<br />
Resentment seems absurd. Toes it not P<br />
AN AUTHOR.<br />
*— - ~"<br />
,-- - -<br />
NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS,<br />
Theology.<br />
ANGLICAN PULPIT LIBRARY. Sermons, Outlines, and<br />
Illustrations for the Sundays and Holy Days of the<br />
Year ; Original and selected. In 6 vols. Vol. I.,<br />
Advent to Christmastide. Hodder and Stoughton.<br />
I 58.<br />
AsHLEY, JoBN M. Cogitationes Concionales, being 216<br />
short Sermon Reflections, founded upon the “Summa<br />
Theologica, ’’ of S. Thomas Aquinas. In 12 monthly<br />
parts. Part I., paper covers. Hodges. IS. net.<br />
BRUCE, ALExANDER. B. St. Paul’s Conception of<br />
Christianity. Edinburgh : T. and T. Clark. 7s. 6d.<br />
CHURCHILL, REv. STUART. Christ as a Citizen. A<br />
Sermon. Baines and Scarsbrook. Paper covers, 2d.<br />
DAVIDSON, RANDALL, T. A Charge delivered to the<br />
Clergy of the Diocese of Rochester, October, 1894.<br />
Paper boards. Macmillan.<br />
ExELL, REv. Josh PH S. The Biblical Illustrator. Romans.<br />
Two vols. Nisbet. 7s.6d. each.<br />
GooDHEART, C. A. Advent Thoughts on the Lord’s<br />
Prayer. S.P.C.K. 6d.<br />
GOULBURN, E. M. Thoughts on Passages of Holy Scrip-<br />
ture. J. Parker.<br />
GREGORY, REv. S. Among the Roses: and other Sermons<br />
to Children. W.M.S.S.A. 3s. 6d.<br />
HUGHEs, REv. Hugh PRICE. Essential Christianity : a<br />
Series of Explanatory Sermons. Isbister. 3s. 6d.<br />
KEMPIs, THOMAs A. Meditations on the Life of Christ.<br />
Third edition. With the original preface by the late<br />
Rev. S. Kettlewell. Oxford and London : Parker. 5s.<br />
LIDDON, H. P. Clerical Life and Work: a Collection of<br />
Sermons, with an Essay. Longmans. 58.<br />
MALDONATUs, JoBN. A Commentary on the Holy Gospels:<br />
St. Matthew’s Gospel. Translated and edited from the<br />
original Latin by George J. Davie. Part VI. Hodges,<br />
Paper covers, Is. net.<br />
MATHESON, REv. GEORGE. Searchings in the Silence, a<br />
Series of Devotional Meditations. Cassell. 3s. 6d.<br />
MoRRIs, FATHER JOHN. Journals kept during times of<br />
Retreat. Selected and edited by Father J. H. Pollen.<br />
Burns and Oates. 6s.<br />
MoxLY, REv. J. H. S. What Bible Truth is according to<br />
the S.P.C.K.—A Protest. Tivington, Percival. Paper<br />
Covers, Is.<br />
NICOLL, REv. RoPERTson. Ten-Minute Sermons. Isbister. .<br />
3s. 6d.<br />
OxFORD CHURCH-LESSONS BIBLE FOR THE LECTERN, con-<br />
taining the Old and New Testaments with the Books of<br />
the Apocrypha, marked throughout as appointed to be<br />
read in Churches. Oxford, University Press. English<br />
royal 4to., 36s. to subscribers.<br />
PULPIT COMMENTARY, edited by the Very Rev. H. D. M.<br />
Spence and by the Rev. Joseph S. Exell. Wol. I.,<br />
St. Matthew. 2 Is.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 192 (#206) ############################################<br />
<br />
192<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
RELIGION IN Common LIFE : A Course of Sermons<br />
Delivered at St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields by Warious<br />
IPreachers. Elliot Stock.<br />
ROCK, DR. DANIEL. The Hierurgia ; or, the Holy Sacrifice<br />
of the Mass. With Notes and Dissertations. New and<br />
revised edition, edited by W. H. James Weale. Parts<br />
III. and IV. John Hodges. 2s. net.<br />
SACRED Books of THE OLD TESTAMENT. A Critical Edi-<br />
tion of the Hebrew Text, printed in colours, with notes,<br />
prepared under the editorial direction of Paul Hempt.<br />
Part VIII., The Books of Samuel, by K. Budde (6s. 6d.);<br />
Part III., The Book of Leviticus, by S. K. Driver and<br />
H. A. White (2s. 6d.). Nutt.<br />
SHARPE, REv. JoHN. The Student's Handbook to the<br />
Psalms. Eyre and Spottiswoode.<br />
STUBBs, C. W., D.D. Christus Imperator, a Series of Lec-<br />
ture-Sermons on the Universal Empire of Christianity.<br />
Edited by. Macmillan. 6s.<br />
SwºTE, HENRY B. The Old Testament in Greek, according<br />
to the Septuagint. Edited by. Vol. III.-Hosea to 4<br />
Maccabees. Cambridge University Press. 7s. 6d.<br />
WERITIES of RELIGION ; Twelve Sermons. By J. Hamil-<br />
ton Thom, R. A. Armstrong, and others. Philip Green.<br />
Is. 6d.<br />
History and Biography,<br />
ANDERSON, JEssIE A. Lewis Morrison-Grant : His Life,<br />
Letters, and Last Poems. Edited by. Alex. Gardner.<br />
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THE AUTHOR.<br />
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which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at mo ea pense to themselves<br />
ea:cept the cost of the stamp.<br />
4. AscERTAIN WEAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVES To<br />
BOTH sides BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
mess whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself.<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTs.-Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom yow appoint as your<br />
agent. Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone.<br />
6. CoST OF PRODUCTION.——Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures.<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.–Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society.<br />
8. FUTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice.<br />
T 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 202 (#216) ############################################<br />
<br />
2O2<br />
THE AUTHOR,<br />
Io. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a MS. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work.<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration.<br />
12. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.—Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTS. —-Keep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<br />
I4. 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 />
Society’s Offices :-<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY,<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel's opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Senºl to the Editor of the Awthor notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
*- = 2=º<br />
THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE,<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
I. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. With, when<br />
necessary, the assistance of the legal advisers of the Syndi-<br />
cate, it concludes agreements, collects royalties, examines<br />
and passes accounts, and generally relieves members of the<br />
trouble of managing business details.<br />
2. That the expenses of the Authors' Syndicate are<br />
defrayed solely out of the commission charged on rights<br />
placed through its intervention. Notice is, however,<br />
hereby given that in all cases where there is no current<br />
account, a booking fee is charged to cover postage and<br />
porterage.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works for none but those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiation<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least four days’<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. 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 />
7. 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 />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department" for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted ” has been opened. Members anxious<br />
to obtain literary or artistic work are invited to com-<br />
municate with the Manager.<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 />
NOTICES.<br />
HE Editor of the Awthor 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 />
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 Awthor 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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<br />
All persons engaged in literary work of any kind, whether<br />
members of the Society or not, are invited to communicate<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 203 (#217) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
2O3<br />
to the Editor any points connected with their work which<br />
it would be advisable in the general interest to publish.<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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest P Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 call it.<br />
*-* -º<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY,<br />
I.—CANADIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
HE sudden death of Sir John Thompson has<br />
probably put off the consideration of the<br />
Canadian claims for a time. A memorial<br />
on the subject will be drawn up by the committee<br />
after the Christmas and New Year Vacation.<br />
Meantime, the following is a resumé of the whole<br />
Case. It appeared in the Times of Dec. I I, and<br />
is here reproduced in full, by special permission,<br />
for which we record our best thanks:—<br />
“The history of the discussion extends over no<br />
less a period than fifty years, beginning with<br />
the Imperial Copyright Act of 1842, and the<br />
details have been made the subject of so<br />
much argument on either side that there is,<br />
unfortunately, little room to hope for much<br />
modification of opposite opinion. Half a century<br />
of contention, carried on chiefly by means of<br />
official correspondence that tends to grow more<br />
voluminous year by year as the means of com-<br />
munication become more rapid, has remained<br />
practically barren of result. The Canadian copy-<br />
right question, with certain modifications deemed<br />
wholly insufficient by the Canadian Government,<br />
has remained almost where it was placed in 1842.<br />
The incidents which have marked its progress are<br />
so few that they can be catalogued in a para-<br />
graph ; the arguments to which they have given<br />
rise demand some courage for their mastery on<br />
the part of the student of colonial history.<br />
“Briefly, the principal facts which need to be<br />
taken note of in relation to Canadian copyright<br />
are as follows: The Imperial Copyright Act of<br />
1842 gives copyright throughout the whole of<br />
Her Majesty dominions to any book published in<br />
the United Kingdom, whether it be printed or not<br />
in the United Kingdom, or whether it be written<br />
by a British subject or not. The intention was<br />
manifestly to provide that British literature<br />
should have free circulation through British<br />
territory. As a matter of fact, the conditions of<br />
trade in the United Kingdom were such that the<br />
editions published under the protection of the<br />
Copyright Act were too expensive for the colonial<br />
market, and colonial readers, instead of being<br />
freely supplied with British books, were almost<br />
entirely deprived of them. To remedy this evil<br />
an Imperial Act of 1847, known as the Foreign<br />
Reprints Act, provided that, so long as the<br />
Imperial Government were satisfied that sufficient<br />
protection was given to the author's rights in any<br />
given colony, the prohibition to permit the entry<br />
of cheap foreign reprints enforced by the Act of<br />
1842 might by Order in Council be suspended.<br />
Under this Act the Canadian Government<br />
imposed a nominal author's royalty of 12% per<br />
cent., to be collected at the custom-houses by the<br />
Canadian Government and paid to the British<br />
Government for the benefit of the author.<br />
Foreign reprints were consequently admitted to<br />
the advantage of the Canadian reading public<br />
and to the manifest disadvantage of the Canadian<br />
book trade.<br />
“In the meantime the colonies were developing<br />
powers of self-government under the system of<br />
Parliamentary responsibility which had been con-<br />
ceded to Canada in 1841, only one year before the<br />
passing of the Imperial Copyright Act. The<br />
confederation of the provinces of the Dominion of<br />
Canada took place in 1867, and in the British<br />
North America Act of that year, by which the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 204 (#218) ############################################<br />
<br />
2O4.<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
conditions of confederation are determined, copy-<br />
right ranks among the subjects over which power<br />
was given to the Parliament of Canada to legis-<br />
late. But under a previous Act of 1865, known<br />
as the Colonial Laws Walidity Act, any colonial<br />
law which is any respects repugnant to the provi-<br />
sions of any Act of Parliament extending to the<br />
colony is read subject to the Act, and remains<br />
void “to the extent of such repugnancy.” In so<br />
far, therefore, as any Canadian legislation upon<br />
copyright conflicts with Imperial legislation<br />
extending to the colony it remains void, notwith-<br />
standing the provisions of the British North<br />
America Act<br />
“The results of these two-handed provisions<br />
have been those that might have been anticipated.<br />
A Canadian Copyright Act of 1875 laid down the<br />
conditions of local copyright for Canadian<br />
authors, who, as their works are not necessarily<br />
published in the United Kingdom, were not pro-<br />
tected by the Imperial Act, The Canadian Act<br />
was subjected to some wrangle, but was made law<br />
by an Insperial Confirming Act. Then followed,<br />
in consequence of the discussion upon the Act,<br />
the Copyright Commission of 1876. A consolida-<br />
tion Bill intended to give effect to the recommen-<br />
dations of the Commission did not become law.<br />
More negotiations followed, and led in the course<br />
of ten years to the Berne Convention and the<br />
International Copyright Act of 1886.<br />
“The Berne Convention, of which the object<br />
was to create an international union for the protec-<br />
tion of literary and artistic property, was signed<br />
on Sept. 9, 1886. By a protocol attached to the<br />
Convention the colonies and foreign possessions<br />
of Great Britain were included with the United<br />
Kingdom, with power reserved to them to<br />
denounce the treaty, in so far as it concerns them,<br />
upon giving twelve months’ notice to that effect.<br />
Under the International Copyright Act of the<br />
same year, which was passed for the purpose of<br />
giving effect to the Berne Convention, it was<br />
provided that the author of a book first published<br />
in a colony has copyright throughout the whole<br />
of the Queen's dominions. Canada, it should be<br />
observed, formally assented to the Imperial Act<br />
of 1886, and to a subsequent Order in Council of<br />
1887, by which effect was given to it in the colo-<br />
nies. By the Berne Convention the principle of<br />
International copyright for all countries belong-<br />
ing to the Union was established. By the Impe-<br />
rial Act of 1886 the supplementary principle of<br />
copyright throughout all the British possessions<br />
was established for the Empire.<br />
“To other members of the Copyright Union,<br />
whether international or Imperial, those provi-<br />
sions have been found to be of great value. The<br />
geographical position of Canada made her case<br />
exceptional. The United States, which is the<br />
largest reproducer of English publications,<br />
borders the Canadian frontier for some thousands<br />
of miles. Under the provisions of the Berne<br />
Convention Canada was prevented from repro-<br />
ducing the works not ouly of British copyright<br />
holders, but of the copyright holders of the entire<br />
Union without due compensation to the author,<br />
while her nearest neighbour, publishing in the<br />
same language for a reading public of which the<br />
requirements were practically identical, was not a<br />
member of the Union, and was consequently free<br />
to reproduce at will and flood the markets of the<br />
continents with cheap reprints, against which the<br />
Canadian book trade could not contend. The<br />
privilege given in return to Canadian authors of<br />
copyright throughout the Union remained prac-<br />
tically void by reason of the small number of<br />
authors who could profit by it. The Berne Con-<br />
vention, therefore, rendered the position of Canada.<br />
so much the worse by increasing the number of<br />
copyright holders to whom Canadian publishers<br />
were bound to give compensation by as many<br />
countries, colonies, and British possessions as<br />
joined the Union. As a matter of fact, the read-<br />
ing public of the Dominion of Canada has been,<br />
and is, principally supplied with British literature<br />
by American reprints. It is worth while in this<br />
connection to point out that the interests which<br />
are opposed to each other in this controversy are<br />
not those of British authors and Canadian authors,<br />
or of British authors and the Canadian public,<br />
but of British authors and Canadian publishers.<br />
“These facts being very generally recognised<br />
in Canada, where discontent with the Imperial<br />
restrictions upon copyright has been persistent<br />
ever since the effect of the Act of 1842 was<br />
realised, a Canadian Act was passed by the<br />
Dominion Parliament in 1889, by which it was<br />
proposed that, instead of the universal copyright<br />
conveyed by the Copyright Union under the Con-<br />
vention of Berne, copyright in Canada should be<br />
given to any person domiciled in Canada or the<br />
British possessions and to the citizen of any<br />
country having an international copyright treaty<br />
with the United Kingdom on certain conditions<br />
of publishing and registration, including the pro-<br />
vision that the book shall be printed and pub-<br />
lished in Canada within one month after first<br />
publication elsewhere. The Act contains a<br />
further licensing clause, to the effect that, when<br />
copyright has not been obtained, the book may<br />
be published under licence in Canada, but the<br />
author's rights shall be safeguarded by a IO per<br />
cent. royalty, which shall be the price paid for<br />
the licence. Such an Act would, of course,<br />
render it necessary for Canada to withdraw from<br />
the Copyright Union, and the Canadian Govern-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 205 (#219) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
205<br />
ment accordingly gave notice that it wished, in so<br />
far as it were concerned, to denounce the Berne<br />
Convention.<br />
“The Act could not, however, become law with-<br />
out receiving the sanction of Her Majesty's<br />
Government, and this sanction has been with-<br />
held. In the opinion of the law officers of the<br />
Crown, formally reported on Dec. 31, 1889, the<br />
powers of legislation conferred on the Dominion<br />
Parliament by the British North America Act do<br />
not authorise that Parliament to amend or repeal,<br />
so far as relates to Canada, an Imperial Act con-<br />
ferring privileges within Canada. It will readily<br />
be conceived that this decision has not been<br />
received with acquiescence in Canada..' The ques-<br />
tion has been raised by it from a discussion of the<br />
relative interests of authors and publishers to the<br />
higher level of a question of self-government.<br />
Feeling in Canada runs very strongly upon the<br />
point. Sir John Thompson, both as Minister of<br />
Justice in 1889 and later as Prime Minister of<br />
the Dominion, has stoutly defended the self-<br />
governing rights of the colony he represents and<br />
the competency of the Dominion Parliament to<br />
pass an amending Act. Powers which include the<br />
right to impose customs duties upon British<br />
goods must, it is held, give power to defend the<br />
local interest of any trade. Colonial opinion will<br />
not easily accept a limitation, the justice of which<br />
can be disputed, of constitutional rights, and it<br />
is not improbable that the whole question may<br />
have to be decided upon this wider issue.<br />
“The latest modification of the technical aspect<br />
of the question has been produced by the<br />
American Copyright Act of 1891, under which<br />
any British subject may obtain copyright in the<br />
United States on condition that at least two<br />
copies of the book are printed from type set<br />
within the United States on or before publication<br />
elsewhere. In return for this, American subjects<br />
may obtain copyright throughout British posses-<br />
sions on the same terms as British subjects. On<br />
the ground that the American Act and the<br />
President’s proclamation do not constitute an<br />
international copyright treaty Canada refused to<br />
admit citizens of the United States to the enjoy-<br />
ment of copyright privileges within the limits of<br />
the Dominion. This Canada is held to have the<br />
right to do under the Act of 1875, which was<br />
confirmed by the Imperial Act of the same year.<br />
“What is now desired by the Government of<br />
Canada is that an Imperial confirming Act shall<br />
be passed to give the force of law to the still<br />
inoperative Canadian Act of 1889. The objections<br />
of the Imperial Government to such a course<br />
are—that to do as Canada desires involves an<br />
abandonment of the policy of international and<br />
Imperial copyright which was, after difficulty,<br />
asserted six years ago; that it is inconsistent<br />
with the policy of making copyright independent<br />
of the place of printing, which has always been<br />
upheld by Great Britain; that it would have the<br />
effect of introducing a modification into the con-<br />
ditions under which the United States consented<br />
to the agreement of 1891 ; and that it would be<br />
injurious to the interests of British authors, by<br />
whom the Canadian market is principally sup-<br />
plied. It is urged on behalf of British authors<br />
that the whole Canadian case is based on the<br />
fallacy that Canadian publishers and printers<br />
have a right to the profits of publishing and<br />
printing the works of British authors, whereas in<br />
reality the profit of their work belongs to the<br />
authors themselves. When the arguments of the<br />
right of self-government are brought forward, it is<br />
replied that no conceivable British right of self-<br />
government can include the right to confiscate<br />
the property of unoffending members of society.<br />
Unquestionably the adjustment of the case on<br />
mutually satisfactory grounds is rendered difficult<br />
by the absence of any body of Canadian authors<br />
to whom reciprocal privileges under the Copyright<br />
Acts can offer substantial advantages. As it<br />
stands, the advantage of authors is all on one<br />
side, and the advantage of publishers is on the<br />
other. That the authors should be British and<br />
the publishers Canadian accentuates the sharp-<br />
ness of a contest which, even without the inter-<br />
vention of a governing body on each side, we are<br />
accustomed to hear a good deal of in this country.<br />
It also, however, helps to indicate clearly the<br />
direction in which compromise may most hope-<br />
fully be looked for, and a practical provision on<br />
the part of the Canadian Government by which<br />
the rights of authors may be fully safeguarded<br />
may, perhaps, help to bring the long controversy<br />
to a close.”<br />
II.-INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.<br />
At a meeting of the American “Authors’<br />
Guild,” held in New York, Nov. 2 I, a resolution<br />
was proposed to reopen the International Copy-<br />
right Law by a petition to Congress for its<br />
amendment. The discussion of the resolution<br />
was adjourned to the regular meeting in<br />
December, when the project of publishing a<br />
literary quarterly will also be considered by the<br />
Guild.—Athenaeum, Dec. 8.<br />
III.-PUBLISHED ON COMMISSION.<br />
The following is (I) a publisher's estimate for<br />
the cost of production of a book forming 540 pp.<br />
at 340 words to a page in long primer type;<br />
and (2) the estimate according to the Society's<br />
book called “The Cost of Production.”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 206 (#220) ############################################<br />
<br />
2O6<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I. Publisher's estimate without advertising and<br />
|binding of 300 only :<br />
For an edition of 500 copies, 3148.<br />
2 3 5 3 93 750 copies, 3.165.<br />
55 ,, IOOO copies, 317O.<br />
33<br />
II. Here is the Society’s estimate of exactly<br />
the same work in the same type—remember that<br />
we can get the work done for so much, and well<br />
done :<br />
For an edition of 500 copies, 38 IOO.<br />
750 copies, 31 I5.<br />
55 55 , IOOO copies, 3145.<br />
One would like the general opinion on the<br />
character of the publisher who is capable of<br />
sending out such an estimate. And, one would<br />
ask, do not figures such as these show the absolute<br />
necessity of supporting the only machinery which<br />
exposes these things P<br />
33 33 35<br />
IV.-A HoPELEss CASE.<br />
The following is a case which has happened<br />
more than once, and should be noted:<br />
A. B. writes an article or several articles for a<br />
journal which is, though the contributor does not<br />
know it, on its last legs, financially. He asks<br />
the editor for a cheque, and gets no reply. He<br />
writes again, and still gets no reply. He calls,<br />
and cannot see the editor. Then he seeks the<br />
aid of the Society. Now this, one would think,<br />
is eminently a case in which the Society should<br />
be useful. In fact, there are dozens of similar<br />
cases in which the proprietor of a journal has<br />
been made to pay by the action of the secre-<br />
tary. But in this case the secretary discovers<br />
the unpleasant fact that the paper has been<br />
taken over and is being run by and for the<br />
debenture holders. This means that, though the<br />
secretary might take the case into the County<br />
Court and obtain a judgment, there would be no<br />
means whatever of enforcing that judgment,<br />
because the debenture holders have the first claim<br />
upon the proceeds of the paper. The only course,<br />
then, is to throw the paper into bankruptcy —<br />
a difficult and expensive task. A course, too, by<br />
which the creditor will gain only a paltry dividend,<br />
if anything. There is no publicity to County<br />
Court judgments, otherwise the mere facts of the<br />
case might cause the manager to pay rather than<br />
incur the discredit of the judgment. So that in<br />
such a case there seems no help at all.<br />
NOTES FROM PARIS,<br />
WER all the things that I had to say in this<br />
month's letter there hangs a very gloomy<br />
shadow, and turn and twist as I may I am<br />
always brought back to this most unhappy fact,<br />
that your Stevenson and mine no longer breathes<br />
our common air, and that thirst we as we may<br />
for the clear water of his lucid prose, there will<br />
be nothing from him any more nor ever again,<br />
for our gentle gentleman of letters lies for ever<br />
asleep on a mountain-top in an island in the<br />
southern Sea.<br />
I fancy that amongst those who deplore his loss<br />
few perhaps will be more distressed than Crockett<br />
and Weyman. Both spoke to me of him with<br />
high admiration and great pride in his apprecia-<br />
tion of their work, for to both of them he had<br />
written in high praise and encouragement. His<br />
portrait hangs in Crockett's work-room in his<br />
house on the moors by the Esk, and it is on the<br />
mantelpiece of Weyman's study in the Welsh<br />
frontier town. And now there is crape round<br />
it ; there and everywhere it is felt that our<br />
English peoples are poorer by a great-hearted<br />
gentleman, our English tongue is robbed of a<br />
clear and sweet exponent.<br />
The French press paid due tribute to the dead<br />
master, and in most of the leading papers there<br />
appeared admiring obituary notices. There is<br />
much in this, as as a general rule the French<br />
journalists know nothing of, and care less, for<br />
English writers. So that, if Stevenson’s death<br />
was recorded in columns of appreciative articles<br />
in the Parisian papers, it shows that his mastery<br />
was recognised here also. Some of the writers<br />
displayed a certain ignorance, and gave amongst<br />
the list of his works the names of books which he<br />
never wrote, but the intention was everywhere a<br />
good one, and there was comfort in this manifes-<br />
tion in a foreign land.<br />
I have seen Alphonse Daudet since my return to<br />
Paris, and he spoke to me with much anticipation<br />
of pleasure about his forthcoming visit to London.<br />
He, however, seems determined to preserve the<br />
strictest incognito whilst in England, and has<br />
begged me to state that, greatly touched as he is<br />
by the kindness of those who proposed to do him<br />
honour, his state of health will prevent him from<br />
appearing in public in any way.<br />
Emile Zola is being greatly attacked in the<br />
French papers for his Italian proceedings. In<br />
one caricature he is represented kneeling before<br />
Ring Humbert licking the royal boots. In<br />
another large coloured cartoon he is shown in the<br />
garb of a mountebank, grovelling before the King<br />
and Crispi, and the former is saying “Enough,<br />
enough, it really is enough.” All this is very<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 207 (#221) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
2O7<br />
unjust. I attribute these attacks partly to the<br />
hatred of Italy which has been felt in France<br />
ever since the Italians joined the Triple Alliance,<br />
but mainly to the jealousy with which Zola's<br />
unprecedented success and European popularity<br />
have filled the obscure scribes who are so<br />
attacking him. Zola answers them one and all<br />
with an immense shrug of his burly shoulders,<br />
and says, “Let them talk, as for me, I am setting<br />
to work.”<br />
S. R. Crockett has an adorable little daughter<br />
called “Maisie.” The other day a visitor called<br />
at Bank House in the absence of her parents, and<br />
was received by the young lady. Happening to<br />
notice a photograph of Mr. A. P. Watt in a place<br />
of honour in Mr. Crockett's study, he asked his<br />
little hostess who that gentleman might be.<br />
“Oh,” said Maisie, “that is the gentleman who<br />
gets papa his American copyrights.”<br />
The gentlemen who write reviews of books for<br />
the newspapers are, I presume, journalists,<br />
and their writings, by the same token, are<br />
journalism. Why then do these gentlemen use<br />
the expression “journalism ‘’ as a reproach in<br />
their critical appreciations. One often reads<br />
“this is not literature, it is journalism,” a<br />
strange remark coming from a professed<br />
journalist. It reminds one of the bird who<br />
befouls his own nest, for it implies that the<br />
writer has a fine contempt for his own writings,<br />
and it fills the reader with pity at the want of<br />
the writer's self-respect as a journalist.<br />
There is one critic in London—I am sorry that<br />
I do not know his name—who has a curious<br />
notion of the responsibilities of his craft. A<br />
book—it was rather an expensive book—was<br />
published in London last month, and copies of<br />
this book were issued for review two days before<br />
the actual date of publication. On the same<br />
evening a copy of this book was seen in the<br />
window of a well-known second-hand bookstall<br />
in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was marked at a<br />
reduced price, though it was uncut, and just as<br />
it had left the publisher's hands, and though it<br />
was the only copy of the book then for sale in<br />
London. It was evidently one of the copies<br />
which had issued that morning for review, and<br />
had fallen into the hands of a gentleman with<br />
peculiar views on the functions and duties of<br />
criticism. In France all press copies of books are<br />
stamped with a sign which marks them as such.<br />
The English publishers might adopt a similar<br />
blan.<br />
p Amongst the many books which I find on my<br />
table on my return to Paris is a very clever<br />
collection of prose poems in French, by “P. L.”<br />
This collection is entitled “Les Chansons de<br />
Bilitis,” and the poems are supposed to be a<br />
WOL. W.<br />
translation from a Greek poetess. They are<br />
preceded by a detailed biography of the imaginary<br />
songstress, and in a most skilful manner is the<br />
illusion maintained throughout a most charming<br />
and savoury book. “P. L.” stands for Pierre<br />
Louys, a young French poet of whom I have<br />
often spoken in these pages as a young littérateur<br />
of considerable performance and still greater<br />
promise. Pierre Louys is a true artist, with no<br />
other preoccupation in life beyond the cultus of<br />
beauty, a poet in every fibre. His translation of<br />
Meleager will be remembered, to mention only one<br />
of his little masterpieces.<br />
I met Maurice Barrés a night or two ago, and<br />
found him looking rather tired. I suppose the<br />
strain of editing a fighting paper, like La<br />
Cocarde, is a very heavy one. Yet he was<br />
enthusiastic and energetic as ever, and told me<br />
that, apart from his literary work (besides editing<br />
La Cocarde and contributing to it a daily leader,<br />
he is engaged on a new novel), he is actively pre-<br />
paring his parliamentary candidature in two con-<br />
stituencies, Neuilly and Nancy. We had a long<br />
conversation on journalistic blackmailing in Paris,<br />
and amongst other things he told me that just<br />
before his play, “La Journée Parlementaire,” was<br />
produced an offer was made to him by an indi-<br />
vidual representing a syndicate of Parisian news-<br />
papers, by which, on payment of a considerable<br />
sum, he could secure enthusiastic reports of his<br />
play, with the alternative of well, you can guess<br />
the alternative.<br />
Apropos of journalistic blackmailing in Paris, I<br />
imagine that nobody is more surprised at the<br />
turn which things have taken than the able<br />
editors who, arrested for the practice, are now<br />
languishing in Mazas gaol. For years they have<br />
been allowed undisturbed to practise their little<br />
industry, till they had been lulled into the<br />
illusion that what they were doing was recognised<br />
and admitted. Suddenly, after nearly a quarter<br />
of a century of toleration, they are swooped down<br />
upon and laid by the heels. I can imagine that<br />
they feel a real grievance against the authorities.<br />
I could write a volume on the practices of<br />
blackmailing in France, were I only to draw on<br />
my reminiscences of conversations I had on the<br />
subject with poor Ferdinand de Lesseps. The<br />
subject is, however, a nauseating one. I will only<br />
mention that I was once delegated to gag a<br />
provincial blackmailing journalist, and that each<br />
time that I paid him his monthly hush-money, I<br />
used to talk to him about his business. He<br />
seemed to think that he was acting in a perfectly<br />
straightforward manner. “I run my paper,”<br />
he used to say, “not from philanthropy, but<br />
as a commercial speculation, and I work what<br />
influence it gives me for all that it is worth.<br />
U<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 208 (#222) ############################################<br />
<br />
2O8<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
People must pay to get things put into my paper,<br />
and equally must they pay to keep things out,”<br />
We used to smoke cigarettes together, and got<br />
quite friendly in the end, for the man's turpitude<br />
was thorough, and one likes thoroughness of<br />
every kind, I was almost sorry when I heard<br />
that he had died in gaol, He was such an<br />
interesting study.<br />
It seems as if shortly there will be quite a<br />
colony of English men of letters residing in Paris.<br />
I have heard several, and not the least distin-<br />
guished amongst our contemporary writers,<br />
expressing the intention to go and live in the<br />
French capital. I think it is a mistake on their<br />
part, and I, for one, have never ceased regretting<br />
having settled down on what an old Yorkshire<br />
farmer de mes amis spoke to me of as “the<br />
wrong side of the watter, my lad.” Paris is<br />
uncomfortable, it is expensive, and the eternal<br />
foolishness which envelopes one here, ends by<br />
influencing disastrously one's views on men and<br />
on life. Besides, one forgets one's English. The<br />
tool blunts from disuse.<br />
I see that at a type-writing office in the City<br />
Mr. Hill’s idea of a roll of paper, as a substitute<br />
for sheets, has been taken up and put into prac-<br />
tice. Quite a crowd of people stand outside that<br />
office and watch the long coil as it unfolds<br />
itself.<br />
The “Quotidien Illustré,” a French imitation<br />
of the Daily Graphic, is the latest addition to the<br />
press of Paris. R. H. SHERA.R.D.<br />
123, Boulevard Magenta, Paris.<br />
*— a 2-º<br />
--<br />
NOTES AND NEWS,<br />
Y this time all the papers, daily and weekly,<br />
have paid their tribute of praise and regret<br />
to the memory of Louis Stevenson. Yet<br />
this paper, though late, must also lay its wreath<br />
upon that far-off island grave. For, indeed, while<br />
he lived, to talk of decadence was to betray<br />
incapacity. I do not think there is in our whole<br />
literature a finer piece of work than “Treasure<br />
Island.” I do not think there are anywhere more<br />
delightful essays than some of Stevenson's. We<br />
need not attempt to compare him with anybody<br />
—comparisons of genius are futile things; Scott is<br />
Scott ; Fielding ; Thackeray; every man of genius<br />
stands alone. Ilike all men of genius Stevenson<br />
was unequal; there were limitations in his powers;<br />
certain fields were closed to him ; he could not<br />
discourse of love, for instance. But for what he<br />
gave the world we must be thankful, for some of<br />
it will last, I believe, as long as the English<br />
language. -<br />
The immortality of a writer involves selection.<br />
As time goes on one piece after another drops out<br />
of notice and is forgotten, except for the student.<br />
Why? It is impossible to tell. Goldsmith has<br />
been practically reduced, except for the student, to<br />
the “Deserted Village,” “She Stoops to Conquer,”<br />
and the “Vicar of Wakefield;” Gray to the Elegy;<br />
of Southey’s voluminous poems one little poem only<br />
remains; Coleridge keeps his “Ancient Mariner.”<br />
Of more modern writers it would be invidious<br />
to speak; it is too early to guess what part of<br />
Tennyson will drop out of the general memory;<br />
what part of Browning will be preserved; but it<br />
would be interesting to learn what novels, if any,<br />
of Thackeray and Dickens are already beginning<br />
to show signs of approaching oblivion.<br />
The committee have received a large number of<br />
replies to their questions as to Net Prices. At<br />
their first meeting of the New Year the replies<br />
will be submitted to them and considered. Perhaps<br />
we shall be in a position to publish some resolu-<br />
tion on the subject next month.<br />
In an advertisement of a new periodical, “The<br />
Minster,” one observes with some surprise the<br />
name of Mr. George Gissing as the contributor of<br />
a story. With surprise, not because he ought not<br />
to be there, but because this powerful writer has<br />
never before, so far as I know, appeared in a<br />
serial. I hear now of other magazines which<br />
have at last found him out. I have never been<br />
able to understand the comparative silence with<br />
which the very fine work of this writer has been<br />
received. It is, perhaps, because his themes have<br />
been gloomy. The other writers in the new<br />
magazine are the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sir<br />
Edwin Arnold, Sir Benjamin Baker, the Head<br />
Master of Harrow, Corney Grain, Mr. George<br />
Spottiswoode, George Saintsbury, and James<br />
Payn. It is quite the Orthodox plan to begin<br />
with great names. At the same time, great names<br />
very often belong to those who are not great in<br />
literature. And, since we wish well to the new<br />
magazine, we would venture to suggest that<br />
literary popularity is most easily attained by<br />
names that are great in literature.<br />
The book trade may be in a very depressed<br />
condition, but there are six long columns of pub-<br />
lishers' advertisements in the Times of Dec. 18.<br />
This looks like a certain amount of confidence in<br />
the present as well as in the future. Whether the<br />
market is depressed or not, there is certainly no<br />
falling off in the output, the regulation of which<br />
is especially the business of the publishers. The<br />
author has not, and cannot have, any voice at all<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 209 (#223) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR,<br />
2O9<br />
in the output. I suppose that depression means,<br />
not a restricted output, but smaller editions; e.g.,<br />
for books of a certain class—say Autobiographies<br />
and Recollections—where there were formerly a<br />
thousand buyers there are now only five hundred.<br />
But, so long as the purchases by readers exceed<br />
the cost of production, so long will fresh books<br />
of the kind be produced. And so with every<br />
other kind of book.<br />
Mr. W. Pollard (Athenæum, Dec. 8) records<br />
the death of surely the very last of all the persons<br />
named in Charles Lamb's letters. Elizabeth,<br />
widow of Charles Tween, died at Hertford on<br />
Nov. 27, aged ninety-two. She was buried, Dec. 3,<br />
in Widford Churchyard, Hertfordshire, where<br />
Charles's grandmother, Mrs. Field, lies buried.<br />
Mrs. Tween was a Miss Norris, mentioned by<br />
Lamb in a letter to Henry Crabb Robinson of<br />
January, 1826. She, with her sister, opened a<br />
girls’ school, but married two brothers.<br />
The funeral was on Monday, Dec. 3, in Widford Church-<br />
yard, Hertfordshire; and the place has many things that<br />
recall recollections of Lamb and his writings. On entering<br />
the churchyard, we see on the left the gravestone of his<br />
grandmother, Mrs. Field, and the lettering requires renovat-<br />
ing. In front is the church.<br />
“On the green hill top,<br />
Hard by the house of prayer, a modest roof,<br />
And not distinguished from its neighbour-barn<br />
Save by a slender tapering length of spire,<br />
The grandame sleeps.”<br />
And on the right we are reminded of the opening of the<br />
first story in Mrs. Lamb’s “Mrs. Lester's School.” At<br />
Widford are the gravestones of Mrs. Elizabeth Norris<br />
(widow of Mr. Randal Norris), died July, 1843, and her<br />
son Richard. On the west side the church tower<br />
are a stile and footpath leading to the beautiful valley<br />
of the Ash close by, and just on the other side is the<br />
wilderness Charles Lamb describes in his “ Blakes moor in<br />
H–shire '' (fir, t essay, second series), and also names in<br />
“Rosamund Gray.” Just below the wilderness, and still<br />
nearer the church, stood the old Blakesware mansion where<br />
his grandmother was housekeeper, and which he describes<br />
in this essay. And on the rising ground to the east stood<br />
the cottage where Rosamund Gray lived with her grand-<br />
mother. On the hillside, just north of the church and<br />
valley, is Little Blakesware Farm, where Charles Lamb<br />
used to visit Mr. Tween, the then tenant.<br />
—-e--> --—-<br />
Does the free library injure the sale of books?<br />
At present there are comparatively few free<br />
libraries, and their chief effect, so far, has been to<br />
place books within the reach of those who could not<br />
afford to buy them; and this, I think, will be their<br />
effect when they are multiplied by fifty. Thus there<br />
are now in this country only about three hundred.<br />
It is not too much to expect that avery few years will<br />
see the free iibraries, great and small, enumerated<br />
at 15,000. Almost every good book will certainly<br />
be taken by all these libraries. That is to say, good<br />
histories and biographies, good books on popular<br />
science, favourite poets, favourite novelists, will<br />
all be taken; and, really, if no other purchaser<br />
appeared, the author would not do so badly. But<br />
I believe that the present purchasers will remain.<br />
The free libraries will lend books to that enormous<br />
class whose incomes are below £300 a year, and<br />
who cannot afford to buy books, and those who<br />
can afford to buy books will continue to do so.<br />
A man is on the prowl seeking to deceive. He<br />
calls himself Charles E. Winter. This is the<br />
story of a late attempt : “He called to see me in<br />
order, he said, to obtain leave to translate a story<br />
of mine. I could not give leave as I had sold the<br />
copyright, and he then asked if I could give him<br />
any type-writing, saying he had done some work<br />
for you’’—the editor of this Journal—“ and men-<br />
tioning other names of reputation in the literary<br />
world as a sort of guarantee. The end of it was<br />
that, influenced by a sad history he told of desti-<br />
tution, and also, perhaps, by his being evidentl<br />
a man of education—he spoke French really like<br />
a Frenchman—I gave him some money, and was<br />
foolish enough to trust him with the MS. of<br />
another story. Since then I have found out that<br />
the man is a fraud, and I have now seen a detec-<br />
tive who tells me that the man is already<br />
‘wanted by the police for having got money<br />
from somebody else in the same way.”<br />
A correspondent wrote some time ago—but his<br />
letter was mislaid—asking whether £12 was a<br />
fair price to pay for a volume of which an edition<br />
of 2000 was sold. The volume was a little book<br />
which sold for half-a-crown. An edition of two<br />
thousand would probably cost—there were special<br />
reasons why the advertising would cost little or<br />
nothing—about £70, or about 8%d. a copy.<br />
The enterprising publishers therefore, who sold<br />
this book at about Is. 6d. a copy, cleared 9}d, a<br />
copy, out of which they paid the author £12,<br />
and realised for themselves £65 odd. Was the<br />
transaction a fair one P One thinks that it was<br />
not.<br />
Here is a case which perhaps admits of argument.<br />
A half profit agreement ; a book which is sold at a<br />
high price; a return at the end of a year, showing<br />
the sale of some hundreds, with a loss of some-<br />
thing like 330—the exact amount does not matter,<br />
as the account is not disputed. That was<br />
twenty years ago. The author during all this<br />
time asked for no further return, having long since<br />
made up his mind that the book would not prove a<br />
pecuniary success. However, in some spare moment<br />
he did sit down and asked for a second return. It<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 210 (#224) ############################################<br />
<br />
2 I O<br />
THE<br />
AUTHOR.<br />
came in. It showed a yearly sale of about £30<br />
worth of the book, with an increased loss, after<br />
twenty years, of £55 or thereabouts. In other<br />
words, what has happened is this. The publisher<br />
wished to keep the author's name on his books, and<br />
on his lists. He has therefore gone on advertising<br />
the book in his list of standard works, every year<br />
spending in advertising a little more than he<br />
received. He has made the book an advertise-<br />
ment of himself. Nor, it seems, can the author<br />
complain. He passed without question the first<br />
account. In that furnished twenty years later he<br />
asked for a return of the advertisements for the<br />
last five years. A small sum was charged for<br />
advertising in the publisher's own magazine—it<br />
should not have been charged—but to dispute it<br />
would not remove the deficit. Therefore it was<br />
allowed to stand. Perhaps it may be said that<br />
the author was advertised as well as the publisher.<br />
The author says that he did not ask for the<br />
advertisement, that it did him no good, and that<br />
he did not want it. If all the remaining copies<br />
are sold the deficit cannot now be made good, and<br />
so he will not interfere.<br />
On p. 215 will be found a few contemporary notes<br />
on a very remarkable and unprecedented depres-<br />
sion in the book market. It is amazing to think<br />
that only sixty years ago the leading publishers<br />
had no announcements at all to make in the<br />
autumn. Six hundred printers out of work at a<br />
time when all the London books were printed in<br />
London; nothing risked except reprints of<br />
favourite authors; not until the end of the year<br />
are there any books, and then only a hundred.<br />
The whole history of this depression, the length<br />
of its duration, and the revival of the demand<br />
for books would form a chapter of interest in<br />
the history of English literature.<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
*-- - --"<br />
*-*.<br />
F EU IL LET ON,<br />
IN THE PORCH.<br />
By SHAN F. BULLOCK, Author of “The Awkward Squad.”<br />
& 4 ELL | * said Greenback, as the outer<br />
door of the Judgment Hall closed<br />
swiftly behind White and Cold,<br />
“Well! What luck P’’<br />
White and Cold ruffled her leaves, gave a little<br />
shiver of disgust, then suddenly flung back her<br />
front cover.<br />
“Look there !” cried she. “I look there ! Is<br />
it not shameful ? Bedaubed like that by such a<br />
Crew—Oh! such a crew Look –“ Damned,’<br />
* Damned,’ ‘Damned,’ stamped all over my<br />
pretty whiteness— Damnation and finger-marks,<br />
there's my portion.”<br />
Greenback looked with pity at his little friend.<br />
What a change | But an hour ago they had<br />
parted there in the porch, and she had gone in<br />
for judgment so youthfully happy and fresh and<br />
hopeful; now the bolt was shot behind her, and<br />
she was back—an outcast, battered, disfigured,<br />
surely condemned. What a change P<br />
“Poor dear,” he murmured. “Poor dear ! So<br />
complete—so complete.” -<br />
“Complete?” cried White and Cold, “I should<br />
think it was. I tell you I was damned before one<br />
of their vile eyes ever saw me. They sat hunger-<br />
ing for me with their daggers drawn. Look!<br />
not twenty of my pages cut, not fifty of m<br />
verses read, not one verdict even initialled—Oh!<br />
such a crew. One looked at my title-page,<br />
‘Phew!’ quoth he, ‘New man,’ and scribbled<br />
* Damned ;’ another read two lines, muttered<br />
“Minor, very minor,’ and wrote his verdict;<br />
another read five lines, ‘ Rot,” said he, and wrote<br />
worse—and so on from deep to deep. Poetry !<br />
What know they of poetry P Critics! Just<br />
heaven—Critics l—Oh the travail and fond<br />
hopes 52<br />
“Poor dear,” murmured Greenback. “Poor<br />
dear! I’m so sorry–Not even one kind word.”<br />
“Oh yes, there's one—you'll find it there near<br />
the bottom—a woman wrote it, a little ugly body<br />
who turned paler at sight of Long-hair's name on<br />
the title-page, and smiled as she read here and<br />
there. Can’t you find it P”<br />
“Ah !” said Greenback. “Yes, I see—damned<br />
with faint praise. Poor child.”<br />
“Oh I don’t want your pity,” cried White and<br />
Cold. “No | It's all a conspiracy. I know it is.<br />
I go this way doomed to daggers and destruction,<br />
you go that to wreaths and glory. Why? Why,<br />
I say? Why because I’m a first child, a girl, the<br />
daughter of a long-haired nobody; because my<br />
race has fallen among the Philistines; because I<br />
trace my descent from Homer through the<br />
generations. You smile P Yes, you can afford to<br />
smile. You're a seventh child; the world was<br />
waiting for you ; the-the person who owns you<br />
is somebody. What of you both P. He was long<br />
enough under a cloud at first; and you—why<br />
you were born piecemeal, scattered here and there<br />
about the world, and then collected into your<br />
shabby green covers. Bah! Collected / Essays /<br />
Old Sober.sides, what of you? Why, you’re a<br />
plebeian—a modern—Addison is your—”<br />
“Easy, easy,” said Greenback in his urbanest<br />
manner. “Why all this folly, child? I’m beyond<br />
all that you know, and really—”<br />
“Oh, yes; you’re most superior, I know. All<br />
gentlemen are. Why did you not keep to your<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 211 (#225) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
2 H I<br />
word, though P Any gentleman can do that. You<br />
promised before we left the Row to stand by me<br />
and take your fate with me at the same hands.<br />
But no ; you must leave me at the door, and<br />
sneak off to the the professionals—the big pots—<br />
the men who always write sweet things and sign<br />
them—”<br />
“Really, madam,” returned Greenback, “I<br />
must beg of you to keep your vulgar sneers for<br />
your equals. As a gentleman I offered you my<br />
protection to the extent of my ability; more I<br />
could not do. Like yourself I had to take the<br />
chances of war—”<br />
“Chances of fiddle-sticks | Chances of nincom-<br />
poops ? What chance had I?”<br />
“Madam,” said Greenback severely, “enough of<br />
this. You had your chance like another, and let<br />
me say that I cannot bring myself at all to look<br />
at the art of criticism from your standpoint—”<br />
“Of course you can’t. You get the sugar-<br />
plums, I get the physic.”<br />
“Madam, enough. Let us call a truce to these<br />
trivialities. The trial is over; the door is closed<br />
on us both ; our fates assigned us. Madam, our<br />
ways now must part. Thither, out into the<br />
world and the sunshine, lies my path. Yours—<br />
You—Ah, my poor child! My poor child !”<br />
“Well, what of me? I suppose you think I<br />
can’t take care—”<br />
“No, no! Not that. Have you not heard?<br />
Do you not know? That place of doom and<br />
buried hopes; do you not know of it?”<br />
“What P Where P What 2 ”<br />
“Ah, child, thank Heaven for youth and inno-<br />
cence. Knowledge is such a sad burden. . . .<br />
Yes! perhaps you had better know. My child,<br />
out there, beyond the sun and the light, is a place<br />
of dread and despair. Dank fogs envelop it,<br />
despairing voices haunt it, a gaunt precipice over-<br />
hangs and cuts it off from this world of chance.<br />
Oh verily a region of fog and forgetfulness.<br />
And thither, day by day, men come, and now with<br />
scorn, now with ringing laughter, sometimes,<br />
perhaps, with regret, cry, “Over, over !’ and send<br />
fluttering down into the darkness the unfortunate<br />
children of folly and conceit—"<br />
“Oh, oh! Children? What children? Not— ?”<br />
“Yes, child—the books that were born only,<br />
sooner or later, to die.”<br />
“Books All of them P Every one?<br />
not every one! Surely not—not me, too !”<br />
“Yes, sweetheart—you, too.”<br />
“Oh no, no l Not so soon.<br />
soon 2 ”<br />
“It is cruel—but kind. Child, I fear me your<br />
shrift will be short.”<br />
Oh I<br />
Did you say<br />
“Oh, no ! Why a day ago, an hour ago, I was<br />
but born. Did you say soon P Why, I haven't<br />
VOL. V. - -<br />
yet seen the sun' What! all this pretty finery<br />
—all of it, you, say? All, is all to go down—<br />
down P. Ah! mercy, mercy l’’<br />
“Sweetheart,” said Greenback very tenderly,<br />
“be brave. It is soon over—few in the end<br />
escape. Better over at once, maybe, than after<br />
a cheerless struggle in the storms and the<br />
twilight.<br />
“Oh ! but so soon—so soon—only an hour of<br />
life. It is shameful! I’ve had no chance. I<br />
tell you it will be murder—-yes, murder. For,<br />
look you, I am alive, every page of me is<br />
throbbing alive. Ah and the brutes would<br />
murder me. Ah comrade—keep them back—<br />
only for one day, one gleam of the sunshine.”<br />
“Impossible,” muttered Greenback. “It is<br />
impossible.”<br />
“Oh the injustice, the cruelty, the folly of it<br />
all. You say that voices haunt that—that place.<br />
What voices? Can the dead cry? What voices?<br />
Why those of maidens such as I am, ay! and of<br />
men, too, and women who have been buried<br />
alive. Hark! you can hear them wailing—<br />
wailing hopelessly. Oh! the injustice—the bitter<br />
Cup,”<br />
Greenback let his little friend run on, and him-<br />
self fell a thinking. Was it true, any of this that<br />
White and Cold in her frenzy was saying? Did<br />
anything alive ever go fluttering down P. Whose<br />
were those voices P Surely sometimes mistakes<br />
were made — mistakes born of hurry and<br />
prejudice, perhaps of ignorance P Surely some-<br />
times a book—maybe just born, maybe having<br />
run its course—with just a spark of life between<br />
its covers went over, some jewel that were worth .<br />
the snatching. TXown in that melancholy region<br />
were there not live things—golden pages,<br />
sentences, lines, phrases—buried eternally beneath<br />
mountains of stupidity and vanity ? The perfect<br />
line in a maze of doggerel, a noble sentence<br />
standing out from a dreary flatness, a page here<br />
and there torn from experience, and telling the<br />
story of a heart—surely often and often these<br />
had come unheralded, gone unnoticed, and left<br />
the world the poorer. Write, write, men were<br />
ever writing—could the most hopeless dullaro<br />
among them sit always and never chance on the<br />
happy phrase, the haunting cadence; never hear<br />
once from heaven a whisper of the gods P. This<br />
little butterfly, now lying all crushed and hopeless,<br />
could it be that all her glitter was mere dross<br />
and vanity ? -<br />
“Come, sweetheart,” he said at last, “ Cheer<br />
up, now ; all is not over yet. Come! stand for<br />
judgment and let me be your critic.”<br />
So White and Cold fluttered and twirled and<br />
aired her little graces, and Greenback looked<br />
gravely on. Those inside the door had not been<br />
X<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 212 (#226) ############################################<br />
<br />
212<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
far wrong, he thought; she had virtues, but she<br />
was no divinity; there was glitter, but no gold;<br />
the best she could show was now and then a<br />
happy pose, a graceful turn, and once, he thought,<br />
a flash of passion. No | Salvation was not for her<br />
nor for her kind; still, she was not quite unworthy,<br />
the gold might have flashed somewhere. And—<br />
and surely among all the others, her unfortunate<br />
companions in adversity, the gold if sought for,<br />
must have flashed somewhere P Surely not to<br />
have sought, sought eagerly, thought Greenback,<br />
can only be reckoned as foolishness in the ways<br />
of man. Why, he himself, only for his parentage,<br />
might easily have gone over.<br />
“You are right, my dear,” he said presently,<br />
“quite right. It is an inhuman thing thus to<br />
destroy ruthlessly what might well contain hidden<br />
treasure most precious.”<br />
“Ah, liknew it,” cried White and Cold, “I knew<br />
it ! I wanted only a chance.”<br />
“I was speaking generally, child,” said Green-<br />
back hurriedly.<br />
“Then—then—What are you, too, among<br />
my enemies? You, too, blind?”<br />
“Ah, child, what matters it P Did I see genius<br />
written on your every leaf what could I avail?<br />
Nothing.”<br />
“Nothing ! Do nothing P<br />
ou say there is no hope P’’<br />
... “It would be cruel to say you false,” murmured<br />
Greenback. “Child, there is no hope.”<br />
“No hope P Oh ! the living tomb—oh ! the<br />
voices wailing—oh Sir, Sir, do something, save<br />
me for one hour ! ”<br />
“My child,” answered Greenback very gravely,<br />
“what you ask is impossible. Sorely do I regret<br />
your fate, fervently do I wish it were otherwise;<br />
but in this matter, as in all, we are helpless. It<br />
is hard—Ah! would that long ago, when the<br />
Master was bending over me, I had had the<br />
thoughts which now I have I should have<br />
whispered: “Write, Master, write and warn the<br />
world of its folly. It knows not what it does—<br />
daily it is casting away treasure. The workers in<br />
the Hall of Judgment are weary and grown<br />
callous; they have no leisure in which to perform<br />
what to be effective must be a labour of love.<br />
But have not you, my Master, called (Ay! spoken<br />
it to myself) this an age of Amateur well-doing,<br />
of societies founded everywhere for the protection<br />
of the weak, and the prevention of wrong-doing?<br />
And have I not shown you wrong; are not these<br />
weak for whom I plead? What work more noble,<br />
more glorious and beneficent could learned men,<br />
of taste also and leisure (of you, revered Master,<br />
and your peers I speak), hope to lay hand to than<br />
the duties which should appertain to a Society<br />
solidly founded, honestly supported, and having<br />
Do you mean—do<br />
for its object the Rescue of Jewels from the<br />
Wastes of Literature P Go out, my Master, go<br />
out and raise your voice; it is powerful; the<br />
world will hear you; countless generations shall<br />
call you blessed.’ So should I have spoken, child;<br />
and—”<br />
“But now—even now it is not too late. The<br />
Master | tell him, tell him—ask him to save<br />
me!” .<br />
“My child, take heart and be brave—to struggle<br />
and cry is folly. You know not the world; it is<br />
slow to hear, and slower to move. And the<br />
Master—alas ! I am not the Master's keeper,<br />
and his ear just now is turned from me. But I<br />
promise you that some day his voice shall be<br />
raised, and this Society of which—”<br />
“Yes, yes—but I shall have gone!”<br />
“Gome—gone—we all go—go and are forgotten.<br />
Ah, child ! is there no consolation in the thought<br />
that your sacrifice may to future generations<br />
bring great good P”<br />
“Consolation | Consolation in that pit of hell!<br />
Lost, lost What do I care about future genera-<br />
tions P. Oh my pretty finery What<br />
going? Leaving me P Is it good bye?”<br />
“It is good-bye, sweetheart. The world calls<br />
me, and I must go. Keep heart, and die<br />
bravely.”<br />
“Die | Die ' And is this the end ?<br />
face—that alone P”<br />
“Be brave my child—and good bye.”<br />
“—All alone—Never see you again—Oh! not<br />
good bye.”<br />
“Ah well—who knows—sooner or later we all,<br />
or nearly all, come there. Who knows? Well,<br />
Sweetheart, not good bye then, but au revoir.”<br />
Must I<br />
*— — —”-- :<br />
A LITERARY CORNER.<br />
| WONDER how many of the men and<br />
- women, who monthly turn to the pages of<br />
the Author, have ever explored the pleasant<br />
precincts of Camilla Lacey, which lie within easy<br />
reach of many of their number. It was recently<br />
the good fortune of the present writer to see all<br />
that is now left of this literary haunt, and to<br />
follow for a brief while the footsteps of an almost<br />
forgotten literary coterie. For to this little corner<br />
of the Surrey Hills the French emigrés were irre-<br />
sistibly attracted in the days when the names of<br />
Talleyrand, Narbonne, and Madame de Stäel were<br />
on everybody’s lips.<br />
The little village was even in those days<br />
remarkable for shady groves and towering trees,<br />
and for its pretty gardens and small cottages, in<br />
one of which Madame d’Arblay lived.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 213 (#227) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
2 I 3<br />
To-day, indeed, the little homestead is gone,<br />
with its rustic wooden porch and low white walls,<br />
with their charming old-fashioned pointed gables,<br />
and in its stead rises a modern mansion, wherein<br />
little is left of the old world building. The only<br />
authentic remains of the cottage, which was so<br />
beloved of the celebrated authors, are now said,<br />
indeed, to be the narrow back stairway, and, per-<br />
haps, two adjoining small rooms.<br />
Nevertheless, to many folks the house as it is<br />
fills the mind with a thousand touching memories,<br />
and its owners have sought to preserve intact<br />
everything associated with the fame of Fanny<br />
Burney.<br />
The prettiest, and, perhaps, the sunniest,<br />
brightest room of the whole mansion is the little<br />
literary museum wherein are preserved the relics<br />
of a fame which once made the gladness of the<br />
country side.<br />
In a quaintly furnished room, with hangings of<br />
olden times, dainty flowered curtains shade the<br />
fading manuscripts which lie in glazed cases<br />
available to the curious, the wonderful manu-<br />
script of Camilla and Evelina. Old-fashioned<br />
furniture fills up the small room, a corner table<br />
supports the large crucifix, which, if report says<br />
true, was once the possession of no less a<br />
personage than the old Chevalier d’Arblay.<br />
All the pieces of furniture, though gathered in<br />
recent years, seems to be part and parcel of the<br />
original inhabitants, and around the walls hang<br />
portraits, engravings for the most part of all the<br />
prominent friends of the gifted authoress.<br />
Below each one is suspended by loving hands an<br />
autograph letter from the portrait represented,<br />
addressed for the most part in warm hearted lan-<br />
guage to the “charming kind friend” Madame<br />
d’Arllay. Here, for instance, is a full-faced<br />
portrait of Mrs. Delany in her black lace fichu<br />
and mantilla; close beside her Mrs. Montague<br />
(after Reynolds), with her good tempered some-<br />
what oval face; Mrs. Thrale, Mrs. Trimmer,<br />
many of the Burney family, in pen and ink and<br />
in crayon ; Baretti (after Reynolds), in queue<br />
and powder; David Garrick, in slashed and<br />
braided coat. Here, by the bye, hangs another<br />
charming portrait, with a characteristic face and<br />
expression; below it a delightful old world<br />
epistle from Madame Piazzi to the charming<br />
Madame d’Arllay. “Come o' Tuesday,” runs<br />
the faded manuscript, “as well as Sunday.<br />
Dine with me o' Sunday, sweet soul, do ” and<br />
here is Mrs. Delany’s letter full of inquiry after<br />
the health of her “Dearest Miss Burney: We<br />
sent but yesterday to know how you did ; we<br />
have been quite alarmed, for they brought us<br />
word that though you was better to Burney was<br />
only as well as could be expected ; ” and so on, I<br />
might quote infinite in number, the tender,<br />
heartfelt greetings of this charming throng. All<br />
of them, indeed, ring the same changes of devoted<br />
friendship and admiration—Talleyrand, Madame<br />
de Stäel, Reynolds, “St. Cecilia,” Brinley<br />
Sheridan, and many, many another.<br />
As the “gallery” ends, the eye rests a moment<br />
on the well filled little corner bookshelves, where<br />
are gathered in the old first editions—Evelina,<br />
Cecilia, Camilla. The minor works and volumes<br />
of great contemporary writers are there to com-<br />
plete the small library, and the celebrated<br />
journals, round which has since centred a<br />
veritable literature in itself. There, too, are the<br />
earlier diaries of 1768-78, to which some men<br />
give the most praise; and last, not least, the<br />
curious official form, said to be an authentic copy<br />
of the marriage register. I almost hesitate to<br />
Copy it in my short paper, fearing it may raise<br />
doubts as to veracity. But I give it, for the<br />
curious I feel sure would be allowed to see and<br />
judge it for their own satisfaction. The form<br />
gives the scene of Fanny Burney’s marriage<br />
with the Chevalier d’Arblay as St. Luke's parish<br />
church, Chelsea, by licence, on July 28, 1793.<br />
Biographers, I am aware, mention already two<br />
places as the scene of the celebrated ceremony.<br />
I can add nothing to their testimony, but I think<br />
these few notes may prove of interest.<br />
Of the surrounding country side little can have<br />
changed since the old days I here record; the<br />
well-wooded heights of Denbies, Box Hill,<br />
Juniper Hill still stand much as they did then.<br />
But the charming gardens and undulating lawns<br />
which surround the beautiful modern house of<br />
Camilla Lacey; these things mark the transfor-<br />
mation undergone since the days of Madame<br />
d’Arblay's occupation. There yet may exist, per-<br />
chance among them, the shrubs that Chevalier<br />
planted with toilsome endeavour; but few people<br />
now traverse the country lane with thoughts of<br />
its literary recollections.<br />
The railway rushing across the country side<br />
bears Londonward its crowd of busy people; to<br />
thoughtful literary men and women it will ever<br />
be the home of delightful old world memories.<br />
* -- ~ 2-4<br />
* * *<br />
THE PAPER TAX.<br />
HE writer of the following article begs to<br />
acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. Lang,<br />
who called attention to the subject in the<br />
Illustrated London News two or three months<br />
ago. The subject is treated in the Edinburgh<br />
Review for June, 1831, in an article called “Taxes<br />
upon Literature.”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 214 (#228) ############################################<br />
<br />
2I4<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
. At that time there was a tax upon paper, a tax<br />
upon binding, and a tax upon advertisements.<br />
All these taxes had to be paid in the production<br />
of the book, and before a single copy was sold—<br />
they had to be paid, in fact, whether a single<br />
copy sold or not.<br />
The meaning and the burden of these taxes<br />
are shown by the Edinburgh Reviewer. He<br />
takes the case of an 8vo. book of 500 pages.<br />
He selects an ordinary book of that size, and<br />
he gives the figures showing the cost of pro-<br />
duction with that part of it due to the taxes.<br />
These figures, he says, were furnished by a<br />
person of the “highest authority.” They appear<br />
as follows:<br />
I. In an edition of 500 copies :—<br />
Due to taxes.<br />
Printing and cor-<br />
rection ............ 388 18 O<br />
Paper ............... 38 IO O ... & 8 I 2 IO<br />
Boarding ............ Io O O 3 3 8<br />
Advertising ........ 4O O O 2O O O<br />
177 8 o 31 16 6<br />
If the whole edition is sold out, i.e., allowing<br />
for eleven copies sent to the public libraries and<br />
fourteen to the author, if 475 are sold at 8s. 5d.<br />
a copy, the amount realised is £1.99. 17s. I Id.,<br />
leaving a profit of £22 9s. 11d.<br />
2. Taking an edition of 750 copies :—<br />
Due to taxes.<br />
Printing and cor-<br />
rections............ £95 6 O<br />
Paper .............. 57 I5 O 312 I9 4<br />
Binding............... I5 O O 4 I5 7<br />
Advertising ......... 5O O O 25 O O<br />
218 I o 42 I4 II<br />
If the whole edition (725 copies) be sold at<br />
8s. 5d., the amount realised would be £305 2s. 5d.,<br />
showing a profit of £87 1s. 5d.<br />
3. An edition of IOOO copies:—<br />
Due to taxes.<br />
Printing and cor-<br />
rections ......... 3IO2 I4 O<br />
Paper ............... 77 o o £1.7 5 9<br />
Boarding ......... 2O O O 6 7 5<br />
Advertising ...... 6o o o 3O O O<br />
259 I4 O 53 I 2 2<br />
If the whole edition, 975 copies, are sold at<br />
8s. 5d. the amount realised would be £410 6s. 3d.<br />
leaving a profit of £150 12s. 3d.<br />
But, the writer goes on to say, this supposes<br />
the sale of the whole edition; now by the evidence<br />
of a publisher in the first rank, out of 130 works<br />
issued by him, fifty had not paid expenses;<br />
thirteen only arrived at a second edition, not<br />
always profitable. One fourth of the whole<br />
number of books produced do not pay expenses;<br />
only one in eight can be reprinted. Suppose<br />
that, instead of 720 copies being sold, only 425<br />
went off leaving 300 on hand. This is, in fact,<br />
the common case with books. How does the<br />
account stand? .<br />
The cost of the edition is £218 Is. By the sale<br />
of 425 copies the sum of £178 17s. Id. is realised<br />
This leaves an actual loss of £40. But the taxes<br />
had to be paid in advance.<br />
In other words the cost of production had to be<br />
increased by about 22% per cent. Moreover the<br />
printing, binding, &c., could be paid after the<br />
first returns of the book, but the taxes had to be<br />
paid in advance. There would seem in these days<br />
to have been some ground for the cry about risk<br />
and uncertainty. Certainly a tax of 22% per cent<br />
on the cost of production must have made the<br />
business much less lucrative than at present. The<br />
writer points out, however, that publishers of<br />
standing were careful to avoid risk as much as<br />
possible by taking only books written by well<br />
known names, and on subjects likely to command<br />
attention.<br />
We observe that no “press’ copies were issued.<br />
The book was advertised; if it was reviewed<br />
the reviewer bought or borrowed a copy. The<br />
practice of sending out review copies must<br />
have come into existence soon after this, because<br />
in the Forties it was certain that there were press<br />
Coples.<br />
It is interesting to compare the cost of pro-<br />
duction of 1831 with that of 1894. We take the<br />
example given in the Society’s “Cost of Pro-<br />
duction,” p. 31, i.e., a page of 34 lines, of 339<br />
words, a Long Primer type, and of 500 pages.<br />
We have the following comparison, deducting the<br />
amount due to taxes.<br />
Edition of 500 copies:—<br />
1831<br />
Printing and Correction 3888 18 o<br />
Paper ........................ 29 I7 2<br />
Boarding 6 I6 4<br />
Advertising ............... 2O O O<br />
£145 II 6<br />
1894<br />
Composing 31; sheets at<br />
£I 7s. I Id. per sheet... 353 6 3<br />
Printing, 5s. 9d. a sheet 8 19 8<br />
Corrections, say............ 5 o O<br />
Paper, at 9s. a sheet...... I4 I3 6<br />
Binding, at 5a, a vol. ... Io 8 4<br />
Advertising e tº e 2O O O<br />
— 31 12 7 9<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 215 (#229) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
2 I 5<br />
Or taking the edition of IOOO copies:–<br />
1831<br />
Printing and correction 2102 14 O<br />
Paper .................. • * * * > * 59 I4 3<br />
Boarding ........ ......... I 3 I 2 7<br />
Advertising ......... . . . . . . 3O O O<br />
se- £2O6 o IO<br />
1894<br />
Composition ............... 353 6 3<br />
Printing, at Ios. 6d. a.<br />
sheet ..................... I6 IO 9<br />
Paper, at 18s. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 7 O<br />
Corrections ... . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 O O<br />
Binding, at 5al. ... . . . . . . ... 20 16 8<br />
Advertising . . . . . . . ...... 3O O O<br />
38154 O 8<br />
So that composition and printing have gone<br />
down 32 per cent. since the year 1831 ; paper is<br />
half what it was ; binding is a little dearer.<br />
As regards the great risks in publishing at<br />
this period, it will be seen from another part<br />
of this paper, that there was a depression<br />
in the book trade at that time (1831) deeper<br />
and more marked than had ever before been<br />
known. The political excitement of the time<br />
was supposed to be the cause ; but national<br />
excitement, whether over politics or war, gene-<br />
rally stimulates the book trade. It is more<br />
reasonable to attribute the stagnation first to the<br />
general commercial depression of the time which<br />
had ruined or crippled the manufacturers, so<br />
that they could no longer afford to buy books at<br />
the high price then asked; next, to the decay of<br />
the book clubs; and, thirdly, to a disgust at the<br />
weak and washy novels and poetry with which<br />
their book clubs were provided. The reading and<br />
book-buying public, never very large, had, from<br />
these and other causes, grown much smaller; it<br />
consisted of the professional classes and the more<br />
wealthy merchants and manufacturers. Outside<br />
the larger towns there was little book-buying.<br />
The advertisement duty, formerly of 3s. 6d. for<br />
each advertisement, and in Ireland 2s. 6d, was<br />
reduced in 1833 to 1s. 6d. in England and to Is.<br />
in Ireland. In 1853 it was abolished alto-<br />
gether.<br />
The newspaper stamp, which varied, being I d.<br />
in 171 I, I d. in 1776, 2d. in 1789, 2 #d. in 1794;<br />
3}d. in 1797, 4d. in 1815, I d. in 1836, was finally<br />
abolished in 1855.<br />
The paper duty was repealed in 1861.<br />
THE DEPRESSION OF TRADE, 1831.<br />
HE following extracts, concerning the new<br />
books of 1831, are taken from the sources<br />
named. They refer to the threatened ruin<br />
of literature in the Thirties—a very curious<br />
chapter in the history of modern literature. The<br />
depression was attributed to the political excite-<br />
ment of the time, but, as we believe, mistakenly<br />
so attributed :<br />
I.<br />
(Athenæum, Oct. I 5, 183 I.)<br />
Man is a poetic creature, let philosophers say<br />
as they will; it is wonderful to hear of the ruin<br />
to literature and the destruction to art which one<br />
friend perceives in the Reform Bill; while<br />
another friend will see nothing but prosperity<br />
and exaltation to both. The airy fictions of<br />
these men, one of a bright and the other of a<br />
dark nature, are in a high degree poetical<br />
It must be owned that for these six months art<br />
and literature have suffered a sad eclipse. One<br />
side says, without reform there must be revolu-<br />
tion ; the other, that revolution will follow<br />
reform. No man will speculate in aught but<br />
words; labour has nearly ceased — printing<br />
presses repose by the hundred—and booksellers<br />
say that they have not sold a volume since the<br />
question was agitated. A poet in our presence<br />
lately requested a publisher to purchase a new<br />
poem in ten cantos—subject and time—“Wars<br />
of the Two Roses.” “Are you insane P” was the<br />
quick reply; “write on the rise and fall of stocks,<br />
or on the Reform Bill, and hope for purchasers.”<br />
II.<br />
(Supplement, Oct. I 5.)<br />
These are evil times: the pen and the pencil<br />
are nearly idle, save in writing political lampoons<br />
and drawing caricatures. The dread of change<br />
perplexes monarchs no more, they eat their<br />
pudding and hold their tongue; but fear has<br />
come upon men of genius; poets and painters<br />
eye, in alarm, the thickening clouds, while men<br />
whose muscles are strong, and whose hearts are<br />
griping and eager, look on the coming tempest as<br />
on the wind which will shake the ripe fruit and<br />
give them much to gather A few of the<br />
booksellers announce new books, or rather works<br />
long bespoke and written ; but, on the whole, the<br />
depression in the great market of literature con-<br />
tinues. Murray has not even an advertisement ;<br />
we hear not one word of the Quarterly IReview,<br />
though the period of its appearance has come,<br />
and all that is new are the Annuals and a few<br />
thrice-spoken speeches for or against reform.<br />
There is not one book announced which promises<br />
either genius or learning, and there is little chance<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 216 (#230) ############################################<br />
<br />
2 I6<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
of either while this thick cloud rests on our<br />
land, and till this question, which affects the<br />
wealthy, the bustling, and the important, is<br />
settled.<br />
III.<br />
(Athenæum, Nov. 12, 1831.)<br />
The ablest of our writers are for the present<br />
next to idle, and some have left or are about to<br />
leave the land. Scott is on his way to Italy, and<br />
letters from him cheer us up with the intelligence<br />
of increasing health and spirits ; a gentle sea<br />
sickness was followed by more than usual vigour<br />
and sprightliness. We rejoice the more at this,<br />
because, before he left Portsmouth, he talked<br />
rather seriously about his voyage. He alluded to<br />
Fielding's visit to Lisbon, Smollett's to Italy,<br />
and Byron's to Greece, and returned to the sub-<br />
ject if diverted from it. It is remarkable that<br />
Byron wrote Scott a long letter inviting him to<br />
Italy, and pointing out, if we remember right,<br />
Naples as a place where he might enjoy balmy<br />
air and see abundance of human characters.<br />
Washington Irving, too, an author whom we love<br />
greatly, is said to be on the point of sailing to<br />
America, and we think he is right—extinction of<br />
literature, and depression of art, riots and blood-<br />
shed; and, finally, the cholera in Sunderland, shut<br />
up from escape by sea, with full liberty to march<br />
whither it pleases by land, are, on the whole, no<br />
cheering prospects.<br />
IV.<br />
(Athenæum, Nov. 19, 1831.)<br />
The public depression attributed by one faction<br />
to the refusal of reform, and by the other to the<br />
introduction of the measure, still continues;<br />
cheap books alone are published, and during the<br />
present political pest cheap books alone will be<br />
purchased; for no man can expect to read a large<br />
work leisurely through when the very ground<br />
under his feet seems to have a touch of the<br />
earthquake, and high houses threaten to topple<br />
down and crush ordinary people in the rubbish.<br />
Men who in former palmy times boldly launched<br />
their first-rate quarto, are now content to push<br />
their cockboat along the shore and close by the land<br />
—in truth, till the great question of reform is<br />
settled but no timid adventurer need<br />
try to come forward. Magazines may change<br />
editors, newspapers their proprietors, reviews<br />
their contributors, and booksellers may have faith<br />
in rich or official authors, but the great market of<br />
literature will not open its gates full and wide<br />
till the public mind is settled, and perhaps not<br />
then.<br />
W.<br />
(Athenæum, Nov. 26, 1831.)<br />
All in literature continues dull as a great thaw,<br />
long promised works are held back from the<br />
market, and no new ones of any mark or likeli-<br />
hood make their appearance. Six hundred<br />
printers are out of employment in London alone.<br />
Reprints of favourite authors are all that book-<br />
sellers dare venture upon ; and of these the new<br />
edition of the poetical works of Sir Walter Scott<br />
promises to be one of the most attractive gº tº<br />
This, with the “Italy ’’ of Rogers, and the Works<br />
of Byron, announced by Murray, must console<br />
our eyes for the absence of mental food. The<br />
Annuals, we fear, must go to the wall when these<br />
are published.<br />
VI.<br />
(Athenæum, Dec. 17, 183 I.)<br />
Literature has recovered a little from its long<br />
stupor; more than a hundred new works, and<br />
some of them of great interest, have been<br />
announced. Pamphlets on reform and visionary<br />
treatises on cholera will now give way, we hope, to<br />
works of learning and genius. In addition to<br />
this good news, we hear that Sir Walter Scott has<br />
arrived safe and well at Malta. Reprints of<br />
valuable books, sometime announced, are about to<br />
make their appearance; the Byron of Murray<br />
comes out on the first of the new year, and a<br />
beautiful work it is.<br />
VII.<br />
(Athenæum, Dec. 24, 1831.)<br />
Our publishers' shops are now more frequented<br />
—booksellers are receiving orders—the columns<br />
of the newspapers are filling with advertisements<br />
of books; and though these festive times of<br />
Christmas interpose a little in business matters,<br />
we cannot but perceive that literature has rallied<br />
and gives token of recovering much of its original<br />
vigour. We hear that the next numbers of the<br />
magazines, both north and south, will show<br />
that the national love of elegance is reviving; we<br />
cannot, however, look for a full development of<br />
the publishers' plans of the next campaign till<br />
the publication of the Quarterly, and Edinburgh,<br />
and Westminster Reviews.<br />
VIII.<br />
(Letter from Rev. Thomas Frognall Dibden,<br />
Oct. 31, 183 I.)<br />
I paid my eleventh and last visit to the<br />
renowned publisher of the Quarterly Review. I<br />
have long considered Mr. Murray as the greatest<br />
“family ’’ man in Europe, and was not surprised<br />
to find him surrounded by an extensive circle of<br />
little ones. A family man is usually a cheerful<br />
man ; but the note of despondency was to be<br />
heard even here. The Quarterly Review was,<br />
however, in full plumage, winging its way, and<br />
commanding the attention of an unabated crowd<br />
of admirers. Lord Byron was also to come forth<br />
in a new dress—shorter, and less flowing, but<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 217 (#231) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
217<br />
well fitting, brilliant, and attractive. So far, so<br />
good; yet the taste for literature was ebbing.<br />
Men wished to get for five, what they knew they<br />
could not obtain for fifteen shillings. The love of<br />
quartos was well-nigh extinct, in spite of the<br />
efforts of a neighbouring forty-eight horse power<br />
engine, to restore that form to its usual fashion<br />
and importance.—Bibliophobia, p. 31.<br />
*- a. --<br />
a- - -<br />
THE ENGLISH DIALECT DICTIONARY.<br />
HIS dictionary will be edited by Mr. Joseph<br />
Wright, M.A., Ph.D., deputy professor<br />
of comparative philology in the University<br />
of Oxford. The treasurer is Professor Skeat,<br />
Litt.D., LL.D. The following is from the circular<br />
recently issued. Some of our readers will, perhaps,<br />
be ready to help in the way herein pointed out :<br />
“The dictionary will include, so far as is<br />
possible, the complete vocabulary of all dialect<br />
words which are still in use or are known to<br />
have been in use at any time during the last 200<br />
years. All words occurring in the literary lan-<br />
guage, and the dialects, but with some local<br />
peculiarity of meaning in the latter, will also be<br />
included. On the other hand, all words which<br />
merely differ from the literary language in pro-<br />
nunciation, but not in meaning, will be rigidly<br />
excluded, as belonging entirely to the province of<br />
grammar and not to that of lexicography. It<br />
will also contain (I) the exact geographical area<br />
over which each dialect word extends, together<br />
with quotations and references to the sources<br />
from which the word has been obtained ; (2) the<br />
exact pronunciation in each case according to a<br />
simple phonetic scheme, specially formulated for<br />
the purpose; (3) the etymology so far as relates<br />
to the immediate source of each word.<br />
“During the last twenty years a great number<br />
of people in all parts of England have been co-<br />
operating to collect the material necessary for<br />
the compilation of a large and comprehensive<br />
Dictionary of English Dialects, based upon scien-<br />
tific principles. It was also with this express object<br />
in view that the English Dialect Society was<br />
started in 1873, which up to the end of 1893 has<br />
published seventy volumes, all of which, so far<br />
as is advisable, will be incorporated in the<br />
dictionary. In addition to the great amount of<br />
material sent in from unprinted sources, hundreds<br />
of dialect glossaries and works containing dialect<br />
words have been read and excerpted for the<br />
purposes of the dictionary. I have already in<br />
my possession considerably over a million slips—<br />
about a ton in weight—each containing the source<br />
with quotation, date, and county. The slips for<br />
the letter S alone weigh nearly 2 cwt. It has cost<br />
those interested in this grand and glorious work,<br />
several hundred pounds to get the material<br />
roughly arranged in alphabetical order. Pro-<br />
fessor Skeat, myself, and other specialists—both<br />
at home and abroad—are of opinion that the time<br />
has come when it is urgently necessary to begin<br />
to edit for press the vast amount of material<br />
already collected, because in a work of this nature<br />
delay is dangerous, and every year will render it<br />
more and more difficult to obtain accurate infor-<br />
mation about the exact pronounciation of dialect<br />
words; so rapidly is pure dialect speech dis-<br />
appearing from our midst, that in a few years it<br />
will be almost impossible to get accurate informa-<br />
tion upon difficult points. Hence it has been<br />
decided to begin the publication of the dictionary<br />
next year if possible.<br />
“But much as has already been accomplished<br />
in collecting material, much still remains to be<br />
done before the staff of assistants and myself can<br />
begin our long and arduous task. I therefore<br />
appeal most earnestly to my fellow-countrymen<br />
for further help, to enable us to make the material<br />
as complete as possible before we begin to pre-<br />
pare the work for press. Two or three hundred<br />
additional workers could in a very short time<br />
furnish us with all the material which still<br />
remains to be gleaned from printed and other<br />
sources. When this appeal becomes widely<br />
known, there will surely be no difficulty in obtain-<br />
ing the help we require ; for, as was pointed out<br />
in a former report of the Dialect Dictionary: “It<br />
will be nothing short of a reproach and a disgrace<br />
to us as Englishmen if we let a true and genuine<br />
part of our national speech die out in our time<br />
without an effort to preserve and hand it down<br />
to posterity. Such an effort we are making. It<br />
would argue a sad want of public spirit if<br />
Englishmen were to evince no interest in our<br />
labours, and let them languish for want of<br />
material support.’”<br />
*—- - -<br />
r- - -<br />
BOOK TALK.<br />
N the verses by the Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bell<br />
quoted in our last number there are three<br />
printer's errors. In the last line but one of<br />
the second stanza, “ hears no strain'' should be<br />
“hears our strain.” In the third stanza,<br />
“ Arethusa '’ should have been printed<br />
“Arethuse;” and in the line following, “with<br />
look of love * should be “with looks of love.”<br />
“X. Y. Z. and other Poems” presents itself in<br />
a garb that suggests the influence of “The<br />
Yellow Book.” There is a black serpent in a<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 218 (#232) ############################################<br />
<br />
218<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
green ground and a yellow sun, conventionally<br />
presented, on a black ground. The poems are by<br />
the Rev. John Lascelles. The publishers are the<br />
Leadenhall Press. They are religious verses, and<br />
very remarkable for their strength and originalty.<br />
They are sometimes even startling. Every poet<br />
must choose his own vehicle, and perhaps Mr.<br />
Lascelles has chosen the form which suits him<br />
best. One may ask, however, if the ruggedness<br />
is not sometimes a little forced. Here is the<br />
concluding poem :<br />
What matters it, if men remember me,<br />
When I have gone to live among the stars;<br />
In some fair home where earthly frets and jars<br />
Have ceased to vex my soul P and I can see<br />
The deepest depths of truth; my vision free<br />
From earth's distortions; and from all that mars<br />
The intercourse of souls; when God unbars<br />
The golden gates of Immortality.<br />
What matter if men read me through and through ;<br />
And talk of me when I am but a name,<br />
And all I love have gone to join the just P<br />
What matters it P But for the good I do,<br />
No more than if they reverently came,<br />
In after years—and stooped and kissed the dust.<br />
Mr. George Cotterel is another new poet. His<br />
verses are published by David Nutt. Mr.<br />
Cotterell is among other things a story-teller in<br />
verse, It will be unexpected if he, or some other<br />
poet, should succeedin reviving the lostart of story-<br />
telling in verse. There are several stories in these<br />
volumes. The story of “Natham,” of “Constance,”<br />
and that called “Violets.” Mr. Cotterell has also<br />
told dramatically the story of Arethusa and the<br />
story of Galatea. The last-named begins as<br />
follows:<br />
Sore-smitten, my shepherd, my dearest,<br />
Struck down and for me !<br />
There is none of all now that thou fearest,<br />
None like unto thee. *<br />
There is none with thy strength and thy sweetness,<br />
Though lovers remain<br />
In love with thy dear love's completeness,<br />
Nor will be again.<br />
But thy face was a mark for his madness,<br />
Thy love for his hate,<br />
The monster that envied our gladness,<br />
And compassed thy fate :<br />
And all day in all desolate places,<br />
I bemoan thee and weep,<br />
Afar from thy loving embraces<br />
Astray like thy sheep.<br />
“The Confessions of a Poet ’’ is a book which<br />
has been lying on our table for two months. It<br />
is a volume of verse by Mr. F. Harald Williams<br />
(Hutchinson and Co.). The preface, which is<br />
amusing, concerns the critics. For instance, one<br />
of them declared that he would not dare to ask<br />
in a respectable shop for a book with such an<br />
improper name as 'Twiat Kiss and Lip. (!) One<br />
looks at the title from every point of view, and<br />
yet one cannot possibly see what and where is<br />
the impropriety of it. Then the author com-<br />
plains of the garbled review, the dishonest<br />
review, and, above all, of the crowded review,<br />
where one or two reviewers have to discuss a<br />
dozen books in a single week—sometimes a dozen<br />
in a single column. Again, he calls attention to<br />
the directly opposite opinions on his book. Here<br />
are three :<br />
“Extraordinary skill and felicity in versifica-<br />
tion.”<br />
“Mere doggerel passing human scansion and<br />
comprehension.”<br />
“Accurate rhythm and perfect versification.”<br />
Of course these opinions contradict each other<br />
flatly. In these columns criticism of a poet is<br />
not attempted. The most that we can do is to<br />
let a poet speak for himself, and to state what he<br />
presents. The volume is large, containing 500<br />
pages of verse in small print. The poet is fluent :<br />
perhaps he would do better to remember that a<br />
busy world cannot find time to read through too<br />
bulky a volume. The following is the opening<br />
stanza of “The Land of Nod ‘’’:<br />
The stream of quiet life goes smoothly on,<br />
In sunshine and in shade,<br />
Without a check as it has ever gone,<br />
While blossoms form and fade.<br />
And scarce a ripple breaks the eventide<br />
Of labour touched with tears,<br />
And modest hopes whose sober colours hide<br />
The face of human fears.<br />
Deep down below, like an uncovered corpse<br />
That yet no burial earns<br />
Or decent rest, and with the current warps,<br />
And turns.<br />
We learn from the Athenaeum that Mrs.<br />
Thackeray Ritchie thinks of bringing out an<br />
edition of her father's works, with biographical<br />
notes. Also that a large-paper edition of Mr.<br />
George Meredith’s “Tale of Chloe" will be<br />
issued by Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden.<br />
Messrs. Archibald Constable and Co., of 14,<br />
Parliament-street, S.W., are issuing a new library<br />
of fiction entitled “The Acme Library,” and<br />
consisting of volumes by well-known authors of<br />
about 20,000 words in length. The first issue is<br />
a story by Dr. Conan Doyle relating to mesmeric<br />
influence.<br />
In the book list for November the initials of<br />
“A. Z.” were given as the author of “A Drama in<br />
Dutch " (Heinemann and Co.). They should<br />
have been “Z. Z.”<br />
Among the new books in last month's list<br />
should have been inserted a “Manual of<br />
Addresses to Communicants,” by the Rev. W.<br />
Frank Shaw (Mowbray and Co. 3s. 6d.).<br />
Miss Gerda Grass's novel, “Phil Hawcroft’s<br />
Son,” which has been running in the Newcastle<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 219 (#233) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
2 I 9<br />
Weekly Chronicle, has now come to an end. It<br />
has attracted considerable attention, and has<br />
already been translated into Swedish. It will be<br />
probably published in the spring.<br />
Dr. K. Lentzner has delivered a course of four<br />
lectures on Danish Literature, under the patron-<br />
age of H.R.H. the Princess of Wales.<br />
Mrs. F. Percy Cotton, writing under the name<br />
of Ellis Walton, has published (Elliott Stock) a<br />
new volume of verse, called “Some Love Songs,<br />
and other Lyrics.” These verses have received<br />
highly laudatory reviews in Sunday papers.<br />
The interest recently created in book plates is<br />
quite wonderful. Apart from Mr. Egerton Castle's<br />
comprehensive work on the subject, there are half<br />
a dozen books on the subject issued by the same<br />
publishers (H. Grevel and Co.). These are:<br />
“Art in Book Plates,” illustrated by forty-two<br />
original ex Libris, designed in the style of the<br />
German ; “Little Masters of the Sixteenth<br />
Century,” from the ex Libris collection from the<br />
Ducal Palace of Wolfenbüttel; “Rare old Plates<br />
of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century;” “Em-<br />
blemata Nobilitatis; ” “Emblemata Secularia;”<br />
“Initials;” and a “Modern Dance of Death.” In<br />
addition to this may be noted “American Book<br />
Plates” and “English Book Plates,” both pub-<br />
lished by Messrs. Bell.<br />
The “Life and Letters of John Greenleaf<br />
Whittier’ ought to be read by everybody who<br />
loves pure literature and the life of a man devoted<br />
to the best and highest forms of literature accord-<br />
ing to his lights. It will cost you 18s., and it is<br />
published by Sampson Low, Marston, and Co.<br />
But if you go to a free library you can get it<br />
for nothing.<br />
“Poste Restante,” a novel by C. Y. Har-<br />
greaves, 3 vols. (A. and C. Black). The reader<br />
may make a note of it for his next circulating<br />
library list.<br />
Mrs. Croker's new novel, “Mr. Jervis: a<br />
Romance of the Indian Hills,” is just published,<br />
in three volumes—the old three-decker not dead<br />
yet—by Chatto and Windus.<br />
Austin Dobson’s “Eighteenth Century<br />
Wignettes” (second series), is, like everything of<br />
this most delightful writer and poet, charming<br />
and interesting.<br />
The Fortnightly Review under the new editor<br />
is getting on so well that last month it was found<br />
necessary to issue a second edition.<br />
“St. Andrews and Elsewhere * is A. K. H. B.'s<br />
new volume (Longmans). We all know one<br />
A. K. H. B. Some of us have known him and<br />
been pleased to read him for thirty years.<br />
We recommend Mr. Arthur Morrison’s “Tales<br />
of Mean Streets” (Methuen) to everybody.<br />
They are better than photographs; because the<br />
photograph shows everything. This author<br />
selects, arranges, and produces an artistic whole.<br />
His work is the best kind of realism.<br />
Christabel Coleridge will begin a new serial in<br />
the Sunday Magazine for January.<br />
There will be two serial stories in Good JWords<br />
for 1895, by S. R. Crockett and by W. Clark<br />
Russell.<br />
The author of “The Yellow Aster’” has pro-<br />
duced a new novel, in three volumes, called<br />
“Children of Circumstance.” It has gone into a<br />
fourth edition. (Hutchinson.) “The New Note”<br />
(same publisher) is advertised as in the fourth<br />
edition, and Rita's “Peg the Rake ’’ is advertised<br />
in the second edition. These announcements are<br />
highly satisfactory, but one would submit that<br />
they are less impressive than if the numbers of<br />
each edition were given.<br />
A good many publishers have “select ’’ and<br />
“standard” and other “ libraries' of fiction.<br />
Therefore we need not be surprised to hear that<br />
Messrs. Macmillan are going to have a series of<br />
“Illustrated Standard Novels.” The books are<br />
to be well illustrated, and there will be a preface<br />
or introduction to every volume, thus forming a<br />
pleasant and perhaps remunerative job to as<br />
many literary men as there are volumes. The<br />
books are what we all know—Marryatt, Miss<br />
Edgeworth, Susan Ferrier, and so forth.<br />
Mr. Ulick Burke is about to produce his long-<br />
promised work on Spain. The publisher will be<br />
Longmans. It will be curious to see whether the<br />
old interest in things Spanish will be revived by<br />
this important book. Of late years our literature<br />
has been almost silent on Spain and the Spanish.<br />
“Menzikoff, or the Danger of Wealth,” a story<br />
founded on fact, has been translated from the<br />
German of Gustav Nieritz by Mrs. Alexander<br />
Rerr, and published by the Religious Tract<br />
Society. The book in the original made consider-<br />
able stir and has had a large circulation.<br />
Miss Julia Agnes Fraser has just issued a<br />
novel in three volumes, called “Shibrick the<br />
Drummer.” The publishers are Messrs. Remington<br />
and Co.<br />
Among the many new books of verse which<br />
have appeared of late is one by Marcus S. C.<br />
Rickards, author of “Creation's Hope,” “Songs<br />
of Universal Life,” &c., called “Poems of Life<br />
and Death,” published by George Bell and Sons.<br />
They are all short poems, ranging in length<br />
from one page to three. The poet is always<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 220 (#234) ############################################<br />
<br />
22O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
pleasing and unaffected. His song is neither<br />
complicated nor obscure; perhaps it is sometimes<br />
too simple. The themes that inspire him are<br />
old-fashioned—The Nightingale, Roses, Violets,<br />
Sweet Peas, the New Moon, a Hedge Sparrow,<br />
a Curlew, and so on. Those who like simplicity<br />
in style, purity of thought, and rippling melody<br />
will find these qualities in Mr. Marcus Rickards.<br />
Mr. C. J. Wills has produced another book on<br />
Persia which is even more interesting than his<br />
“Land of the Lion and the Sun.” It is called<br />
“Behind an Eastern Weil,” and is an account of<br />
life as it really is for the women of that far off<br />
country — perhaps the farthest “off” at this<br />
moment of any country under the sun–centainly<br />
a long way more distant than China, Japan, or<br />
even, thanks to recent startling developments,<br />
Rorea itself. It is published by Blackwood and<br />
Sons.<br />
Messrs. Chatto and Windus have published a<br />
translation of the Memoirs of the Duchesse de<br />
Gontant. The period covered is from 1773 to<br />
1836. The Duchess was gouvernante of the<br />
Children of France during the Restoration. The<br />
memoirs, therefore, cover the whole of the most<br />
interesting period of French history. All that<br />
can be said about the book amounts to this,<br />
that once taken up it will not be laid down or<br />
exchanged for another book until it is finished.<br />
“Norley Chester”—Madame or Monsieur—<br />
has published a little book of sonnets (Elliot<br />
Stock) called “Dante Wignettes.” There are<br />
twenty-five of them. The sonnets have the true<br />
ring of verse, and the true enthusiasm for Dante.<br />
Again, the three-volume novel is not dead yet.<br />
Mr. C. Y. Hayman brings out his new work (A.<br />
and C. Black) in this form. “Poste Restante”<br />
is its title. You who still belong to circulating<br />
libraries make a note of it.<br />
Messrs. Ward and Downey have in hand a<br />
novel by R. H. Sherard, entitled “Jacob<br />
Niemand.” It will be published in the spring.<br />
Mr. R. H. Sherard is engaged on a life of Sarah<br />
Bernhardt, which will be published next season<br />
by Edward Arnold.<br />
Mr. F. B. Doveton's new work will appear<br />
shortly. It is a book of Prose Sketches, meta-<br />
physical, descriptive, and social, with tales and<br />
lay sermons. The publisher is Elliot Stock.<br />
“Beyond the Dreams of Avarice,” by the editor<br />
of this paper, will be published before the end of<br />
January (Chatto and Windus) in one volume,<br />
price 6s.<br />
><br />
c:<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—PERSONAL ExPERIENCE.<br />
T is fair to give publicity to both sides of<br />
the question, so, as an author of some years<br />
standing, I should like to state that my<br />
experience of editors is very unlike that of “An<br />
Author’’ published in your last issue. I hav<br />
met with great kindness and consideration from<br />
many editors; indeed, some have become<br />
quite friendly, and when they refuse articles—<br />
which they are often obliged to do for want of<br />
room, or because they do not require what I send<br />
them—they frequently write a kind, courteous<br />
note with their refusal. But I never eapect this<br />
from them, knowing how busy they are and how<br />
precious is their time. On the other hand, I<br />
should never trouble them with the information<br />
that anyone else was “enchanted ” with my<br />
works. Firstly, because I am not fortunate<br />
enough to have an “enchanted ” public ; and,<br />
secondly, because I am sure the editor would not<br />
care to hear it even if I had<br />
But, as a body, should we not be happier<br />
if we raised our ideal of the noble profession to<br />
which we belong P. There are very few great<br />
writers in the world, and only a very small pro-<br />
portion of these can be found in England. Even<br />
if writers are born with talent or even with genius<br />
they have much labour to go through before they<br />
can produce a classic, and most of us are far from<br />
producing classics. But once let us raise our<br />
ideal and we shall not be surprised when that<br />
which falls far short of it, is often returned with-<br />
out thanks! However, if we have satisfied our-<br />
selves that our work is good, or as good as we<br />
can make it, do not let us be cast down if the<br />
poem, or the tale, or the novel is rejected ten<br />
times over. In the end good work will find a<br />
publisher. Popularity does not always mean<br />
that the writer who has it is a great writer,<br />
indeed, for a young author to make a “hit ’’ with<br />
a first book is almost a curse. If we place our<br />
ideal high we can then be our own judges, and<br />
we need not be dependent on the good or the bad<br />
opinion of hard-worked editors.<br />
Above all things let us not tout for reviews |<br />
I have never done so, yet my work has been<br />
noticed quite as much as it deserves; indeed, I<br />
have sometimes received more praise than my work<br />
merited. I must own, however, to possessing a<br />
Jow opinion of second-rate reviewers, who often<br />
do not read the books they review, or else tell the<br />
story straight through without one word of<br />
critical comment. Still, their strange mistakes<br />
make us laugh, and their blame cannot injure an<br />
ideal, as they possess none of their own.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 221 (#235) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
22 I<br />
Further, if we accuse some publishers of certain<br />
unfair dealings, let us also look at home and<br />
strive to keep our own profession free from<br />
smallness or meanness. Let us set our faces<br />
agai st log rolling, cringing to obtain favourable<br />
reviews, or praising poor work hoping to get<br />
praise in return. If we want good money let us<br />
give good work, but especially let us give good<br />
work even if we get no money at all. Det us<br />
avoid pot boilers and accept poverty if necessary<br />
rather than lower the standard in our own eyes<br />
and in the eyes of the few who can see.<br />
If I may, let me again repeat Mr. Sherard’s<br />
quotation. It will materially help us when,<br />
after having striven hard, we find our work<br />
returned to us by editors with or without thanks.<br />
“J’en ay assez de peu,” répondit il. “J’en ay assez<br />
d’un, J'em ay assez de pas wºn.”<br />
ESME STUART.<br />
II.-Nov ELISTS AND THEIR CHARACTERS.<br />
I had imagined that novelists need no longer<br />
fear being held responsible for the opinions and<br />
actions of their leading characters. But I have<br />
just had singular proof that the old-fashioned<br />
idea of “hero * dies hard in England.<br />
Unfortunately I am rather fond of taking<br />
immature characters and trying to develop them<br />
—as we are most of us developed—through mis-<br />
takes and failures. In preparing my last novel<br />
(the eighteenth I have written) for the press, I<br />
altered the original title, “Norman Colvill’s<br />
Blunders ” to “A Modern Quixote.” I thought<br />
that the touch of kindly satire which I meant to<br />
run through the story would be implied in the<br />
name “Quixote.”<br />
The A. B. C. of my art, of course, prevented<br />
me from discussing my character or writing my<br />
own opinions about him. But on the title-page<br />
I wrote Bacon’s axiom, “Goodness admits of no<br />
excess, but error.” And as it was necessary for<br />
me to write a short preface to apologise for the<br />
staleness of certain passages in a book, which<br />
was written in 1893, I took the opportunity to<br />
refer to “blundering and mistaken efforts,” made<br />
with the best intentions. Certain chapters were<br />
even headed “Nemesis,” “The Punishment<br />
Begins, ’ &c., and towards the end of the third<br />
volume the Quixote, who has been compelled to<br />
carry out his theories to the bitter end, deplores<br />
his own failure, and acknowledges his own<br />
priggishness in the earlier Oxonian stage.<br />
Imagine my amazement when critic after critic<br />
speaks of “Mrs. Spender’s Hero,” “ Mrs.<br />
Spender’s Polemics.” Personally I hate polemics,<br />
but my opinions or my individuality should<br />
surely be kept as much as possible in that back-<br />
ground from which, leading a li’e of retirement,<br />
I can only express my surprise.<br />
LILY SPENDER.<br />
III.-WRITERS OF SONGs.<br />
The time having come for the rights and<br />
interests of musical composers to receive a share<br />
of consideration, which holds out fair hope of<br />
redress, may I venture, as a lyric writer of at<br />
least twenty-five years’ standing, to put in a plea,<br />
for the writers of words for music?<br />
A great many songs, with words written by<br />
me, have been sung, year after year, by noted<br />
singers, not only in London concert halls, but all<br />
over the English-speaking world. Yet, beyond<br />
the small fee paid for the words at the time<br />
of publication, I have never received one penny.<br />
|Many of the music publishers now send to the<br />
writers a form of receipt for the fee, to which a<br />
special clause is attached that “all rights in the<br />
words, whether for public performance or not, in<br />
all parts of the world, shall belong absolutely<br />
and for ever to the publisher.” By signing this<br />
receipt the writer, of course, loses all further<br />
interest in his property.<br />
Public singers receive large royalties on songs<br />
sung by them, such royalties being ostensibly<br />
paid by the publishers, but in which payment the<br />
composers must in many cases share by foregoing<br />
a part of their own very small profit.<br />
I am ignorant of these matters, and should<br />
like to ask why the singer is so much more<br />
sufficiently paid than the writer or composer ; He<br />
must manifestly sing something, and is amply<br />
paid by the public for doing so. Would it not<br />
seem a more just arrangement that writer, com-<br />
poser, and singer should each receive a share<br />
of the royalties paid by the publishers ?<br />
Might not some other form of receipt be<br />
adopted by music publishers, the terms of which<br />
would deal less hardly with the composers and<br />
writers of songs P T.YRIC.<br />
IV.-PLAGIARISM OR MEMORY.<br />
Synonymous expressions of thought are<br />
common in literature, but clear instances of<br />
unconscious plagiarism are rare. The following<br />
lines are similar word for word:<br />
And yet<br />
We lost it in this daily jar and fret,<br />
And now live idle in a vague regret.<br />
JOHN DAVIDSON.<br />
It was, and yet<br />
We lost it in this daily jar and fret,<br />
And now live idle in a vague regret.<br />
ADELAIDE A. PROCTER.<br />
A young poet in the full fire of genius and<br />
passion for his ideal cannot be too careful in<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 222 (#236) ############################################<br />
<br />
222<br />
A UTHOR.<br />
THE<br />
passing his proofs, or he may easily appropriate<br />
unconsciously the lines of others.<br />
I may mention that, prior to publishing my<br />
first volume—“Lord Harrie and Leila, In<br />
Memory of H.R.H. the Prince Consort, and<br />
other poems ”—I carefully read through my<br />
ideals—Byron, Shelley, and Keats—ere I would<br />
allow it to pass the press. It was well I did so,<br />
as I found it necessary to expunge certain lines<br />
which had crept in through unconscious instances<br />
of memory, which would otherwise have gone<br />
forth as my own, and for which my critics would<br />
not probably have spared me.<br />
H. GEORGE HELLON.<br />
W.—STANDARD WORKs.<br />
I have often thought that there is an injustice<br />
in the copyright falling practically largely into the<br />
heretofore publisher's hands after copyright ceases.<br />
Would it be possible to have some such clause as<br />
“all stereos to become the property of the author's<br />
heirs and assigns on expiration of copyright,” and<br />
such stereos to be used for their benefit by the<br />
literary syndicate of authors or others ? As it is<br />
now, the publishers gain any advantage by cessa-<br />
tion of rights, while it is the public or the Society<br />
of Authors which ought so to gain. H. S.<br />
VI.-KIND OR JUST P<br />
The editor of an American periodical was<br />
robbed of his tin box, not full of bonds and cash,<br />
as the wicked thief imagined, but of MSS. and<br />
sketches. Bear the loss who should P I fancy<br />
many editors of English magazines would say<br />
“The authors, of course ; we are not responsible<br />
if foolish people send us their MSS.”<br />
Not so my American editor. The periodical in<br />
Question is not rich, but it will bear the loss and<br />
compensate the authors. This is not only kind,<br />
but courteous—and just. S. B.<br />
*.<br />
VII.-HospitaLS AND PROOFs.<br />
Apropos of a suggestion in one of your recent<br />
numbers that authors would do a good deed by<br />
sending their proof sheets when useless to<br />
hospitals, I should be glad of the medium of<br />
your correspondence column to make a similar<br />
suggestion.<br />
Books sent to magazines and newspapers for<br />
review should never be sold, and it is clearly the<br />
duty of everyone who values a fair field to<br />
authors to protest against such a custom.<br />
There is an excellent statement in the editorial<br />
notices of The Unknown World to this effect :<br />
“The editor of The Unknown World, as himself<br />
a writer of books, and the publishers, as per-<br />
sonally interested in sustaining the commercial<br />
value of new books, resent the prevailing custom<br />
of selling review copies immediately after publi-<br />
cation, and too often without notice at all. All<br />
books sent to this magazine for review will<br />
remain in the custody of the proprietors, and will<br />
not be parted with under any circumstances.”<br />
This has suggested to me two propositions,<br />
which are, as far as I know, original. The first<br />
is that all review copies should be bound in<br />
paper as French novels are published. The<br />
second, that the editors of magazines and news-<br />
papers could make a good use of these copies if<br />
they sent them to such libraries as the Peoples’<br />
Palace library, or the Working Men's Club<br />
libraries of the Federation of Working Men's<br />
Social Clubs, or of clubs connected with Toynbee<br />
Hall, or school and college missions. Besides<br />
these, hospitals and free libraries would greatly<br />
benefit by such a system. JOHN WYATT.<br />
VIII.-EDITORIAL AMENITIES.<br />
Case I. Recently I submitted a lengthy MS.<br />
for approval to the editor of a well-known, high-<br />
class paper. In a week it was returned with the<br />
usual note of non-acceptance ; torn, inked, and<br />
dirtied, every page of it. The result: The MS.<br />
(which was type-written) would have to be re-<br />
typed at the cost of 8s. or 9s. before it could be<br />
offered elsewhere. It was perfectly clean and new<br />
when sent to the editor in question, in an envelope.<br />
I wrote a note of remonstrance. Answer: “The<br />
editor much regrets if the MS. should have<br />
become slightly soiled (good this ; it was simply<br />
filthy), but thinks Mr. Z. must have been mis-<br />
taken as to its condition when sent to the office of<br />
the magazine. He is unable to offer Mr. Z.<br />
any compensation.”<br />
Case 2. A few weeks ago I forwarded by<br />
request a MS. for the consideration of another<br />
well-known magazine, inclosing ample stamps for<br />
its return, if unsuitable, under cover. Result:<br />
MS. returned coverless, the two last pages having<br />
been turned back and glued so as to form an<br />
impromptu wrapper, a half-penny stamp being<br />
attached in place of the two penny Ones sent by<br />
me to cover postage. A pouring wet day resulting<br />
in the MS., thus insufficiently protected, being<br />
soaked through and through, necessitating almost<br />
entire re-copying.<br />
Case 3. Two years ago an old established<br />
paper accepted a MS. of mine upon an archaeo-<br />
logical subject. At the expiry of nearly two<br />
years from date of acceptance I wrote to inquire<br />
why the contribution had not been used. Answer:<br />
The editor could not make use of it as it was<br />
“full of inaccuracies.” I naturally asked for<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 223 (#237) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
223<br />
somewhat fuller information upon the subject of<br />
my alleged inaccuracies. After some time had<br />
elapsed the MS. was returned with the detailed<br />
information for which I had asked. Upon going<br />
through the list, and consulting the best known<br />
authorities on the subject, I found that every one<br />
of the editor's statements, contravening mine in<br />
the article, was incorrect. I wrote to point this<br />
out, but have not yet received any reply, though<br />
several weeks have elapsed. I presume that I<br />
am powerless to insist on publication, and have<br />
lost the chance of the article appearing else-<br />
where. It has been paid for (a cheque was sent<br />
me three or four months after acceptance) but<br />
publication would have proved more valuable to<br />
me in more ways than one.<br />
Surely these are somewhat “hard ” cases,<br />
though by no means isolated ones. C. H.<br />
IX.—THE LAUREATESHIP.<br />
I think your correspondent “A Prose Writer’”<br />
has done a good deed in again calling attention<br />
to the prolonged vacancy of the office of Poet<br />
Laureate, though I can hardly agree with him<br />
that the whole fraternity of authors is being<br />
slighted.<br />
In some well-known books of reference, which<br />
purport to be “carefully corrected at the different<br />
offices,” the Poet Laureate is shown to occupy a<br />
position, in the Lord Chamberlain's Department,<br />
immediately above the Barge Master and the<br />
Keeper of the Swans. The Barge Master may<br />
be able to say, in the words of “The Bard,”<br />
In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes.<br />
And the Keeper of the Swans may be in the<br />
habit of hearing exquisite notes when one of his<br />
charges dies; but does close association with<br />
them confer any special honour on a poet P Has<br />
not the time come either for abolishing the office<br />
or for setting it in a more dignified position ?<br />
The duties of the post are very uncertain.<br />
The poet may have to celebrate many events in<br />
one year, or he may have no events to celebrate<br />
during many years. In either case the spectacle<br />
is not very edifying. Genius writing to order<br />
One year, and waiting for orders the next.<br />
Pegasus sometimes at grass, sometimes kicking<br />
in his unaccustomed harness. Why not dis-<br />
establish the Laureateship, and let volunteers rise<br />
to the occasion when occasion arises P<br />
Palmam qui meruit ferat.<br />
Give the laurel wreath, and the honour, and,<br />
if necessary, the cheque, to the best man after<br />
the celebration of each event. The decision<br />
should be by universal suffrage and the ballot,<br />
because no poet could be worthy unless under-<br />
standed of the people.—Your obedient servant,<br />
II.<br />
X.—NEOLOGISMs.<br />
I observe that a controversy is proceeding in<br />
the Westminster Gazette as to the double mean-<br />
ing of “ancestor.” Is not a single word wanted<br />
to explain what is meant by what is frequently<br />
but incorrectly called “collateral ancestor P’’<br />
Could not such a word be invented P<br />
Then as to “up to dateness.” I have seen<br />
this word used in the Referee, but I believe it to<br />
be considered as generally unfit for serious prose.<br />
But by what word or what number of words<br />
can its obvious meaning be expressed ? Surely<br />
the sooner the word, or a better single word, if<br />
such can be found, is admitted into serious prose<br />
the better. J. M. LELY.<br />
XI.-CONTINUATION BY ANOTHER HAND.<br />
The following correspondence sent to us by<br />
Messrs. Harper and Brothers is published with<br />
the permission of Mr. Justin McCarthy:<br />
I<br />
Harper and Brothers, Publishers,<br />
Franklin-square, New York.<br />
Nov. 27, 1894.<br />
DEAR SIR,-We have read with interest the<br />
remarks in The Author, issued the first of this<br />
month, upon the subject “Continuation by<br />
Another Hand,” elicited by the publication by a<br />
firm in this city of a new edition of Mr. Justin<br />
McCarthy’s “A History of Our Own Times,” to<br />
which supplementary chapters have been added<br />
by Mr. G. Mercer Adam, bringing the work down<br />
to 1894.<br />
Inasmuch as we are the publishers of the<br />
American authorised edition of this work, and as<br />
the sale of our edition will be injuriously affected<br />
by this unauthorised reprint, we felt it our duty<br />
to call Mr. McCarthy’s attention to the matter<br />
several weeks ago.<br />
Our edition of the work was published before<br />
the International Copyright Law was passed, and<br />
was therefore without protection against un-<br />
authorised reprints; nevertheless, the sale has<br />
been considerable. We have already paid Mr.<br />
McCarthy on account of royalties representing a<br />
sale of many thousand sets.<br />
Mr. McCarthy appreciated the interest which<br />
we took in the matter, and replied in a most<br />
cordial and characteristic letter. We inclose<br />
herewith copies of our letter to Mr. McCarthy,<br />
and his reply. Yours very truly,<br />
HARPER AND BROTHERs.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 224 (#238) ############################################<br />
<br />
224<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
II.<br />
Oct. I I, 1894.<br />
DEAR SIR,--In the London letter to the New<br />
York Times, published on the 7th inst., the<br />
inclosed paragraph appeared:—“We fully sym-<br />
pathise with you in the sense of injury raised in<br />
your mind by the publication by the United<br />
States Book Company of Mr. G. Mercer Adam's<br />
edition of your ‘History of Our Own Times.’<br />
That edition is an injury to us as well as to you,<br />
for it will maturally affect the sale of our edition.<br />
We inclose here with the advertisement of the<br />
book from the New York Evening Post, and we<br />
shall send you a copy through our London<br />
Office.”<br />
The wording of the paragraph in the Times<br />
was very unfortunate. The statement that it was<br />
“sad enough to get next to nothing for the<br />
original work when it appeared” is misleading,<br />
for it might be understood as reflecting upon us,<br />
who were the original and authorised publishers<br />
of the work in this country. We assume, of<br />
course, that the unfortunate paragraph was not<br />
the result of any statement of yours, but was<br />
simply the reflection of the correspondent him-<br />
self, who was ignorant of the fact that we had<br />
paid you royalty upon the sale of our edition of<br />
your book from the time of publication. The<br />
total payments of royalty represent, we find, the<br />
sale of many thousand sets. To this should be added<br />
the sum paid for the authorisation of the Franklin-<br />
square Library edition of the work. Under the<br />
circumstances this is a very substantial “next to<br />
nothing,” as the Times correspondent would<br />
promptly concede. We have no doubt that he<br />
would be only too glad to correct any false<br />
impression which his letter may have created—or<br />
you may prefer to do this yourself.<br />
By the way, the enterprising Mr. Adam is a<br />
Canadian, and was formerly a publisher in<br />
Toronto.<br />
Would it be advisable, in view of Mr. Adam’s<br />
action, for you to prepare a third volume, bringing<br />
the book down to the present date P<br />
While writing it occurs to us to inquire when<br />
you intend to complete your “History of the<br />
Four Georges,” two volumes of which we have<br />
published. It is now several years since the<br />
second volume was issued, and inquiries are<br />
constantly made for the final two volumes. If<br />
this is delayed too long it is possible that some<br />
“literary philanthropist” may undertake to com-<br />
plete the work for you, or enter upon the same<br />
field.<br />
We are, dear sir, yours very truly,<br />
HARPER AND BROTHER8.<br />
Justin McCarthy, Esq., M.P.<br />
III.<br />
73, Eaton-terrace, S.W., London,<br />
Oct. 26, 1894.<br />
DEAR SIRs, I have to acknowledge, with<br />
many thanks, the receipt of your letter of the<br />
I Ith of this month. You are quite right in<br />
assuming that I knew nothing of the paragraph in<br />
the Tondon letter to the New York Times. I never<br />
saw it or heard of it until Ireceived your letter. 1<br />
should think that what the writer meant was that,<br />
owing to the state of the law as regards copyright<br />
then, I did not receive from the United States<br />
anything like the amount which I might have<br />
received under other conditions. But, so far as<br />
your firm is concerned, I can only say that you<br />
have always dealt with me in the fairest, most<br />
honourable, and even most generous manner. I<br />
was surprised at the time, and am still surprised,<br />
that you were able to pay me so much for the<br />
history, seeing that numbers of publishers of a<br />
different order were issuing all manner of cheaper<br />
editions. When first you and I began to have<br />
dealings together, there was an honourable under-<br />
standing among American publishers that if a<br />
foreign author selected or succeeded in obtaining<br />
some particular American firm as his publishers,<br />
the other publishers would accept the arrange-<br />
ment and not interfere. This was really a copy-<br />
right by good feeling and common understand-<br />
ing. But before my history came to be published<br />
there were new firms in the field, and copyright<br />
of that sort was brought to an end. It was<br />
therefore, as I have said, a wonder to me that<br />
you were able to pay me as much for a “History<br />
of Our Own Times” as you actually did. Our<br />
business relations extend back over a quarter of<br />
a century. I have nothing to speak but<br />
praise in regard to the firm of Harper and<br />
Brothers.<br />
I certainly mean to bring the “History of Our<br />
Own Times” up to date—whenever I get a chance<br />
—and to finish the “Four Georges” too. I hope<br />
that Messrs. Harper and Brothers may be the<br />
publishers of both. Lately I have been absorbed<br />
in politics and unable to do much literary work,<br />
but I hope for quieter times.<br />
Of course, you are free to make any use of this<br />
letter that seems to you desirable.<br />
With kindest regards, very truly yours,<br />
JustTN McCARTHY.<br />
Messrs. Harper and Brothers. | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/272/1895-01-01-The-Author-5-8.pdf | publications, The Author |
273 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/273 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 09 (February 1895) | <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.+05+Issue+09+%28February+1895%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 09 (February 1895)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1895-02-01-The-Author-5-9 | | | | | 225–252 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1895-02-01">1895-02-01</a> | | | | | | | 9 | | | 18950201 | C be El u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
Monthly.)<br />
CON DU CTED BY WALTER BESAN. T.<br />
VoI. W.-No. 9.]<br />
FEBRUARY 1, 1895.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
For the Opinions eaſpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as ea pressing the<br />
collective opinions of the committee unless<br />
they are officially signed by G. Herbert<br />
Thring, Sec.<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
important communications within two days will write to him<br />
without delay. All remittances should be crossed Union<br />
Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered<br />
letter only.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on<br />
all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub-<br />
jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
*- A -º<br />
r- - -<br />
WARNINGS AND ADWICE,<br />
I. RAWING THE AGREEMENT.-It is not generally<br />
understood that the author, as the vendor, has the<br />
absolute right of drafting the agreement upon<br />
whatever terms the transaction is to be carried out.<br />
Authors are strongly advised to exercise that right. In<br />
every form of business, this among others, the right of<br />
drawing the agreement rests with him who sells, leases, or<br />
has the control of the property.<br />
2. SERIAL RIGHTS.—In selling Serial Rights remember<br />
that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that<br />
is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you<br />
object to this, insert a clause to that effect.<br />
3. STAMP You R AGREEMENTS. – Readers are most<br />
URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements<br />
immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected<br />
for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree-<br />
ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every<br />
case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter<br />
which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at no ea'pense to themselves<br />
eacept the cost of the stamp.<br />
WOL. W.<br />
4. ASCERTAIN WHAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVES To<br />
BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself.<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTS.–Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom you appoint as your<br />
agent. Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone.<br />
6. CoST OF PRODUCTION.——Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures.<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.—Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society.<br />
8. FUTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice.<br />
Io. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a M.S. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work.<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration.<br />
12. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTS. –- Keep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<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 />
Society’s Offices :-<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
*—- - --"<br />
- - -<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub-<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
Y 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 226 (#240) ############################################<br />
<br />
226<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Awthor notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
THE AUTHORS' SYNDICATE,<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
I. That the Authors’ Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. That it<br />
submits MSS. to publishers and editors, concludes agree-<br />
ments, examines, passes, and collects accounts, and, generally,<br />
relieves members of the trouble of managing business details.<br />
2. That the terms upon which its services can be secured<br />
will be forwarded upon detailed application.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works only for those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiations<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed ea clusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least two days'<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. That every attempt is made to deal with all communi-<br />
cations promptly. That stamps should, in all cases, be sent<br />
to defray postage.<br />
7. That the Authors' Syndicate does not invite MSS.<br />
without previous correspondence; does not hold itself<br />
responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice; and that<br />
in all cases MSS. must be accompanied by stamps to defray<br />
postage.<br />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department” for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted" is open. Members are invited to<br />
communicate their requirements to the Manager.<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 />
,-- - -<br />
NOTICES,<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 />
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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
£948. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 227 (#241) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
227<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 call it.<br />
*- ~ *-*<br />
s= * *<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—THE HICKs CoPYRIGHT BILL.<br />
"TYPHE Hicks Copyright Bill, against which Mr.<br />
William Agnew has written to the Times,<br />
has no chance of passing through the<br />
House. Protests have been filed against it by<br />
the American Copyright League of Authors and<br />
Publishers, the American Artists' Society, the<br />
Fine Arts Society, the New York Etching Club,<br />
and others. The chairman of the House Com-<br />
mittee on Patents, which has charge of the Bill,<br />
considers that it will be abandoned.—Times,<br />
Jan. 2 I.<br />
II.-NET PRICEs.<br />
In response to the circular about met prices,<br />
the secretary has received a great many replies,<br />
but not so many as might have been expected<br />
on a subject which touches our members in a<br />
twofold manner. That is to say it affects them<br />
as buyers of books as well as makers of<br />
books. In the former capacity they should ask<br />
whether they will lose or gain by the pro-<br />
posed change. Of course the answer is obvious.<br />
They will no longer get the discount and they<br />
will not be able to buy so many books. A rise<br />
in price from 4s. 6d. to 6s. is a rise of 33; per<br />
cent. “Oh but we are not going to charge so<br />
much. Trade competition will come in.” Perhaps.<br />
But trade competition has done very little so far<br />
to cheapen books. The book-buying public is<br />
small: 1t must remain small, because people<br />
cannot think of buying books whose incomes are<br />
under £2OO a-year. The interest of trade com-<br />
petition is to keep up the price of books. Book<br />
buyers will infallibly lose by the change. “But<br />
the author will have more.” Will he P Suppose<br />
3OOO copies of a 6s. book to be sold at 4s. 6d.<br />
That means an expenditure of £675 by the<br />
public. If that book is sold net at 6s., the same<br />
expenditure would only buy 2.250. “But the<br />
royalties would be adjusted to meet the difference.”<br />
Would they P. The preponderance of opinion<br />
was in favour of the net price, and generally on<br />
the ground that one would know how much had<br />
to be paid.<br />
Another objection is that the buyer would still<br />
demand and still obtain his discount; not openly,<br />
as at present, but secretly, which would be worse,<br />
and so the later position of the bookseller would<br />
be worse than the former.<br />
What it comes to is that something must be<br />
done for the booksellers if they are to continue.<br />
They have more than one association. They are<br />
surely united enough to agree upon what they<br />
want, and strong enough to demand it. Publishers<br />
cannot do without booksellers. Authors could<br />
do without publishers, but they cannot do without<br />
booksellers. The question rests entirely with the<br />
booksellers. Let them agree, and find an answer.<br />
The net system, it is believed, will not be dis-<br />
cussed much longer. There are already a good<br />
many net books, and there will be more, especially<br />
of the class whose circulation is bound to be<br />
limited, and whose price is too high for the book-<br />
seller to take thirteen as twelve. A good man<br />
of the leading publishers have refused to take the<br />
proposed action submitted to them, and it is not<br />
likely that those who advocate the change will be<br />
able to set up a six-shilling book at net, against a<br />
six-shilling book at 4s. 6d.<br />
III.--ARTISTIC CoPYRIGHT.-MR. WILLIAM<br />
AGNEw.<br />
In the issue of the Times of Jan. I6 there is a<br />
long letter from Mr. William Agnew with regard<br />
to the artistic copyright in engravings and<br />
etchings. He states that a Bill has been intro-<br />
duced by a certain member of the Congress in<br />
the United States to bring etchings and engrav-<br />
ings under the manufacturing clause, and com-<br />
plains, and rightly so, that this is seriously detri-<br />
mental to artistic copyright,<br />
It is no doubt of the utmost importance to keep<br />
artistic copyright apart from the manufacturing<br />
clause, and the same remark applies in a lesser<br />
degree to literary works. For all the civilised<br />
nations of Europe at the Berne Convention<br />
recognised that copyright property should not be<br />
trammelled with trade burdens. The retrogres-<br />
sive policy of the Americans in having established<br />
a manufacturing clause to the literary copyright<br />
is the real cause of the present disturbance now<br />
being made in Canada with regard to Canadian<br />
copyright; and this disturbance may perhaps<br />
prejudice the whole system of copyright as it at<br />
present exists in England. It may be worth<br />
while, therefore, if steps are going to be taken to<br />
oppose the manufacturing clause with regard to<br />
artistic copyright, that authors should raise their<br />
voices in opposition to the present manufacturing<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 228 (#242) ############################################<br />
<br />
228<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
clause bearing on the reproduction of books.<br />
This clause is no doubt opposed to the whole idea<br />
of copyright property as at present existing.<br />
TV.-A CANADIAN PAPER ON CANADIAN<br />
CoPYRIGHT.<br />
I.<br />
As every intelligent person knows, copyright is<br />
the method by which law guards the right of<br />
property which authors, artists, musicians, and<br />
designers have in their intellectual productions.<br />
It is for the defence of authors and for their<br />
defence alone. It is to secure their right to the<br />
profit of the reproduction and multiplication of<br />
their own works. A copyright law pure and<br />
simple would secure to the author the right to<br />
say who and who alone should publish his work<br />
and on what terms, leaving him free to make the<br />
best terms possible for himself. This, in effect,<br />
is what free trade Great Britain does, and what<br />
even protectionist France, Germany, Austria, and<br />
most of the great countries do where intellectual<br />
production is respected. But this is not what<br />
protectionist countries like the United States do.<br />
There the manufacturers, who are ever clamour-<br />
ing for the privilege of enriching themselves at<br />
the expense of the rest of the people, compelled<br />
Congress to turn the copyright law intended for<br />
the defence of authors against pirates into a<br />
protective law for themselves, requiring the book<br />
copyrighted to be printed or reprinted in the<br />
United States. There must be, in the words of<br />
the Tammany corruptionists, “something in it<br />
for them” to be got at the expense of the author<br />
and of his American readers. The United States<br />
Government gave British authors this privilege<br />
on the pledge obtained from Great Britain that<br />
United States copyright should be good all over<br />
the British empire as well as in Great Britain,<br />
and as British copyright holds everywhere<br />
throughout the empire that was granted, and as<br />
a result authors, British or American, can dispose<br />
of their right to United States publishers for the<br />
United States and Canada, and the books cannot<br />
be reprinted here.<br />
Canada, which follows the United States in<br />
most of its international legislation, good and<br />
bad, reciprocated by following the United States<br />
in its course in turning a copyright Act for the<br />
defence of authors into a protection Act for the<br />
protection of manufacturers in Canada. The<br />
effect of this Act would be to compel authors to<br />
have their works reprinted in Canada, to the<br />
probable loss and injury of themselves and of<br />
their Canadian readers; the only people who<br />
would profit by it would be a few Canadian<br />
publishing and printing firms. The present inter-<br />
national arrangement between Great Britain and<br />
the United States, which serves all the purposes<br />
of copyright in securing the rights of English,<br />
Canadian, and other foreign authors to the con-<br />
trol of their works published in America, and<br />
which has made English authors, to their great<br />
profit, more popular and more widely read in the<br />
United States than even United States authors,<br />
would be imperilled if Canada should assert the<br />
right of reprinting which the United States has<br />
done, seeing that Great Britain has coolly<br />
thrown her colonies into the bargain as part of<br />
her copyright domain. Nothing could be more<br />
contemptible than the denunciations of Canada<br />
by the Americans for doing what they themselves<br />
selfishly did. Nothing could be more unfair than<br />
for the English to reproach Canada for wanting<br />
to do what she has consented to the United States<br />
doing. Nothing could be more ill-informed than<br />
the rude expressions of intelligent men of both<br />
countries with regard to Canada's course. All<br />
this is very galling, but no reason why Canada<br />
should, under pretence of securing the rights of<br />
authors, pass a law to embarras them.<br />
It must be remembered that the authors are<br />
agreed that their interests are served by the<br />
present arrangement, and it is authors’ interests<br />
that copyright laws are made to protect. These<br />
should not be sacrificed to the interests of the<br />
mere manufacturer. The immense market of the .<br />
United States affords them large profits as<br />
authors now that pirating is stopped. It is<br />
because that market is so big and the Canadian<br />
market is so comparatively small that English<br />
authors sell the right to publish in both countries<br />
to United States publishers, thus saving the extra<br />
cost involved in printing and publishing two<br />
editions. There authors’ interests are served by<br />
the present British copyright law, and it is<br />
authors’ interests that copyright laws are made to<br />
protect. These should not be sacričced to the<br />
interests of the mere manufacturer. There has<br />
not been a whisper of complaint from either<br />
Canadian authors or readers. Only Canadian<br />
manufacturers, and but a few of them are inte-<br />
rested. It is the knowledge of this that makes<br />
the British Government slow to interfere with a<br />
copyright arrangement which suits those whom<br />
copyright is made to defend, and which would be<br />
endangered in order to turn a copyright law into<br />
an engine of protection. Here, again, the false<br />
pretence and injustice of protectionism creates<br />
bitterness and poisons the relations of the peoples.<br />
We are home rulers, and believe that Canadians<br />
should legislate for themselves in the matter of<br />
copyright as well as of everything else which<br />
affects themselves. But when a few persons<br />
desire, in the name of home rule and of<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 229 (#243) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
229<br />
patriotism, to tax both authors and readers for<br />
their own benefit, we are not anxious to play into<br />
their hands. The United States has undoubtedly<br />
got an unrighteous advantage, but she has been<br />
given it because her market is of the first import-<br />
ance to the authors, who have the first claim to<br />
consideration, and her advantage works no injury<br />
either to Canadian authors or Canadian readers,<br />
who probably get better made and cheaper books<br />
under it than they would under the protective<br />
conditions demanded by the manufacturers.-<br />
Montreal Weekly Witness, Dec. I I, 1894.<br />
II.<br />
The following manifesto on this subject was<br />
issued from the London Chamber of Com-<br />
merce, after combined action with the Society of<br />
Authors and the Copyright Association :-<br />
Copyright is now uniform throughout the<br />
whole of the British Dominions, including, of<br />
course, Canada.<br />
It is based on the following principles:—<br />
I. That a work shall be first or simultaneously<br />
published therein.<br />
2. That copyright shall be independent of the<br />
place of printing, and of every other condition as<br />
to place and manner of manufacture.<br />
3. That the use of it as property shall,<br />
whilst it is copyright, be within the author's<br />
control.<br />
Canada, now seeks to alter these principles, and<br />
has asked the British Government to sanction<br />
arrangements to take away copyright in Canada<br />
from all British authors but Canadians.<br />
If such an imperial sanction be obtained,<br />
Canada offers to legislate so as to give British<br />
authors copyright in the Dominion there for<br />
twenty-eight years, if they reprint and republish<br />
the work in Canada within one month of its<br />
original publication.<br />
But if an author does not reprint and repub-<br />
lish his work there within a month, the Canadian<br />
Government may grant to any applicant a licence<br />
to print an edition without the author's consent,<br />
on his agreeing to pay to the Canadian Govern-<br />
ment, for the author, ten per cent. of the retail<br />
price of such edition. The retail price of every<br />
such edition is to be fixed by the publisher without<br />
consulting the author.<br />
The proposed Bill is silent as to whether the<br />
royalty is to be paid on copies sold or copies<br />
printed. The Canadian Government is not to be<br />
responsible for the collection or payment of any<br />
royalties.<br />
... The following reasons show some of the in-<br />
juries the proposed legislation would inflict on<br />
British authors:—<br />
It undermines the general recognition of the<br />
rights of copyright property, which has now be-<br />
come almost universal.<br />
It interferes with the law of vendor and pur-<br />
chaser which prevails throughout the British<br />
Empire in respect to copyright, equally with all<br />
other personal property.<br />
It requires registration in Canada, a condition<br />
of copyright abandoned by the leading nations of<br />
Europe at the Berne Convention.<br />
It takes from the author the control of his own<br />
property, and hence hinders his improving or<br />
correcting or enlarging his own writings.<br />
It injures his reputation by allowing the con-<br />
tinued circulation of unimproved editions, even<br />
after the author has enlarged his work.<br />
It would enable Canada to reprint, without<br />
permission, articles and stories from reviews,<br />
magazines, and encyclopædias, and thus seriously<br />
to injure the sale of the publications in which<br />
they appeared.<br />
It injures the value of his British edition,<br />
because the Canadian edition could be imported<br />
into the United Kingdom and the other colonies,<br />
and compete with it.<br />
It forcibly deprives him of the benefit now<br />
belonging to him in Canada under the Imperial<br />
Copyright Acts.<br />
It sanctions the appropriation of his property<br />
by others without his, the legal owner's, consent.<br />
It weakens his title to his own property.<br />
It substitutes for trade contracts, on agreed<br />
terms, an inadequate royalty not guaranteed.<br />
It clogs his property with the condition of<br />
local manufacture.<br />
It was not recommended by the Royal Com-<br />
mission for cases where readers were adequately<br />
supplied.<br />
It is at variance with the free trade principles<br />
of the United Kingdom.<br />
Any such dealing with copyright property in<br />
Canada will affect future arrangements with the<br />
Australian and all other English-speaking colonies<br />
and possessions.<br />
It would almost certainly destroy our present<br />
means of securing copyright in the United States<br />
of America.<br />
It diminishes the copyright interests of all who<br />
have given their adherence to the terms of the<br />
Berne Convention. Two million Canadians are<br />
IFrench. -<br />
To this manifesto it may be added that the<br />
Society will immediately issue an Appeal to the<br />
people of Canada upon the whole subject.<br />
*~ a 2–º<br />
g- * =<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 230 (#244) ############################################<br />
<br />
23O<br />
TIII. A UTHOR.<br />
NOTES FROM NEW YORK.<br />
[The first part of these notes should have appeared in<br />
the last number, but we had to go to press early on account<br />
of the Christmas holidays.]<br />
New York, Dec. 15, 1894.<br />
N the December number of the Bookman<br />
appear two paragraphs declaring that Mr.<br />
Meredith’s “Lord Ormont and his Aminta.”<br />
had met with “extraordinary success in America,”<br />
and that “among the other markedly successful<br />
recent books in America” were Mr. Hall Caine's<br />
“Manxman.” and Mr. Stanley Weyman’s “My<br />
Lady Rotha.” And to these statements was<br />
appended this comment: “In fact it seems as if<br />
English fiction were almost entirely supplant-<br />
ing American. Nearly all the great American<br />
successes in the last year or two have been<br />
English books.” Any one who really knew the<br />
facts of the case could not but smile at these<br />
statements and at this comment. The great<br />
success of the winter has been a British book,<br />
Mr. du Maurier’s “Trilby”; but the great success<br />
of last winter was an American book, Mr. Lew<br />
Wallace’s “Prince of India,” which, although<br />
published when times were harder than now and<br />
sold at a higher price, reached a larger sale than<br />
“Trilby’’ and in a shorter time.<br />
Mr. Meredith’s “Lord Ormont ?’ has been well<br />
received in America, but the Bookman grossly<br />
exaggerates the number of copies sold; and the<br />
Bookman cºnveys an entirely erroneous impression<br />
of the condition of the book-marketin America. Mr.<br />
Weyman’s “My Lady Rotha" has done well in<br />
the United States, but not so well as his “Gentle-<br />
man of France.” In fact, the really successful<br />
works of fiction in the year 1894 in the United<br />
States have been Mr. Crawford’s “ Katherine<br />
Lauderdale’’ and Miss Wilkins’s “Pembroke,” —<br />
both of American authorship, and Mr. Weyman's<br />
“Gentleman of France,” Mr. Caine’s “Manxman,”<br />
Mr. Hope’s “Prisoner of Zenda,” Mrs. Ward's<br />
“Marcella,” and Mr. du Maurier's “Trilby.”<br />
Probably every one of them had a sale varying<br />
between twenty and fifty thousand copies (except-<br />
ing “Trilby” of course, the sale of which already<br />
exceeds one hundred and ten thousand). Three<br />
books of American authorship were published too<br />
late in the winter to enter fairly into the com-<br />
parison, but both Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett's<br />
“Piccino,” and Mr. Charles Dudley Warner's<br />
“Golden House” began with editions of ten<br />
thousand each, while Mrs. Deland’s “Philip and<br />
his Wife” got into a fourth edition before the<br />
end of its first month.<br />
I have spoken here of copyrighted books only,<br />
because each one of these is in the hands of a<br />
single publisher; and it is possible, therefore, to<br />
ascertain precisely the number of copies sold.<br />
But during the past year or so three British<br />
works of fiction were not copyrighted —Miss<br />
Harraden’s “Ships that Pass in the Night,” Mr.<br />
Benson’s “Dodo,” and Mrs. Caffyn’s “Yellow<br />
Aster.” All three of these were seized by the<br />
pirates immediately, and reprinted right and left<br />
in cut-throat competition until they are now to<br />
be had for fourpence each. And, no doubt, the<br />
sale of these three British books has been<br />
enormous, owing partly to their own merits and<br />
partly to the furious energy of competing pirates.<br />
But the sale of these non-copyrighted stories of<br />
British authorship has been greatly surpassed, I<br />
think (of course, exact figures for comparison are<br />
not available) by the sale of certain stories of<br />
American authorship which have just come out<br />
of copyright. Our term of copyright here is<br />
twenty-eight years with one renewal of fourteen,<br />
making forty-two years in all; it is the shortest<br />
term of any of the leading countries of the world.<br />
Hawthorne’s “Scarlet Letter” was published in<br />
1850, his “House of Seven Gables” in 1851, and<br />
his “ Blithedale Romance ’’ in 1852 ; and also in<br />
1852 was published Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom's<br />
Cabin.” On these four stories the re-printers<br />
rushed as usual, and with unusual success. I<br />
have been told that one house alone has sold<br />
more than a hundred thousand copies of “Uncle<br />
Tom’s Cabin.” And this is in the lifetime of the<br />
author, for Mrs. Stowe is still alive, although she<br />
is no longer interested in the life about her;<br />
probably she will never know that her story has<br />
had a second youth on its attaining its majority<br />
twice over. Perhaps it is well to recall here that<br />
she received little or nothing from any of the<br />
British publishers who have sold countless<br />
thousands of “Uncle Tom's Cabin’’ during the<br />
last two score years. American pirates have<br />
more sins to answer for than the British pirates<br />
but the British pirate was never slow in helping<br />
himself to every American book he thought worth<br />
stealing.<br />
At the very time when the editor of the Author<br />
has been holding the American magazine editor<br />
up as an example to his British brother, an<br />
American humorist was preparing to make fun<br />
of the American magazine, and of its editors and<br />
of its principles. Mr. James L. Ford, who may be<br />
known to some English readers as the author of<br />
a volume of broadly comic sketches, called<br />
“Hypnotic Tales,” and who was one of the<br />
earliest contributors to Puck, the oldest and<br />
strongest of our comic papers, has now just put<br />
forth a volume called “The Literary Shop,” in<br />
which he considers the successful periodicals of<br />
the United States from the point of view of a<br />
young writer who has “copy " for sale. The<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 231 (#245) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
23 I<br />
attack he makes on the magazines has been made<br />
before both in Great Britain and in the United<br />
States. The sum and substance of it is that the<br />
American magazines being intended for family<br />
reading, the editors very wisely reject anything<br />
which could “offend the taste of the most<br />
fastidious.” Mr. Ford praises the “business<br />
sense” of the editors who have applied this<br />
theory so adroitly as to give the Century and<br />
Harper's a circulation of 200,000 copies a month;<br />
but he declares that American literature is being<br />
strangled by this restriction of it to themes suit-<br />
able for the contemplation of the Young Person.<br />
He affirms that only an emasculated literature is<br />
possible under these conditions; and he directs<br />
special attention to the fact that the great city of<br />
New York is teeming with subjects for fiction,<br />
and that these subjects are not getting the treat-<br />
ment they deserve because the magazine editors<br />
are “down on low life.” Mr. Ford makes his<br />
points very sharply and with a sub-acid humour<br />
which is pleasing, except, no doubt, to those who<br />
are pierced by his shafts; but he has wilfully<br />
taken a false view. At the very time he was<br />
saying that no American magazine would publish<br />
stories of low life in New York, Harper's had just<br />
concluded a series of sketches of New York scenes,<br />
up town and down town, high life and low life;<br />
and it has since begun another series of sketches<br />
of New York characters, frankly low-life, all of<br />
them.<br />
Nevertheless, there is a great deal of truth in<br />
Mr. Ford’s little book, and an abundance of<br />
humour, shown most abundantly, perhaps, in the<br />
satiric sketches which fill the final pages of the<br />
volume. Of these “The Poet's Strike,” depicting<br />
a sad occurrence at Harper and Bros, and “The<br />
Society Reporter's Christmas,” are the most<br />
comical.<br />
Of the three British authors we have had here<br />
this winter lecturing and reading from their own<br />
works, one, Dr. Conan Doyle, returned to Eng-<br />
land last week laden with dollars. Dean Hole<br />
continues in the field and so does Mr. Christie<br />
Murray. At the meeting of the “Uncut Leaves”<br />
to-night Mr. Murray is to be one of the readers.<br />
I understand that the practice of the “Uncut<br />
Deaves” of reading from their own unpublished<br />
words has been introduced into your Authors’<br />
Club in London. It is not a custom in the<br />
Authors’ Club here. The “Uncut Leaves '' is a<br />
private enterprise of Mr. L. J. B. Lincoln, who<br />
engages various authors to appear before his sub-<br />
scribers. Those who attend the meetings Mr.<br />
Lincoln conducts pay for the privilege ; and<br />
there are sometimes eight and nine hundred pre-<br />
sent. Those who read Mr. Lincoln pays, and<br />
pays liberally. So successful has this scheme<br />
WOL. W.<br />
been, that Mr. Lincoln conducts series of “Uncut<br />
Leaves,” every winter, not only in New York, but<br />
also in Brooklyn, in Philadelphia, in Baltimore,<br />
and in Washington.<br />
The Authors’ Club here, which has been home-<br />
less for nearly a year, is to be housed at last in<br />
quarters specially prepared for it in the recent<br />
addition to the sumptuous Carnegie Music Hall.<br />
It expects to get into these new rooms early next<br />
month. In the meantime its fortnightly meetings<br />
have been held this fall in the ample halls of the<br />
Architectural League in the noble building of the<br />
Fine Arts Society.<br />
By a purchase of plates and stock from<br />
Messrs. Harper and Brothers, the New York<br />
branch of Longmans, Green, and Co., has become<br />
the American publishers of all of Mr. Rider<br />
Haggard’s novels. They have recently published<br />
here his “People of the Mist,” and they will have<br />
another tale ready in January. They are also<br />
steadily enlarging their list of American authors,<br />
as, of course, any British house must do if it<br />
wishes to have close relations with American<br />
bookbuyers. In one week, as it happened,<br />
Longmans, Green, and Co. issued in New<br />
York four different books of American origin.<br />
By a purchase of plates and stock, they have<br />
also become the publishers of Col. Thomas<br />
Wentworth Higginson, whose “Young Folks'<br />
History of the United States” has now nearly<br />
attained a circulation of two hundred thousand<br />
copies.<br />
To St. Nicholas during the coming year Mr.<br />
Theodore Roosevelt will contribute a series of<br />
“Hero Tales of American History.” He is en-<br />
gaged on what may be called a continuation of<br />
Parkman's great history; it is an account of the<br />
“Winning of the West,” the slow expansion of<br />
the English-speaking people from the Atlantic<br />
coast, over the Alleghanies and across the plains.<br />
The third volume has just appeared, and a fourth<br />
will follow in about eighteen months.<br />
Mr. H. C. Bunner, the poet who wrote “Airs<br />
from Arcady,” is also the editor of Puck, and he<br />
has just reprinted from that popular weekly a<br />
second series of the ingenious and delightful<br />
comic tales he calls “Short Sixes.” Later in the<br />
winter he will have ready a volume of “Urban<br />
and Suburban Sketches,” reprinted from<br />
Scribner's Monthly.<br />
In February, Messrs. Dodd, Mead, and Co.<br />
begin to publish an American edition of the<br />
Bookman, to be conducted by Professor H. T.<br />
Peck, of Columbia College. The American<br />
edition will be wholly independent of the British,<br />
which it will not even resemble in shape.<br />
Another Columbia man, Professor Cattell, is to<br />
be the editor-in-chief of a new series of Science<br />
Z<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 232 (#246) ############################################<br />
<br />
232<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
(which may be described as an American emu-<br />
lator of the British Nature). Professor Cattell<br />
is already one of the editors of the Psychological<br />
Review ; he has called about him a staff of extra-<br />
ordinary strength, representing nearly every<br />
department of science and almost every institu-<br />
tion of learning in America.<br />
New York, Jan. 12, 1895.<br />
The death of Robert Louis Stevenson has<br />
occasioned real grief in America, and to express<br />
this in a slight degree a memorial meeting<br />
was held in this city on Jan. 4, under the<br />
auspices of the Uncut Leaves Club. It was<br />
a most notable crowd that gathered together to<br />
listen to the homage paid the great romancer by<br />
the speakers; and it was thoroughly representa-<br />
tive of the literary and artistie circles of the<br />
city. (See p. 248.)<br />
Perhaps a short account of the organisation of<br />
one of our greatest magazines may prove of<br />
interest to the readers of the Author. In 1865 a.<br />
primitive “family magazine,” called Hours at<br />
Home, was started, and this soon led Charles<br />
Scribner, founder of the publishing house of that<br />
name, to consider the possibilities which lay in<br />
issuing a periodical that would appeal to a wider<br />
audience and be on a much larger scale. With<br />
this idea in view Dr. Holland, author of the<br />
famous “Timothy Titcomb's Letters,” was con-<br />
sulted as to taking the editorship of the new<br />
venture. Thus in 1870 the firm of Charles<br />
Scribner announced from the office of Hours at<br />
Home that they had organised the Magazine<br />
Department into a separate company, with Dr.<br />
J. G. Holland and Roswell C. Smith as part<br />
owners, under the name of Scribner and Co., and<br />
that the periodical should be known as Scribner's<br />
Monthly. From the start it set a new standard<br />
for the popular magazine. It introduced many<br />
fresh writers, who had great influence in American<br />
literature, and on the artistic side it gave impetus<br />
to wood engraving.<br />
When the death of Mr. Scribner occurred the<br />
magazine continued to increase in prosperity, but<br />
in 1881 a disagreement arose between the<br />
partners, which finally resulted in the sale of the<br />
monthly to a new corporation, headed by Dr.<br />
Holland and Mr. Smith. This transfer was<br />
effected under the stipulation that the Scribners<br />
should abstain from publishing a magazine which<br />
could be a rival in the same field, while on their<br />
side the new company agreed to withdraw the<br />
name Scribner; and the periodical was henceforth<br />
known as the Century Magazine. The old<br />
magazine under its new name continued its<br />
prosperous career, and after the appearance of<br />
the war series in its pages the circulation was<br />
actually doubled within a twelvemonth.<br />
From the start, the Century Company agreed<br />
to allow its editorial staff to acquire shares of<br />
the stock, thus consolidating the interest of the<br />
magazine with those in whose charge it is.<br />
Another custom is the giving at Christmas time<br />
to all employées, not holding shares, a percentage<br />
of the year's profits in proportion to their<br />
salaries. On the death of Dr. Holland, in 1881,<br />
Mr. Richard Watson Gilder, who had long been<br />
his assistant, became editor-in-chief. He has<br />
filled his post most ably, and has gathered about<br />
him men of unusual capability. The associate<br />
editor is Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, who<br />
was secretary of the Copyright League, and was<br />
rewarded for his work by the French Government<br />
with the Legion of Honour. The assistant editor<br />
is Mr. Clarence Clough Buel, who was formerly<br />
a journalist, and who suggested the famous war<br />
series. Among others in the editorial office are<br />
Mr. Frank H. Tooker and Mr. William Carey, to<br />
whose care is due the make up of the tasteful<br />
pages and the arrangement of the illustrations.<br />
Besides these, three women clerks are employed;<br />
and there is also a special staff to whom is com-<br />
mitted the preliminary reading of all the manu-<br />
scripts, some 20,000 of which are passed on every<br />
year.<br />
The art department has a special staff of its<br />
own, at the head of which is Mr. Alexander W.<br />
Drake, with Mr. W. Lewis Fraser as his chief<br />
assistant. It is owing to the efforts of Mr. Drake<br />
that the art of wood engraving has received so<br />
much encouragement from this magazine, and it<br />
is through him also that the development of that<br />
art has been speeded. The Century was among<br />
the first to try photographic engraving processes,<br />
and with a success certainly not yet surpassed by<br />
any other publishing house, even in France. The<br />
half-tone process, although mechanical, and thus<br />
supposedly true to the original, is but what its<br />
name represents it to be—a half tone, and hence<br />
lacking the darkest and lightest shades. In the<br />
January number of the Century is a block, which<br />
originally was a half-tone plate, and which has<br />
been worked over by a wood engraver until about<br />
one-half of its surface has felt the tool. Thus<br />
this new reproduction frankly substitutes<br />
engraving where the mechanical process fails.<br />
The Century aims solely at getting as near the<br />
Original as possible, and the question of cost is<br />
not allowed to interfere with what is the best<br />
method for obtaining the desired results. There<br />
have been cases where etchings were made simply<br />
that they might be processed ; and wood-<br />
engravings found to be too large have been<br />
processed down to half size. Also it is well to<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 233 (#247) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
233<br />
note that the superiority of the American<br />
magazine is due to a great extent to the care<br />
taken with its printing. Infinite thought is<br />
taken by De Winne, the artist printer, to keep the<br />
presswork of the Century up to the level of its<br />
text and illustrations.<br />
The Century Company also issue a juvenile<br />
monthly called St. Nicholas. This, again, has<br />
its own staff. Mrs. Mary Mapes Dodge is editor-<br />
in-chief, and Mr. W. F. Clarke is assistant editor.<br />
There are also two editorial assistants, Messrs.<br />
Tudor Jenks and Chapin, and besides these<br />
several clerks. With this magazine, as with the<br />
Century, every manuscript received is carefully<br />
read and examined. The printing is of the same<br />
high standard, and the illustrations proceed from<br />
the same art department.<br />
In addition to the staffs of the two magazines,<br />
there is a third entirely separate staff, having<br />
charge of the Century Dictionary. At the head<br />
of this is Mr. Benjamin E. Smith. Since the first<br />
page of that stupendous undertaking was cast the<br />
work has never stopped, for it is constantly under-<br />
going revision, and a supplement will eventually<br />
be inevitable. Mr. Smith has recently brought<br />
out a seventh volume, the Century Cyclopædia<br />
of Names.<br />
A large part of the success of the Century is<br />
due to its publishers. They have pushed the<br />
sales judiciously, and have shown such enterprise<br />
in the advertising department, that the magazine<br />
often contains a hundred pages of advertisements.<br />
The business sense which has characterised the<br />
management of the Century is a heritage from<br />
Roswell Smith, the first president of the com-<br />
pany, whose position is now adequately filled by<br />
Mr. Frank H. Scott, Mr. Charles F. Chichester<br />
having succeeded the latter as treasurer. In its<br />
early years the Century found many advantages<br />
in the fact that it was not connected with a pub-<br />
lishing house, as it was never obliged to receive<br />
any author on account of his relations with the<br />
house. But of late, as book material accumu-<br />
lated, it was found expedient not to allow it all<br />
to leave the Century office, and hence the Century<br />
company has been for several years now a pub-<br />
lisher of books also.<br />
The Century pays for all manuscripts on<br />
acceptance. Indeed, this is the custom of all<br />
reputable magazines here, and the editor of<br />
Harper's has been heard to remark “that it was<br />
immoral to accept an article without paying for<br />
it at once.” This naturally leads to the<br />
accumulation of material, and the Century has<br />
always several thousand pounds worth on hand;<br />
in fact, during the past year it has been largely<br />
drawing on that stock. Thus articles on “Book-<br />
bindings,” by Brander Matthews, which were<br />
VOL. W.<br />
accepted and paid for some four or five years ago,<br />
are only now appearing. “Folk-speech in<br />
America,” by Mr. Edward Eggleston, had been<br />
lying by eight or ten years; and Mrs. Oliphant's<br />
papers on the period of Queen Anne waited ten<br />
or twelve years for publication ; while Mr. Marion<br />
Crawford’s article on “The Gods of India,”<br />
which was printed only early last winter, had been<br />
accepted and paid for before he wrote his first<br />
novel, “Mr. Isaacs.” ---<br />
The Century occupies several floors of a fine<br />
large building overlooking Union-square. Its<br />
rooms are most luxuriously and beautifully fitted<br />
up. The walls are decorated with the original<br />
drawings of its illustrations, and to the outsider<br />
it would seem almost like a picture gallery were<br />
it not for its home-like appearance.<br />
The organisation of other American magazines<br />
is not unlike that of the Century. Besides their<br />
enormous book-publishing business, Harper and<br />
Brothers issue also four periodicals—the magazine<br />
and three weeklies. Mr. Henry M. Alden, author<br />
of “God in His World,” is editor-in-chief of<br />
Harper's Magazine. Mr. John D. Adams is his<br />
assistant ; and at the head of the art department<br />
is Mr. Horace Bradley. The other periodicals<br />
are Harper’s Young People, edited by Mr. J. H.<br />
Sears; Harper's Weekly, edited by Mr. Henry L.<br />
Nelson, with Mr. Henry Gallup Paine as managing<br />
editor; and Harper's Bazaar, a weekly, princi-<br />
pally intended to appeal to a feminine audience,<br />
but really containing so much of general interest<br />
as not to be restricted to one sex, and edited by<br />
Mrs. Margaret E. Sangster.<br />
In 1887, Charles Scribner's Sons started a<br />
magazine of their own, and placed it under the<br />
editorship of Mr. Edward L. Burlingame. It<br />
was a new publication in every sense, and in no<br />
way a revival of any tradition of the past. Mr.<br />
Robert Bridges is associate editor, and the art<br />
department is in the hands of Mr. A. F. Jaccacci.<br />
The magazine (with the rest of the publishing<br />
business of Charles Scribner and Sons) has<br />
recently been moved to a new building on Fifth-<br />
avenue, near Madison-square, which is one of the<br />
best built and best equipped edifices ever erected<br />
for exclusive use of a publishing firm.<br />
Mr. Charles Dudley Warner is spending the<br />
winter just outside of Florence in Landor's Willa,<br />
as the guest of Professor Willard Fiske.<br />
Mr. A. M. Palmer has made arrangements with<br />
Mr. Du Maurier to have Mr. Paul Potter dramatise<br />
“Trilby,” and it will shortly be produced at Mr.<br />
Palmer's own theatre. This dramatisation shows<br />
how, in one respect, American copyright is more<br />
favourable to foreign authors than the British<br />
law. In the United States the novelist has<br />
reserved to him the right to dramatise, whereas<br />
z 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 234 (#248) ############################################<br />
<br />
234<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
in Great Britain he has to give an absurd regis-<br />
tering performance of his dramatisation before the<br />
novel appears. Thus a British author having a<br />
novel successful in America can reap the profit of<br />
the play taken therefrom ; but an American<br />
author having a novel successful in England<br />
would stand little chance of making anything<br />
from the dramatisation ; and, as a fact, Mrs.<br />
Stowe never received a penny from England for<br />
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin " as a play.<br />
Mr. Laurence Hutton, than whom no American<br />
has more friends in Great Britain, and whose<br />
father and mother were Scotch, refused to act<br />
as treasurer of the American committee for<br />
the purchase of Carlyle's house in Chelsea,<br />
seeing no reason why any American should<br />
help to make a monument for a contemporary<br />
British author like Carlyle, who certainly never<br />
showed any goodwill towards the United States.<br />
In one of his Literary Notes in Harper's for<br />
January—notes unfortunately not included in<br />
the London edition of the magazine—Mr. Hutton<br />
gives vent to his feelings as follows: “There<br />
seems to exist in the mother country a curious<br />
notion that while we have shaken off all personal<br />
and national allegiance to the British Crown, we<br />
are still rank Tories and Royalists in our loyalty<br />
and devotion to British literature ; that while we<br />
are politically a free and independent people, we<br />
are still an intellectual province of Great Britain;<br />
and that we must still pay taxes to the great<br />
and royal British mind! They would laugh to<br />
scorn any effort on our part to raise money, in<br />
England, for the Curtis memorial in New York,<br />
or for the preservation of Poe's home at Fordham,<br />
even if we were willing to ask others to help us,<br />
in a pecuniary way, to honour our own dead;<br />
and they do mock our generosity in contributing<br />
to the building of a memorial theatre to Shakes-<br />
peare at Stratford, to the buying of a bust for<br />
Pepys in St. Olave's, or to the raising of stained<br />
glass windows to the memory of Raleigh and<br />
Izaak Walton in St. Margaret's and St. Dunstan's.<br />
Shakespeare and Pepys and Walton and Raleigh<br />
are ours, as well as theirs; and it is our right,<br />
as well as our privilege, to show our respect and<br />
affection for our own ; but we ought to throw the<br />
tea into Boston Harbour once more, before we<br />
consent to pay tribute to a class of post-revolu-<br />
tionary British heroes who paid no tribute to us;<br />
or before we offer to help the Britons to glorify their<br />
own land by erecting monuments—in their land—<br />
to poets and scholars who in their lifetime never<br />
cared to glorify anything, or anybody, but Great<br />
Britain or themselves.”<br />
It may be suspected that Mr. Hutton thus<br />
voices a feeling not ucommon among American<br />
men of letters. HALLETT ROBINSON.<br />
LETTER FROM PARIS,<br />
NEVER felt more confirmed in my pre-<br />
ference for an artistic life as contrasted<br />
to the pursuit.of politics, never did I so<br />
cordially agree with what Daudet has written<br />
about his detestation of politics, than as I sat at<br />
breakfast on Thursday last in the grand hall of<br />
the Hotel des Reservoirs at Versailles, just before<br />
the opening of the Congress for the election of<br />
a new President. The room was full of senators,<br />
deputies, political journalists, and all the vague<br />
camp followers of all great political events. And<br />
what a crowd it was, a mass of strangely dressed,<br />
noisy, red-faced individuals, with greedy twinkling<br />
eyes and fevered gestures, and the strangest<br />
manners at table. When one looked at them and<br />
thought of the man of letters, of the poet, of the<br />
painter, or the musician, and the ambitions of<br />
these as compared with the longings of those,<br />
one might well say—and be no Pharisee at that<br />
—that one thanked God not to be as these.<br />
I am asked to announce that Monsieur Léon<br />
Daudet will very shortly commence the publica-<br />
tion of a series or “cycle” of three novels, which<br />
will be as “The Battle of Dorking of the Social<br />
Revolution,” and an attempt to give, in anticipa-<br />
tion, pictures of that great event, whose comin<br />
is so eagerly expected, and so fondly hoped for<br />
by not a few. The first of these novels will be<br />
called “De Precurseur,” and will describe a kind<br />
of Tolstoi apostle, visiting the faubourgs, helping<br />
the poor, and preaching the gospel of Revolt.<br />
The second will be called “Les Porteurs du Feu,”<br />
and the action of this book will take place in<br />
Tondon, Amsterdam, and Paris. The third<br />
novel will be called “The City of Bread and of<br />
Fire.” Monsieur Léon Daudet is at present<br />
arranging for their appearance in serial form in<br />
England and America, previous to their publica-<br />
tion in book-form in France.<br />
Monsieur Jules Massenet is at present engaged<br />
on an opera to be called “Griselidis,” the libretto<br />
of which has been drawn by Armand Silvestre<br />
from the romantic play of the same name which<br />
was performed with so much success at the<br />
Comédie Française, of which Monsieur Armand<br />
Silvestre was co-author.<br />
Speaking about composers, it may be of interest<br />
to note that in France authors’ royalties in an<br />
opera are divided equally between the composer<br />
of the music and the writer of the libretto. Nor<br />
does this rule apply only in the matter of grand<br />
operas, but even in songs, a system which for the<br />
benefit of our minor poets might profitably be<br />
introduced into England. Only the very best<br />
writers of words for songs in England can hope<br />
for as much as four, or at the outside, five guineas<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 235 (#249) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
235<br />
for their words, whilst the average price paid to<br />
the poet is, I believe, 5s. In France the poet<br />
takes half the royalties, and the author of the<br />
music the other half. The royalties on musical<br />
works are, of course, not so large as on literary<br />
productions. Thus the royalties paid to the<br />
authors on a grand opera, never exceed 6 per cent.<br />
of the receipts. Of this the composer takes half,<br />
or 3 per cent., and the librettist the other half.<br />
With a successful opera both musician and<br />
librettist may count on an average receipt of<br />
£1.8 per performance.<br />
Speaking of theatrical matters, it was amusing<br />
to learn from what transpired the other day in<br />
one of the Paris Police-courts that a person who<br />
recently contributed the dramatic criticisms to<br />
La Cocarde used to pay £16 a month to the pro-<br />
prietors of this paper for doing so. It is fair to<br />
add that this was before M. Maurice Barrés took<br />
over the management and proprietorship of this<br />
paper. I have heard of similar things in<br />
England.<br />
A certain London publishing firm has inaugu-<br />
rated a system of paying for contributions to its<br />
various periodicals with cheques, on the back of<br />
which is printed a statement that the payee<br />
acknowledges receipt of amount on the other side<br />
for contributions and copyright of same. His<br />
signature forms the indorsement to the cheque,<br />
and, of course, if he will not indorse the cheque<br />
it cannot be cashed. I am not clear about the<br />
legality of such a contract, but I understand that<br />
the matter is going to be looked into by the<br />
Institute of Journalists. For my part, I never<br />
will sign away copyright.<br />
The other day I met a gentleman who holds a<br />
high official position in Turkey, and we had a<br />
long talk together about life in Constantinople.<br />
I was much interested to hear that the favourite<br />
book in the harem was—what would you say P-<br />
Ringsley’s “Westward Ho!” in translation.<br />
To-morrow, Jan. 25, is the fortieth anniversary<br />
of the suicide of poor Gerard de Nerval, in the<br />
Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, a street which, thanks<br />
to Baron Haussmann, has long since disappeared<br />
from the face of Paris. It was a horrible and a<br />
sinister street this Rue de la Vieille Lanterne, a<br />
street about which a French writer, wise in Paris<br />
street lore, has written as follows: “Ah! this<br />
street above all was most sinister amongst the<br />
most sinister, most hideous amongst the most<br />
hideous. In the thirteenth century it was called<br />
Scorching-street, later on, Washing-street, and<br />
in the nineteenth as in the thirteenth century<br />
it more resembled a sewer than a public way. As<br />
a matter of fact little traffic passed through it,<br />
its inhabitants being reputed the most dangerous<br />
malefactors. The ground, unceasingly drenched<br />
by rain and the overflow of the gutter, formed a<br />
thick black mud, which oozed up under-foot<br />
between the cobble stones that paved this leprous<br />
street. At one end, towards Rue de la Tuerie<br />
(Killing-street), it had a broken-down flight of<br />
steps, which led up from darkness into light, from<br />
filth to what is clean. Up and down this flight of<br />
steps all day long there hopped gravely and with<br />
dignity a black crow. At the foot of the steps<br />
an iron grating rather more than of man’s stature<br />
in height rose, and opposite was a stable which<br />
was the nightly refuge of nameless vagabonds,<br />
while a few paces lower down was a police sus-<br />
pected furnished hotel, or common lodging-house.<br />
Further, nothing save houses wrapped in silence,<br />
ominous and gloomy, and dead walls sweating<br />
forth misery and abjection.”<br />
It was here on the morning of Jan. 25, 1855,<br />
that there hanged himself on that iron grating<br />
the exquisite poet, whose name was Gerard<br />
de Nerval. He was not dead when he was<br />
discovered by one of the “workmen’’ who issued<br />
forth at an early hour from the common lodging-<br />
house, and might have been saved but for the<br />
fear of the mob which gathered round him, as he<br />
hung choking and wriggling, lest murder might<br />
be charged against them. So he was allowed to<br />
continue his hideous and convulsive dance of<br />
death. His feet were but two inches from the<br />
muddy soil.<br />
The onlookers recognised from the man’s head<br />
and hands and face that this was a gentleman in<br />
spite of the fact that his dress was ragged and<br />
Sordid beyond the raggedness of the extremest<br />
and most sordid poverty. Papers of manuscript<br />
peeped out from his torn pockets, and these, con-<br />
sidered together with certain stains of ink on the<br />
dirty blouse and the fingers, revealed in the<br />
victim a man of letters. It is reported that once<br />
or twice the struggling man raised his hand to<br />
his neck in feeble mute appeal, as though to<br />
point out to them, miserable dullards, what was<br />
torturing him, what was the life of him. But no<br />
response was made. It was a crowd of men wary<br />
and cautious of habit. I think that in its public<br />
shame, this death, with all its surroundings of<br />
all that is vile in man and in the works<br />
of man, was a hundred times more sad than<br />
even the arsenic convulsions of that starving<br />
boy in his paper-littered garret in the Holborn<br />
bye-way; aye, a hundred times more sad than<br />
even the final fall in the weakness of hunger and<br />
in the fever of alcohol of Edgar Allan Poe. In<br />
this case as in that there was no help possible.<br />
There was no hand near to stay or help, nor any<br />
land in sight. But from de Nerval’s hideous<br />
pillory, his so accessible gallows, what easy rescue<br />
might have been made. When at last the police<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 236 (#250) ############################################<br />
<br />
236<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
arrived, and the man was cut down, life was<br />
extinct. In his pockets were found various<br />
manuscripts, notably part of a serial story which<br />
Gerard de Nerval was then writing. But no<br />
papers allowing of his identification. So the<br />
body was sent to the Morgue, there to lie on a<br />
dripping slab, with a vagabond, killed in a<br />
brawl, on the one side of him, and a self-drowned<br />
woman of the town on the other. Poor Gerard<br />
de Nerval. Poor poets.<br />
I hear that Mr. Rowland Strong, the able<br />
correspondent in Paris of the Morning Post, is<br />
oc, upying such leisure as journalism leaves him<br />
in writing a novel on Parisian life, with which<br />
he is very well acquainted indeed. The novel<br />
ought to be a very good one, for Mr. Strong is<br />
master of a most excellent style, as the readers of<br />
the Paris correspondence of the Morning Post<br />
have long observed, and, moreover, a man of<br />
wide reading, caustic wit, and great powers of<br />
observation. One is always glad to chronicle the<br />
endeavour on the part of the journalist to produce<br />
purely original work, in spite of the fact that<br />
many critics in London will not admit that a<br />
man who has written for the press is capable of<br />
literary production. It is a strange theory, for<br />
in France at least every successful writer began<br />
his career, with the exception, perhaps, of<br />
Alphonse Daudet, by writing for the press.<br />
I hear that the proprietor of a leading and<br />
successful American magazine has just left Paris<br />
for London to arrange for the writing of a new<br />
“Life of Christ” for publication in his magazine.<br />
Mr. Zangwill is in Paris studying life amongst<br />
the art students in the Montparnasse quarter, in<br />
preparation for a novel on this subject. He may<br />
be seen daily dining—not without heroism—in a<br />
miserable little crémèrie near the Rue de Rennes,<br />
where the rapin and his womankind take their<br />
scanty meals. His note-book is filling apace, but<br />
I fear, in my knowledge of the kind of fare pro-<br />
vided at the Parisian crémèries, that at times he<br />
must regret the fleshpots of Israel. Mark Twain<br />
is also in Paris.<br />
Madame Juliette Adam is writing her Memoirs.<br />
They will be invaluable to the student of the<br />
political and literary histories of France under the<br />
Third Republic.<br />
- RoBERT H. SHERARD.<br />
I 23, Bd. Magenta, Paris, Jan. 24, 1895.<br />
BOOKS PUBLISHED IN 1894,<br />
HE Publishers' Circular gives its customary<br />
analytical table of the new books of<br />
1894 :—<br />
<br />
1893. I894.<br />
New New New New<br />
Books. Editions. [Books. |Editions.<br />
Divisions.<br />
Theology, sermons, Bibli-<br />
cal, &c. .................. 459 74 476 8O<br />
Educational, classical,<br />
and philological ...... 518 IO4 615 I27<br />
Juvenile works and tales 659 36 269 29<br />
Novels, tales, and other<br />
fiction .................. 935 393 1315 337<br />
Law, jurisprudence, &c. 27 23 I 26 23<br />
Political and social eco-<br />
nomy, trade and com-<br />
II101"Ce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 I4. I4 I 2 I<br />
Arts, sciences, and illus-<br />
trated works............ 86 37 98 3O<br />
Voyages, travels, geo- -<br />
graphical research ... 247 72 282 68<br />
History, biography, &c. 269 65 256 58<br />
Poetry and the drama ... 197<br />
Year-books and serials in<br />
37 I6O 2 I<br />
volumes . ............... 37O I 328 2<br />
Medicine, surgery, &c. ... 93 58 97 59<br />
Belles-lettres, essays, mo-<br />
nographs, &c. ......... 96 I I 370 II 5<br />
Miscellaneous, including<br />
pamphlets, not sermons I IO2 328 767 2I 5<br />
5 I:29 I 253 53OO | I 185<br />
5 I:29 53OO<br />
6382 6485<br />
—Times, Jan. 4.<br />
The number of books published in the year<br />
1894 reaches an amazing total of 6485. If,<br />
however, we examine the list a little we shall<br />
find crumbs of comfort. For instance, 981 of<br />
them are “miscellaneous, including pamphlets.”<br />
Strike them out ; we will not read them. Tech-<br />
nical, scientific, professional, and trade books—<br />
all three which belong to the business of life—<br />
numbered 596. Strike them out. Those will<br />
read them who must. Religious books, 856. I<br />
think we may strike them out in considering<br />
literature. The medicine of the soul is as<br />
“scientific ’’ as the medicine of the body. Educa-<br />
tional books number 742. Strike them out,<br />
because they are the tools and instruments<br />
necessary for the conduct and business of life.<br />
Year-books and serials are surely not literature.<br />
Strike out 330. Boys’ and girls' books, 297.<br />
Strike them out. There remain novels, voyages<br />
and travels, history and biography, poetry, and<br />
belles lettres. Of novels there were 1315 new<br />
books and 337 new editions. Now, every novel<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 237 (#251) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
237<br />
worth anything goes into a new edition. These<br />
figures mean, therefore, IOOO failures in novel<br />
writing; they also mean a great many books paid<br />
for by the foolish writers after their work has<br />
been declined. Further, they mean that in this<br />
period of depression and “tightness” there are<br />
thousands who try whether they, too, cannot join<br />
the company of the successful. They cannot,<br />
but they will always try. These figures also<br />
mean that, seeing the enormous success of<br />
certain novels and the impossibility of discover-<br />
ing why some of them have succeeded, a few<br />
publishers are “plunging ” in hope of securing a<br />
“boom.” On the whole, we need not be alarmed<br />
by the figures. Again, the ephemeral nature of<br />
many apparently solid books, as those of travel<br />
and of history, is shown by the fact that there are<br />
538 new books of the kind and only 126 new<br />
editions. Of poetry there is a sad falling off.<br />
Only 160 new books of verse against 190 of last<br />
year. Only 2 I new editions against 37 of last<br />
year.<br />
The most remarkable increase is under the head<br />
of “belles lettres, essays, monographs, &c.” In<br />
1893 there were 96 new books under this head<br />
and II reprints. In 1894 there were 370 new<br />
books and I 15 reprints | What does this mean?<br />
First, we should like to see a list of these new<br />
books and reprints. Probably we should have to<br />
strike out a good many as irrelevant. I take two<br />
columns of book advertisements from the Times.<br />
In one I find two such books; in the other, three.<br />
What are they—these 370 books of belles lettres?<br />
Here is a theory which I advance with hesitation,<br />
but it may account for some. The production of<br />
a book of essays or of criticism is an excellent<br />
method by which a young man ambitious of<br />
literary work may introduce himself. If his book<br />
attracts notice either for style or for scholarship,<br />
he is a man to be noted and remembered by<br />
editors. And the number of such young men is<br />
increasing every day. The congestion of the pro-<br />
fessions; the apparent ease and pleasantness and<br />
freedom of the work; the large incomes made by<br />
successful journalists and critics — these, with<br />
many other reasons, attract the young men of<br />
Oxford and Cambridge. I imagine that this<br />
theory would account for some of the 370<br />
volumes. But what about the rest ? I do not<br />
know.<br />
On further consideration of these figures, it<br />
occurred to me to compare them with those<br />
obtained from the lists issued day by day in the<br />
leading journals. For instance, there is published<br />
every day in the Times a list of the day's<br />
publications. In this list we may certainly<br />
assume that every book of the least importance<br />
or pretensions is announced. The following are<br />
the numbers of publications, month by month.<br />
Since the first two columns are difficult to keep<br />
apart, let us add them together. It will be seen<br />
that the numbers are about half those given in<br />
the Circular. We have, that is to say, 770 novels<br />
and children’s story books announced in the<br />
Times against I 594 reported in the Circular :<br />
New. Children’s. Reprint.<br />
January ......... 65 ...... I 7 . . . . . . 7<br />
February ......... 34 . . . . . . 2 . . . . . . 3<br />
March ............ 37 . . . . . I . . . . . . 8<br />
April............... 3I . . . . . I . . . . . . 6<br />
May ............... 45 . . . . . . O . . . . . . 8<br />
June ............... 47 . . . . . . 4 . . . . . . 8<br />
July ............... 64 ...... 4 . . . . . . I3<br />
August ............ 34 . . . . . . 3 . . . . . . 6<br />
September ...... 25 . . . . . . O . . . . . . 5<br />
October. . . . . . . . . . . . 43 . . . . . . I . . . . . . 7<br />
November. . . . . . . . . 86 . . . . . . 4O . . . . . . I 2<br />
December . . . . . . ... I 23 . . . . . . 63 . . . . . . 35<br />
634 I36 II 8<br />
We need not in the least attack the correctness<br />
of the figures in the Circular. We may, however,<br />
understand that a good half of the books making<br />
up that portentous total were quite unimportant<br />
and trivial works.<br />
Further examination proves that out of the 634<br />
novels there were at least 200 or even 250 also<br />
quite trivial and unimportant. This class is<br />
made up chiefly of those novels published at the<br />
author's own expense. There are paltry houses—<br />
call them rather hovels—which do nothing except<br />
produce trash at the author's expense. “Our<br />
reader reports so favourably of the work that we are<br />
prepared to offer you the following exceptionally<br />
favourable terms, &c.,” according to the formula.<br />
These deductions made, we are left with a very<br />
fair number of novels—by no means too many<br />
for the reading of the English-speaking world—<br />
Written by about 250 known novelists and about<br />
I5O aspirants.<br />
* * *<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
E have lost in Sir John Seeley one of the<br />
greatest writers of our time—if by<br />
“great” we mean one who is powerful<br />
enough to mould and influence his time. The<br />
man who so far influenced the Anglican Church<br />
as to sweep away old shibboleths and to clothe<br />
the old doctrines with fresh meanings; the man<br />
who revived in his country the Imperial idea,<br />
making of Great Britain not only the Mother of<br />
Empire, but the Mistress and Empress; the man<br />
who taught the world how the New Germany was<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 238 (#252) ############################################<br />
<br />
238<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
created and by whom ; that man, surely, deserves<br />
the name of great.<br />
My own acquaintance with Seeley took place<br />
towards the close of the fifties. He was some three<br />
years my senior, so that my earliest knowledge of<br />
him is that of a young Bachelor of Arts, Senior<br />
Classic. He was as a young man habitually grave,<br />
yet by no means without humour; no one who knew<br />
him then would speak of him as dry. Serious<br />
he certainly was ; his mind was then, as ever<br />
since, filled with the great and lofty themes of<br />
which he afterwards treated. To talk with him<br />
was, to a lad of twenty, an education ; he filled<br />
one with new thoughts; he gave one suggestions;<br />
he made one thirsty and hungry for more know-<br />
ledge; he made one careful of speech on account<br />
of a certain Socratic method by which he con-<br />
vinced the foolish speaker of his folly—yet gently<br />
and never with any joy over the humiliation of<br />
the other man. He took little interest in the<br />
things so much beloved by the average under-<br />
graduate ; he seldom asked, I am sure, where the<br />
college boat was ; he was not present at boat<br />
suppers; perhaps he never witnessed the University<br />
boat race; and he never showed up at Lord's. A<br />
modest and sober walk of four or five miles gave<br />
him all the exercise he wanted, and the rest of<br />
his time was chiefly spent in his own rooms.<br />
It is pleasing to remember that one of his<br />
closest friends and greatest admirers was a man<br />
wholly unlike him in every particular—Charles<br />
Stuart Calverley. I have heard Calverley dis-<br />
course on the virtues and qualities of Seeley most<br />
generously (for they were sometimes thought to<br />
be rivals) and eloquently.<br />
Seeley was the son of a man of deep religious<br />
feeling, which he himself inherited. The inevitable<br />
revolt of the son against the father's narrow<br />
Calvinism, which generally takes the form of<br />
aggressive agnosticism, in his place became a<br />
Christianity on broader foundations with new<br />
meanings and more Catholic enclosures. He was<br />
always religious in his thoughts and religious in<br />
his daily life.<br />
I have never heard him lecture or speak. I<br />
can readily believe that as in his books so in his<br />
lectures, the personal element was entirely re-<br />
pressed. Perhaps he was dry. Yet he taught.<br />
He was born to teach, and he was full of things<br />
to teach. He made the most of himself too.<br />
Quite early in life he realised that for such work<br />
as his, German was necessary. He went to<br />
Dresden for three months and came back a<br />
master of the German language. Later on it<br />
became necessary for him to know Italian and to<br />
study Rome. He went to Rome for the summer<br />
months, staying there three months, and return-<br />
ing a master of Italian and of Roman topography.<br />
He is a standing example that the strongest and<br />
best faculties—intellect of the rarest—-memory<br />
—scholarship—linguistic gift–power of expres-<br />
sion—are worth nothing without industry.<br />
I well remember a certain letter which came<br />
to me across the sea, one day a long time ago,<br />
when I was abroad. It was from a man who<br />
knew Seeley better than was my good fortune;<br />
who saw a great deal more of him. This man<br />
sent me a copy of “Ecce Homo,” just then<br />
published. “Read the book,” he said. “It is<br />
Seeley's, though the world does not yet know it.<br />
Read the book. He stands out already, as I<br />
always said he would—ávač divöpóv—a king of<br />
men’’—And so he did.<br />
That Seeley joined our Society at the outset;<br />
that he gave us his name as a Vice-President<br />
first, and a member of Council afterwards; that<br />
he strongly approved of our work and our aims—<br />
this has always been to me, at times when it<br />
seemed as if all our efforts for self-protection<br />
were likely to be in vain, a great encouragement<br />
and support.<br />
•-º-º-º-º-<br />
At the first meeting of the committee held in<br />
the year, on Monday, Jan. I4, it was RESOLVED,<br />
that the best thanks of the committee be con-<br />
veyed to Sir Frederick Pollock, for his services to<br />
the society as chairman of the Committee of<br />
Management during the year 1893 and 1894.<br />
I hear of complaints among members that<br />
their books are not mentiomed in “Book Talk”<br />
of the month. Will every one make a note that<br />
we very much desire to hear of every new work<br />
produced by our members; that we cannot<br />
promise to hunt among the advertisements and<br />
the announcements for these new books; that if<br />
members will inform us of their new books they<br />
may depend upon the notice being inserted;<br />
and that, as regards a short review or expression<br />
of opinion upon the book, it must be left to the<br />
writer of the columns called “Book Talk.” It is,<br />
of course, impossible for the editor to promise,<br />
or for the members to claim, even a short review<br />
in these pages.<br />
The question of Canadian Copyright is sus-<br />
pended for the time, owing to the death of Sir<br />
John Thompson. Meanwhile we have reprinted<br />
in another column (p. 228) an article on the<br />
subject, from the Montreal Weekly Witness,<br />
which shows that public opinion is not all on one<br />
side.<br />
In another place (p. 248) will be found a report<br />
of Mr. Stedman’s address on the occasion of the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 239 (#253) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
239<br />
Stevenson memorial meeting at New York. The<br />
occasion was memorable. One of the few writers<br />
who in their lifetime are recognised as belonging<br />
to the common literature of the English-speaking<br />
races—not the local provincial literature of Great<br />
Britain, of the States, of Canada, of Australia,<br />
but the common possession of all—was dead. The<br />
meeting was held in honour of that man; he was<br />
a Scotchman by birth ; he was not a dweller in<br />
the United States, but he was acknowledged to<br />
belong to the States, to be part of the honour<br />
and glory of the States just as much as Lowell<br />
was claimed to belong to us, although a<br />
Republican and an American to the finger tips.<br />
It was not only a memorable occasion, but the<br />
chairman's eulogy, here reproduced, is fully worthy<br />
of the occasion. Had I not heard Leslie Stephen's<br />
address on the completion of the Lowell memorial<br />
in Westminster Abbey, I should have said that<br />
I did not know a single English author capable of<br />
such an address, so dignified, so beautiful, so<br />
worthy of the writer whom it illustrated. And<br />
now that it is too late, what, one asks, were we<br />
ourselves doing that we held no such meeting P<br />
Why was it left to the Americans to show us how<br />
we should honour our writers? Alas! so little<br />
accustomed are we to any recognition of letters<br />
that we do not even remember to pay the tribute<br />
of a funeral oration on the departure of our<br />
worthiest and our best<br />
Among the letters of the month will be found a<br />
proposal by Mr. Thomas Macquoid that a<br />
memorial to Louis Stevenson should be esta-<br />
blished. The letter does not propose any form of<br />
memorial. Not a statue, says the writer, but<br />
perhaps the founding of some institution con-<br />
nected with literature. I willingly give admission<br />
to Mr. Macquoid’s letter and proposal, and if the<br />
suggestion commends itself to members, I shall<br />
be very glad to receive their opinions on the<br />
subject, and to forward them to the secretary for<br />
the consideration of the committee. There are<br />
two points for consideration: (1) Whether it is<br />
desirable that such a memorial shall be instituted;<br />
(2) if so, what form it should take.<br />
Now, as to the first point. I have no doubt<br />
whatever that some of Stevenson’s work will live<br />
and form part of the glorious Corpus of English<br />
Literature. In the general chorus of praise and<br />
lamentation following on the death of this writer,<br />
it seems ungenerous to hint that any part of his<br />
work may die. At the same time, we must<br />
remember that posterity will be principally<br />
occupied with its own writers, and that it is a<br />
selection only—a very small selection—of dead<br />
men's work, that is allowed to remain and to be<br />
read. It is the next generation that pronounces<br />
the verdict upon a man, and from that verdict<br />
there is no appeal. Perhaps, therefore, it would<br />
be safer to let a dead man remain without honour<br />
for twenty-five years. In that time his greatness<br />
will be established or will be extinguished.<br />
However, if it be thought best to form some<br />
memorial to Robert Louis Stevenson, why<br />
should it not be a statue? The only statues<br />
to men of letters in London are those of<br />
Shakespeare in Leicester-square, and Dr. Johnson<br />
in St. Paul’s. There are also certain busts in<br />
Westminster Abbey and elsewhere. Yet nothing<br />
more honours a man than a statue. It is public ;<br />
it is always present ; it is enduring ; every passer<br />
by recalls the man and his works; it stands as<br />
an outward and visible sign of a nation’s recog-<br />
nition. Poets have their corner in the Abbey;<br />
only a corner; most of the space is given up to<br />
the Great Obscure or the Obscure Great. Let us<br />
make a beginning : let us teach the people that<br />
it is time to honour our great writers as we<br />
honour our statesmen; in the same open way.<br />
Only when we uncover the statue to Louis<br />
Stevenson, in Trafalgar-square, let it be done in<br />
the presence of the people, by invitation; the<br />
people on the omnibuses; the passengers engaged<br />
in their daily calling ; the great common public<br />
who read his “Treasure Island.”<br />
I have seen an advanced copy of the report of the<br />
Society for the year 1894. There is one point<br />
which I venture to anticipate. There are over 12oo<br />
members at this time of writing. Now, out of the<br />
I2OO one-half, or 600, had occasion it seems, during<br />
the year, to consult the Secretary on some point of<br />
difficulty or doubt in the conduct of their business<br />
affairs. Now, consider what would have happened<br />
with these difficulties had the Society not been<br />
in existence. The author would have gone to his<br />
lawyer, who certainly knew nothing about the<br />
subject ; and he would have incurred legal ex-<br />
penses for no good purpose; or he would have<br />
allowed his publisher to put his own interpreta-<br />
tion on the matter. Now the Secretary, who does<br />
know the subject, gives his advice or information<br />
for nothing. In cases where money has to be<br />
recovered, the author has only to put the papers<br />
into the Secretary’s hands, when action is taken<br />
immediately, and for nothing. The knowledge of<br />
this fact generally causes payment to be made<br />
immediately. And—again—remark the propor-<br />
tion of authors who do find it necessary to seek<br />
advice in the year—50 per cent. '<br />
Members will please to note that the committee<br />
have now arranged for the reception of their<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 240 (#254) ############################################<br />
<br />
24O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
agreements and their preservation in a fireproof<br />
safe. They will, of course, be regarded as confi-<br />
dential documents to be read only by the Secre-<br />
tary, who will keep the key of the safe. The com-<br />
mittee now offer<br />
(I) To read and advise upon agreements and<br />
publishers.<br />
(2) To stamp agreements in readiness for a<br />
possible action upon them. -<br />
(3) To keep agreements.<br />
(4) To enforce payments due according to agree-<br />
ments.<br />
Once there was a member—a lady—who could<br />
not get in her accounts or the money due to her.<br />
She came to the Secretary, who promptly pro-<br />
cured the account and the cheque, of course at no<br />
expense to her. There was no suspicion of a<br />
fraudulent return of books sold. Contrary, how-<br />
ever, to reasonable expectation, the lady received<br />
the cheque with considerable temper. She said<br />
that she had looked for a much larger sale; and if<br />
this was all the Society could do for her, she<br />
should withdraw. And she did. What can be<br />
done for people who look to the Society to find<br />
them a public P<br />
Another very unreasonable and selfish person<br />
is the man or woman who stands aloof from us,<br />
Or even joins in the diffusion of the usual unvera-<br />
cities which that kind of publisher who desires<br />
darkness loves to spread around, until the time of<br />
trouble, when he makes haste to bring his papers<br />
and to become a member in order to get his case<br />
settled for him. An extreme form of this kind<br />
was illustrated by a certain man who brought a<br />
case and became a member. His case cost the<br />
Society 3815, but it was successfully conducted.<br />
The grateful member thanked the Secretary for<br />
what he had done, and said that he should now<br />
resign. So we were gainers of one guinea, his<br />
year's subscription, and losers by £15 in costs<br />
in the case. We did not even get kööos, because<br />
he was rather ashamed of his own simplicity and<br />
did not talk about it.<br />
Mr. Laurence Hutton’s remarks on the<br />
American respect for English literature (see the<br />
New York Letter, p. 234) seem to me exaggerated.<br />
We have not asked the Americans to subscribe<br />
for the preservation of Carlyle's house ; the<br />
committee have only signified their willingness to<br />
accept American contributions if any are offered.<br />
We should most certainly not “laugh to scorn”<br />
any proposal that Englishmen should join in<br />
honouring Poe ; nor do we–so far as I know—<br />
“mock the generosity’ of Americans in building<br />
a theatre at Stratford. The ancient literature of<br />
this country belongs to America as much as to<br />
ourselves. As regards a modern writer, when the<br />
Americans adopt him, so to speak; when they<br />
receive him into their libraries; welcome him ;<br />
learn from him ; delight in him; he becomes an<br />
American as well as an English writer. The<br />
question about Carlyle, is simply whether he is,<br />
in this sense, an American writer. Have they<br />
adopted him P Do they learn from him P Let<br />
us remember that there is a small modern current<br />
literature belonging to and common to all English<br />
speaking countries. For instance, we place Tenny-<br />
son and Browning in this our common literature,<br />
together with Lowell and Longfellow. There is<br />
also a current local or national literature in every<br />
English speaking country consisting of minor<br />
poets, minor novelists, minor essayists, who do not<br />
cross the frontiers of their own country. The<br />
influence of Carlyle in this country has been<br />
enormous. It would appear from Mr. Laurence<br />
Button’s remarks, that it has not been great in<br />
America. Perhaps, then, Carlyle does not belong<br />
to the current common literature.<br />
The following is from the Westminster Gazette:<br />
In our last number there appeared a letter calling<br />
attention to the strange appearance of two lines<br />
by Miss Procter in Mr. John Davidson's new<br />
volume of poems. The editor of this paper ought<br />
to be severely castigated for admitting a charge<br />
of plagiarism without verifying it, especially when<br />
it could be tested so easily and so readily. His<br />
only excuse is that the case was adduced as a<br />
remarkable instance of unconscious plagiarism, a<br />
thing more common than is generally believed.<br />
It did not occur to the editor that Mr. Davidson<br />
could be accused of a thing so monstrous and at<br />
the same time so inconceivably foolish as to<br />
“lift” two whole lines from Miss Procter. May<br />
the curtain of the “Fifth Act ’’ be a curtain of<br />
oblivion :<br />
An absurd comedy of errors has been acted in the<br />
columns of the Spectator and in our own. Mr. John<br />
Davidson has been accused of a trick of “sub-conscious<br />
memory,” for including in his “Ballad of a Nun’ the lines—<br />
“And yet,<br />
We lost it in this daily jar and fret,<br />
And now live idle in a vain regret.”<br />
But neither the lines, nor any like them, are in Mr.<br />
Davidson's poem at all ! The following is the development of<br />
the comedy :— -<br />
Act. I. The Spectator, reviewing Mr. Davidson’s poem,<br />
said it was a new version of “A Legend of Provence,” and<br />
quoted Miss Procter's lines as above.<br />
Act II. A correspondent of the Spectator, misunder-<br />
standing, and thinking the quotation was made from Mr.<br />
Davidson, writes and says, “Why, but Mr. Davidson has<br />
been unconsciously reproducing Tennyson’s<br />
“Love is hurt with jar and fret,<br />
Love is made a vague regret.”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 241 (#255) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
24. I<br />
Act III. We quote this correspondent's remarks in our<br />
columns; whereupon another correspondent writes and says,<br />
“Why, this man has not only echoed Tennyson, but actually<br />
lifted into his poem two lines solidly from Miss Procter.”<br />
Several other correspondents write to like effect.<br />
Act IV. At last it occurs to somebody to consult Mr.<br />
Davidson’s poem itself, and to look up the references<br />
generally—with the result shown in the outset of this note.<br />
Act W. Curtain, please !<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
*- A -º<br />
* *<br />
FEUILLETON,<br />
A LITERARY BUBBLE.<br />
N journalism all roads lead to London. A<br />
carefully worded advertisement in the Times,<br />
offering a sub-editorship to a lady or gentle-<br />
man of education in return for a premium of sixty<br />
guineas, drew me, a young and untried member<br />
of the profession, into the metropolitan whirlpool<br />
in the summer of 1893.<br />
The preliminaries duly arranged, though not<br />
without some natural misgivings on the part of<br />
more cautious relatives and friends, I left to make<br />
the acquaintance of the editor-proprietor of the<br />
“high class weekly journal” with whose fortunes<br />
(and misfortunes) 1 was shortly to become identi-<br />
fied. My first interview with this gentleman took<br />
place in the editorial sanctum one sunny after-<br />
noon in May. He was courteous and affable,<br />
and expressed surprise at my diminutive stature<br />
and virgin countenance, my handwriting having<br />
led him to expect a bearded Hercules. From his<br />
grin of satisfaction, however, I gathered that he<br />
was not altogether displeased to find his ideal<br />
upset. Then we talked about journalism. Had<br />
I thought of turning my attention to light or<br />
serious literature ? I replied, diplomatically,<br />
that one might temper gravity with wit. He<br />
was delighted. I was a born journalist he felt<br />
sure, and only required a course of his gentle<br />
tuition to shine as a planet in the literary firma-<br />
ment. His attention knew no bounds. He must<br />
find me lodgings, take me to the Derby (this fell<br />
through (), and make me thoroughly at home in<br />
my new quarters. Meanwhile, would Itake some<br />
books with me for review P. Thus we parted on<br />
excellent terms with each other, and with our<br />
own particular selves.<br />
I had arrived on a Friday, and the high class<br />
weekly was due to appear on the Saturday. It<br />
did not reach the office until late on Monday<br />
afternoon, and, tyro as I was, my heart sank as<br />
I gazed at the insignificant pile of papers which<br />
then lay carefully stacked upon the counter. If<br />
there were 500 copies, the maximum was surely<br />
reached. Just then the proprietor bustled in.<br />
My reviews were glanced at, approved, and the<br />
great man, with almost paternal solicitude, pressed<br />
upon my acceptance a cheque for a pound, a half<br />
week's salary. I ought here to explain that my<br />
contract provided for remuneration at the rate of<br />
£2 per week, and the repayment of a proportionate<br />
amount of the premium if the engagement were<br />
closed within twelve months from the signing of<br />
the agreement. The cheque was crossed, and,<br />
having no bank account in London, I attempted<br />
to cash it through a friend in the provinces. It<br />
was returned marked “refer to drawer,” and I<br />
immediately called the attention of my Gamaliel<br />
to the matter. He hemmed and hawed, consulted<br />
his cheque-book, and finally paid me in gold,<br />
being unable to account for the “mistake.”<br />
For the next two or three weeks my two<br />
sovereigns came in with commendable regularity;<br />
then thirty shillings appeared as the price of my<br />
labour, my employer coolly explaining that he<br />
had spent the odd ten shillings on a Turkish<br />
bath. The arrears were not forthcoming till the<br />
following week, when a cheque (open, at my<br />
request) for £2 accompanied the lagging half-<br />
sovereign. On inquiry at the bank, I discovered<br />
that the cheque would not be honoured. My<br />
literary tutor was not in the least abashed when<br />
I returned with this intelligence. He smiled, and<br />
said he detected some dissimilarity between the<br />
indorsement and the name in the body of the<br />
cheque. That, he felt sure, accounted for my<br />
rebuff. Still, he pocketed the erring paper, and<br />
the arrears began to accumulate in an alarming<br />
fashion, while any actual payment was very<br />
grudgingly tendered.<br />
Meanwhile, the paper had been going from bad<br />
to worse, and the struggle to make both ends<br />
meet resulted in acts of glaring dishonesty. On<br />
one occasion, the funds having run short, and the<br />
stony heart of the printer being unmoved by<br />
promises of future payment, a week passed with-<br />
out publication. To hoodwink the advertisers,<br />
the contents of the previous week's issue were<br />
inclosed in covers bearing the current date, and<br />
forwarded to advertisers only. Whether or not<br />
this fraud was exposed I never learned. Another<br />
ingenious device was the “puffing” of minor<br />
celebrities, who, in return for an eulogistic<br />
description of their virtues, and a correspondingly<br />
convenient omission of their vices, purchased a<br />
few hundred copies of the paper from the enter-<br />
prising publisher. In the case of one “eminent,”<br />
when his order of 500 copies was found to have<br />
exhausted the available supply, a hundred or<br />
more back numbers were inserted at the bottom<br />
of the pile to complete the amount.<br />
But I should fill many columns of the Author<br />
if I attempted to describe all the tricks and<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 242 (#256) ############################################<br />
<br />
242<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
subterfuges employed by this scoundrel to stave<br />
off his creditors, and to figure in the eyes of the<br />
world as a man of unblemished and unimpeachable<br />
character. He practised as a barrister, and was<br />
extremely anxious that I should, under his<br />
auspices, embrace the legal as well as the jour-<br />
nalistic professions. Had I been so weak as to<br />
yield to his wishes, he would undoubtedly have<br />
pocketed a considerable share of the fees. But I<br />
had gauged his character by this time, and<br />
forbore.<br />
I had not been long in his office before I dis-<br />
covered that I was by no means the only “pupil.”<br />
connected with the establishment. There were<br />
two or three besides myself, and I soon heard<br />
grievous complaints of growing arrears and dis-<br />
honoured cheques. My own salary, from putting<br />
in an appearance in driblets, ceased altogether,<br />
and neither by persuasion or threats did I succeed<br />
in extracting another penny from my employer,<br />
who was, in effect, a bankrupt.<br />
The paper died in due course, and we then dis-<br />
covered that the pseudo-proprietor had long since<br />
assigned the property to others. Nor could we<br />
obtain any redress. I had unfortunately neglected<br />
to have my agreement stamped, but had this been<br />
otherwise, an action at law would only have<br />
resulted in throwing good money after bad. I<br />
returned to the provinces a sadder if a wiser man;<br />
and, having lately been elected an associate of the<br />
Society of Authors, have good reason to hope<br />
that I shall henceforth be free from the predatory<br />
attacks of such wolves in sheep's clothing as the<br />
pretended proprietor of a certain “high-class<br />
London weekly.” If the publication of my own<br />
experience should succeed in placing others upon<br />
their guard, I shall at least have derived some<br />
consolation for my own unfortunate commence-<br />
ment. G. F. O.<br />
*~ - –”<br />
,-- - --><br />
RUSTIC READING,<br />
ESPITE all our vaunted spread of educa-<br />
tion, it cannot yet be said that Hodge has<br />
developed much literary taste, or has<br />
taken keenly to the study of fiction, except,<br />
indeed, as a personal accomplishment. In our<br />
large towns, to judge from the statistics issued<br />
by the free libraries, the working classes devour<br />
novels in enormous quantities, nor are they alto-<br />
gether bad judges of quality, for the authors most<br />
in request with them are also among the favourites<br />
of those who subscribe to Mudie’s. And the<br />
urban labourer has come to regard the Sunday<br />
paper as no less a necessary of existence than his<br />
pipe. But in the country matters are very diffe-<br />
rent. Partly from want of taste, partly from lack<br />
of opportunity, nine out of every ten farm-hands<br />
never open a book at all, and confine their reading<br />
to the single beer-stained copy of the local paper<br />
that goes from hand to hand in the bar of the<br />
public-house.<br />
This is partly due, as we have said, to lack of<br />
taste. It is almost startling to find how many<br />
there are among our village-folk who cannot read<br />
at all. A few of them have never learned to do so,<br />
the greater number acquired the art painfully and<br />
by dint of many thwacks at school, promptly to<br />
forget it when, at the age of fifteen or so, they<br />
left school for good, and began to work in the<br />
fields. Let anyone who has almost entirely for-<br />
gotten his Greek endeavour to imagine what<br />
pleasure it would give him to read Thucydides in<br />
the original, by way of beguiling his leisure<br />
hours after a hard day’s work, and he will cease to<br />
wonder at Hodge's apathetic attitude towards<br />
literature. Again, those who can read easily<br />
enough do not find much to interest them in the<br />
newspapers, while books hardly ever come into<br />
their hands. They do not—we are speaking<br />
of entirely rural districts—take the faintest<br />
interest in politics, nor do they care about trade<br />
unions, strikes, agitations, or reforms, all of<br />
which are so dear to the mind of the London<br />
artisan. You may put it down to sluggishness<br />
and stupidity if you will, and it is quite<br />
true that your rustic is not easily aroused<br />
in the direction of any reform, desirable<br />
or otherwise. But yet there is a good deal of<br />
shrewd wisdom underlying this apparent in-<br />
difference, and it proceeds not a little from the<br />
fact that in the calm, peaceful atmosphere of<br />
country life it becomes easier to see these agita-<br />
tions in just perspective, to realise more accu-<br />
rately their importance, to be less readily swept<br />
away by each fresh enthusiasm, than it is for<br />
the fevered town-dweller, overpowered by the<br />
blatant noises of rival fad-mongers, and not<br />
allowed a moment of quiet in which to think for<br />
himself. Of course there are exceptions; in<br />
every village there is the Radical workman,<br />
regarded with humorous and good-natured in-<br />
difference by the rest, who spends all his spare<br />
time in what he conceives to be the study of<br />
politics, and who is always prepared to tell you<br />
how the Prime Minister or the Home Secretary<br />
ought to act. He is great at Socialistic<br />
prophecies, and his confidence in foretelling the<br />
future is only equalled by his ignorance con-<br />
cerning the present and the past. But he is the<br />
exception, not the rule; the typical rustic is a<br />
perfect Gallio as regards politics.<br />
It is interesting to notice a use which Hodge<br />
makes of the copy of the local paper which he<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 243 (#257) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
243<br />
enjoys with his pipe and beer sitting outside the<br />
Spotted Dog on a summer's evening. First, he<br />
reads carefully the title and the date, to guard<br />
against wasting his intellect on ancient history.<br />
Then, in most cases, he will turn to the cricket<br />
news. It is astonishing how keen is the interest<br />
taken in county cricket by the agricultural<br />
classes in our southern districts; many a man<br />
who has never handled a bat in his life can tell you<br />
nearly all the first-class averages for the last five<br />
years. In the north, even more attention is<br />
doubtless given in winter to the football news,<br />
but cricket is by far the greater favourite<br />
in the south. Having read out the scores, with<br />
eloquent comments, to his companions, he glances<br />
through the rest of the paper for any attractive<br />
headlines speaking of murders, fires, or inquests.<br />
Having found one of these charming accounts,<br />
he absorbs it slowly and reverently, running a<br />
finger along the print lest he lose the thread of<br />
sanguinary narrative. After this he scorns to<br />
read of the doings of Parliament or the news<br />
from foreign countries; with a sigh of satisfied<br />
contentment he hands on the paper to his next<br />
neighbour, whose study of it is conducted on<br />
precisely similar lines. And this performance,<br />
repeated once a week, represents the whole of the<br />
attention given to literature by the majority of<br />
our agricultural labourers.<br />
Mrs. Hodge's reading is a little more extensive.<br />
The good soul studies her Bible, and wonderful<br />
indeed are her interpretations of its more difficult<br />
passages. In about half the cottages, too, by the<br />
side of the Bible you will find a well-thumbed<br />
copy of the “Pilgrim's Progress,” with alarming<br />
illustrations used to terrify the children into the<br />
paths of virtue. The pictures in Fox’s “Book of<br />
Martyrs” are also employed for this purpose, and<br />
are found even more effectual) nor does Mrs.<br />
Hodge ever realise the cruelty and gross folly of<br />
this system of intimidation. The rest of the<br />
literature of the cottage will perhaps be made up<br />
of an ancient number of the Graphic (the<br />
illustrations from which are pinned about the<br />
walls), a cookery book, and the current number<br />
of the parish magazine. If the family includes a<br />
Miss Hodge of sixteen or so, that young lady is<br />
nearly sure to possess a little work on fortune-<br />
telling and another on dreams. And such is the<br />
range of the cottage library.<br />
But this almost total neglect of literature<br />
amongst the country people is due, as we said at<br />
the outset, not only, or even chiefly, to want of<br />
taste, but also to lack of opportunity. Give a<br />
country labourer a good book of adventure by a<br />
popular author, and if you can once prevail upon<br />
him to begin reading it, he will continue it and<br />
enjoy it hugely. And Mrs. Hodge, in default of<br />
better things, reads with great eagerness the<br />
mawkish and sentimental stuff found in most of<br />
our parish magazines. So that there really are<br />
symptoms of a taste for literature, were the<br />
opportunity for cultivating it only to be supplied.<br />
But the cheap editions, so accessible to the<br />
Londoner, are never seen here, never a book of<br />
any kind is on sale in the village shop. Amongst<br />
the bacon and the cheese lie copies of a dress-<br />
making journal and the local newspaper, and that<br />
is all. Surely something could and should be<br />
done to promote the sale of good and cheap<br />
literature in the country.<br />
Of course, village lending libraries have been<br />
established in many places. Sometimes they have<br />
succeeded, more often they have failed, because<br />
the books have not been wisely selected, and are<br />
of the aggressively “improving ” order. Hodge<br />
has a healthy hatred of “goody-goody "litera-<br />
ture, and it is this feeling that makes him fight<br />
shy of the lending library. But once conviuce<br />
him that you are not offering him a tract in dis-<br />
guise, and he will be willing enough to read,<br />
while to encourage and foster such a taste is a<br />
work that may safely be commended to those who<br />
are desirous of doing something towards bettering<br />
the condition and brightening the monotonous<br />
lives of our agricultural labourers.<br />
*- - --"<br />
g- > -s;<br />
BOOK TALK,<br />
HE month of January, 1895, will ever be<br />
memorable in bookish circles for the revival<br />
of the issue of books by metropolitan daily<br />
newspapers. Many years ago the Weekly Dispatch<br />
issued an atlas in parts to its readers; and of a<br />
series of illustrations of picturesque parts of the<br />
world, a number of newspapers of the second<br />
rank in England and on the continent have<br />
recently distributed no fewer than eight million<br />
copies. But the great London dailies have<br />
hitherto declined all such offers. The Daily<br />
Chronicle, however, has now taken the lead by<br />
announcing an encyclopaedic dictionary, in forty-<br />
two parts, at 6d. each. This is nothing else than<br />
Cassell’s “Encyclopædic Dictionary,” printed from<br />
a new set of plates; and as it was originally sold<br />
at seven guineas, the reduction in price is certainly<br />
striking. The Chronicle expects a sale of 200,000<br />
copies.<br />
The Chronicle's new departure was received<br />
with great surprise, but the surprise was more<br />
than doubled when two days later the Times<br />
announced that in April it would issue an atlas in<br />
fifteen parts, at Is. each. This, in its turn, is also<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 244 (#258) ############################################<br />
<br />
244.<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
a publication of Messrs. Cassell's. It is the<br />
German-produced atlas, offered first at 31s. 6d.<br />
net, and afterwards at two guineas with the<br />
customary discount. We understand it is owned<br />
|by a syndicate of persons, of whom Mr. Arnold<br />
Forster is the chief. The Times, by the way, is<br />
also about to publish a serial work of fiction in<br />
its weekly edition. It remains to be seen what<br />
the publishers will say to this journalistic rivalry.<br />
When one newspaper publishes a dictionary,<br />
another an atlas, another a history of England,<br />
another a history of English literature, and so on,<br />
a series of severe blows will have been dealt at<br />
publishing firms all round.<br />
The book of the month, if it should be<br />
reached in February, will no doubt be Lord<br />
Roberts’s “Reminiscences of India.” No man<br />
living knows certain aspects of India and the<br />
Indian people so well as Lord Roberts, and the<br />
British public has good reason to feel the<br />
deepest interest in everything that he says. He<br />
fought through the entire Mutiny, and he has<br />
either shared in or directed every military move-<br />
ment or reform in India during the last thirty-<br />
five years. On some problems now pressing for<br />
solution his word should close the controversy.<br />
It goes without saying that the greatest success<br />
awaits his book if it presents any adequate<br />
picture of himself and his career.<br />
The present Tsar made a tour through the<br />
Far East in 1891, in the course of which, as will<br />
be remembered, he was only saved by the timely<br />
assistance of Prince George of Greece from assas-<br />
sination at the hands of a fanatic Japanese police-<br />
man. He had of course remarkable opportunities<br />
for seeing Eastern festivals and sights not com-<br />
monly shown, and unless the record of his travels<br />
is too severely edited, it should form an enter-<br />
taining picture. He did not, however, visit China,<br />
as the Emperor of China could not be induced to<br />
receive him with proper honours, and he would<br />
not go to Peking under other circumstances. The<br />
illustrated account of his travels will be published<br />
by Messrs. Arch. Constable and Co. within a few<br />
weeks.<br />
A book of travels and studies, to be published<br />
early in February is Mr. Henry Norman's long-<br />
promised work on the Far East. It will be called<br />
“The Peoples and Politics of the Far East,” and<br />
will contain a series of chapters on each territorial<br />
or ethnological division of that part of the world<br />
—the British Empire, France, Russia, Spain, and<br />
Portugal in the Far East; and China, Japan,<br />
FCorea, Siam, and Malaya. In all these places<br />
Mr. Norman spent a considerable time, and one<br />
part of the Far East which he explored has not<br />
been visited by any white man either before or<br />
since his journey. The book will contain sixty<br />
illustrations, chiefly from his own photographs,<br />
and four maps, and will be published in one large<br />
volume, probably at a guinea, by Mr. T. Fisher<br />
Unwin.<br />
Messrs. Bliss, Sands, and Foster, a very young<br />
firm of publishers, have hit upon a useful idea in<br />
their series to be called “Public Men of To-day.”<br />
The following are already in preparation :-Li<br />
Hung Chang, by Professor Robert K. Douglas ;<br />
the Right Hon. Cecil Rhodes, by Edward Dicey,<br />
C.B.; the Ameer, by S. E. Wheeler; the German<br />
Emperor, by Charles Lowe ; Senor Castelar,<br />
by David Hannay. Later on we shall have<br />
President Cleveland, Signor Crispi, Lord Cromer,<br />
and M. Stambuloff,<br />
The past month has been an eventful one for<br />
Theosophists, so far as the world of publishing is<br />
concerned. Not only have the Westminster Gazette<br />
and the Daily Chronicle treated the subject,<br />
but Dr. Walter Leaf has published, through<br />
Messrs. Dongmans, an abridged translation, on<br />
behalf of the Society for Psychical Research, of<br />
M. Solovyoff's book, “A Modern Priestess of<br />
Isis.” This, it need hardly be said, is an exposure<br />
of Mme. Blavatsky; while Mr. Arthur Lillie's<br />
“Mme. Blavatsky and her Theosophy,” published<br />
by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein and Co., is<br />
another stout volume devoted to “the most suc-<br />
cessful creed-maker of the last three hundred<br />
years.”<br />
University men, both of this country and the<br />
United States, should read Dr. George Birkbeck<br />
Hill’s “Harvard College, by an Oxonian.” It is<br />
an admirable account of the great American<br />
University, and, considering that it is the work of<br />
a visitor, it is a marvel of research and insight.<br />
The American Press has praised it highly, and<br />
we are astonished to see it dismissed by the<br />
Athenæum in one line.<br />
A special word is due to the completion of<br />
Professor Skeat's Oxford edition of Chaucer. It<br />
is dangerous to prophesy finality for any work,<br />
but it hardly seems likely that any edition of<br />
Chaucer in English can supersede this ideal one.<br />
The last volume is the sixth, but there is still to<br />
be a supplementary volume containing “The<br />
Testament of Love,” and other works which have<br />
been generally attributed to Chaucer.<br />
Mr. Douglas Sladen's volume on Canada will<br />
appear during February. It is not a discussion<br />
of the political questions or economic prospects in<br />
Canada, but a picturesque description of Canada<br />
as a part of the imperial route round the world.<br />
That is, it will deal chiefly, we understand, with<br />
the Canada of the Canadian Pacific Railway.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 245 (#259) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
2.45<br />
Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden are the pub-<br />
lishers, and the book will be lavishly illus-<br />
trated.<br />
Two modern novels to appear during the<br />
coming month will be looked for with interest.<br />
One of them is “The Woman Who Did,” by<br />
Mr. Grant Allen, to be published by Mr. John<br />
Lane. Mr. Allen has hitherto consulted, in<br />
writing his fiction, what he has believed to be<br />
the taste of the public ; in this book he is under-<br />
stood to have consulted his own. He has been<br />
chaffed a good deal for having said that under<br />
present conditions of book-producing, a novelist<br />
was prevented from writing a work of art. In<br />
this book he has, we believe, defied the conven-<br />
tions sufficiently at all events to show his idea of<br />
a work of art in fiction, The curious title, by the<br />
way, is suggested by a conversation which occurs<br />
in the narrative, one man remarking that no<br />
woman would do such a thing, and the other<br />
retorting that he knew a woman who did.<br />
The second novel, called “Gallia,” by Miss<br />
Ménie Muriel Dowie, is the first book she has<br />
written since “A Girl in the Karpathians.”<br />
Gallia, the heroine, is the daughter of a Secre-<br />
tary of State for the Colonies, and the novel is a<br />
study of the character of one type of modern<br />
woman under such circumstances as those in<br />
which the life of his daughter would necessarily<br />
be spent. It is a one-volume novel, and will be<br />
published by Messrs. Methuen at 6s.<br />
The Queen has been pleased to accept the<br />
iatest volume of the new Sussex magazine, called<br />
Southward Ho / with a presentation poem by<br />
Mr. Charles William Dalmon. -<br />
Our readers will be interested to hear of some<br />
results of publishing one's own book that have<br />
just come to our knowledge. We are not at<br />
liberty at present to give the name of the book or<br />
the author, but we may say that it is a large<br />
volume, printed in admirable and almost lavish<br />
style, and sold by one of the first firms of London<br />
publishers for the author, on commission. The<br />
price is 18s., and the first edition, consisting of<br />
1500 copies, has now practically been sold. The<br />
cost of production was, roughly, 3:300, and the<br />
net profit to the author, who has given away an<br />
extravagant number of copies, will be £300 also.<br />
In fact, his balance-sheet will be better than<br />
this, for the cost of production is rather less<br />
than we have stated, while the returns will even-<br />
tually be rather more. Ten per cent. On 1500<br />
copies at 18s. would be £135. Verbum sap.<br />
A new style of literary advertisement has made<br />
its appearance this month. Mr. Fisher Unwin has<br />
issued a booklet, costing a shilling, called “Good<br />
Reading: About Many Books, mostly by their<br />
Authors.” It is, indeed, more than a booklet,<br />
for it contains 252 pages and upwards of forty<br />
portraits. The publisher has requested the<br />
authors of the principal books he has issued<br />
this season to send him an account of how, when,<br />
and why their book, &c., and they have responded<br />
liberally. Their contributions and photographs<br />
form the little volume. Among the contributors<br />
are John Oliver Hobbes, S. R. Crockett, Sir<br />
Chas. Gavan Duffy, Mrs. Bradlaugh Bonner, Dr.<br />
Jessopp, Swift MacNeill, M.P., W. M. Conway,<br />
Henry Norman, Grant Allen, J. J. Jusserand,<br />
Alfred Perceval Graves, Louis Becke, Richard<br />
Watson Gilder, and George R. Sims. The book<br />
is, of course, intended to advertise the wares of<br />
the firm, but many of his authors have paid<br />
their publishers the compliment of sending him<br />
long and interesting reminiscences. It is addressed<br />
“To the Booksellers,” to remind them how<br />
important it is that merely “cheap reading”<br />
should not oust “good reading ” from the home<br />
shelves.<br />
Good Words begins in its present issue a series<br />
of papers by Mr. John Murray, called “Some<br />
Authors I have known.” It is needless to remind<br />
our readers how many of the greatest modern<br />
authors Mr. John Murray has known, either<br />
as his own friends or his father's. Some day,<br />
perhaps, an author will write on “Some Publishers<br />
I have known.”<br />
Mr. John Lane announces “The Story of Venus<br />
and Tannhäuser,” by Mr. Aubrey Beardsley,<br />
with twenty full-page illustrations. The subject<br />
obviously lends itself to both the merits and the<br />
gross defects of Mr. Beardsley’s style, and we<br />
can only hope that for this occasion at least he<br />
will have chosen to fling away the worser half of<br />
his talent. -<br />
Messrs. Longumans and Co. have in preparation<br />
a volume by Mr. Wilfred Ward on “Cardinal<br />
Wiseman’s Life and Times,” to which Mr.<br />
Gladstone, Lord Acton, and Cardinal Vaughan<br />
will contribute. Mr. Ward's volumes on cognate<br />
personalities have been among the most interest-<br />
ing volumes of their class that have been<br />
published for many years. -<br />
Messrs. Macmillan announce a new series of<br />
“Illustrated Standard Novels,” attractively<br />
printed, and priced at 3s. 6d. Every novel will<br />
have a prefatory notice by a critic of distinction,<br />
and will contain some forty illustrations. Among<br />
the first announcements are : “Castle Rackrent ‘’<br />
and “The Absentee,” by Maria Edgeworth,<br />
with introduction by Mrs. Thackeray Ritchie;<br />
“Japhet, in Search of a Father,” by Captain<br />
Marryat, introduction by David Hannay; “Tom<br />
Cringle's Dog,” by Michael Scott, introduction by<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 246 (#260) ############################################<br />
<br />
246<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Mowbray Morris; “Maid Marian * and “Crotchet<br />
Castle,” by Thomas Love Peacock, introduction<br />
by George Saintsbury; “Lavengro.” by George<br />
Borrow, introduction by Augustine Birrell, M.P.;<br />
“Sense and Sensibility,” by Jane Austen, intro-<br />
duction by Austin Dobson.<br />
The month of February may possibly see the<br />
illustrated “Life and Correspondence” of the<br />
late Dante G. Rossetti. Messrs. Ellis and Elvey<br />
will publish the correspondence, which extends<br />
practically over Rossetti's entire lifetime.<br />
“A Year of Sport and Natural History,”<br />
edited by Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, and published<br />
by Messrs. Chapman and Hall at a guinea, will<br />
appear in February. It is to be a sort of<br />
Badminton Library in one volume, and will treat<br />
of shooting, hunting, fishing coursing, &c.,<br />
classified according to the months of the year in<br />
which these sports are pursued.<br />
Mr. Sonnenschein’s “Supplement” to his well-<br />
known and indeed invaluable work on “The Best<br />
Reading ” is now due. It is unnecessary to speak<br />
of the importance of this work. Everybody who<br />
is engaged in research of any kind has constant<br />
recourse to it.<br />
Mr. Frankfort Moore, author of “A Grey Eye<br />
or So?’ and “I forbid the Banns,” is about to<br />
change the subject of his fiction. Messrs.<br />
EIutchinson and Co, announce for immediate<br />
publication a novel by him called “The<br />
Secret of the Court,” dealing with life in the<br />
East.<br />
The daughter of the Archbishop of Canterbury,<br />
Miss Margaret Benson, has written a small<br />
volume, illustrated by herself, of sketches and<br />
studies of animals in their domestic relations. It<br />
is entitled “Subject to Vanity,” and Messrs.<br />
Methuen are the publishers. The daughter of<br />
Lord Salisbury, by the way, Lady Gwendolen<br />
Cecil, is now stated to be the author of the ghost<br />
story, “The Closed Cabinet,” in last month’s<br />
Blackwood.<br />
Everybody who writes for the press should<br />
procure a copy of the tiny pamphlet called “Rules<br />
for Compositors and Readers,” compiled by Mr.<br />
Horace Hart, printer to the University of Oxford,<br />
and giving definite and technical instructions<br />
regarding spelling, punctuation, and type-setting<br />
of disputed and doubful words and expressions,<br />
founded upon the “New English Dictionary.”<br />
Mr. Hart offers to send a copy to any printer's<br />
reader who applies for one, but no doubt other<br />
people could secure copies by a very small pay-<br />
ment. It is in the highest degree desirable that<br />
such authoritative uniformity should be intro-<br />
duced into our books and newspapers.<br />
Mr. John Lane has issued privately a very<br />
charming reprint, by Messrs. T. and A. Constable,<br />
of Edinburgh, of the “Life of Sir Thomas<br />
Bodley, written by Himself,” after whom Mr.<br />
Lane has named his publishing house. In a<br />
preface he gives an account of the founding of his<br />
business with Mr. Mathews, and its development<br />
into its present form.<br />
M. Pierre Loti has just issued in Paris another<br />
of his dreamy descriptions of the East, under the<br />
title of “Le Désert.” Although it is not yet<br />
issued to the public, it bears upon its title-page<br />
the legend, “twenty-eighth edition.”<br />
The third volume of the complete “Edinburgh<br />
Stevenson " has just appeared. It is the second<br />
volume of the sub-division “Travels and Excur-<br />
sions.” -<br />
Mr. E. F. Knight, well known for his admirable<br />
book on the Pamirs, called “Where Three Empires<br />
Meet,” has published through Messrs. Longmans,<br />
at 2s. 6d., an interesting description of the condi-<br />
tion and prospects of Matabeleland and Mashona-<br />
land, under the title “Rhodesia of To-Day.”<br />
In it he promises a history of the Chartered<br />
Company.<br />
The principal books of the past month are:–<br />
“The Life and Correspondence of Sir Bartle<br />
Frere,” by Mr. John Martineau (2 vols.: Murray);<br />
the late Mr. Walter Pater’s “Greek Studies: a<br />
Series of Essays * (Macmillan); Mr. G. A. Sala's<br />
“Reminiscences” (2 vols. : Cassell); Mr. Percy<br />
Fitzgerald’s “Memoirs of an Author’’ (2 vols. :<br />
Bentley); Mr. Gosse's new edition of Smith's<br />
“Nollekens and His Times,” with an essay on<br />
Georgian Sculpture by the editor (Bentley);<br />
“Forty Years at the Post-office,” by Mr. F. E.<br />
Baines, C.B. (2 vols. : Bentley); Mr. Horatio<br />
F. Brown’s “John Addington Symonds " (2 vols. :<br />
Nimmo); volume II. of the “State Papers<br />
relating to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada,”<br />
edited by Professor Laughton for the Navy<br />
Records Society; “The Hillyars and the Burtons,”<br />
the second volume in the reprint of Henr<br />
Kingsley, edited by Mr. Clement Shorter (Ward,<br />
Lock, and Co.); and Mr. George Saintsbury's<br />
“Corrected Impressions: Essays on Victorian<br />
Writers ” (Heinemann).<br />
Mr. Edward Clodd, the President of the Folk-<br />
lore Society and of the Omar Khayyam Club,<br />
whose two little books on “The Childhood of the<br />
World” and “The Childhood of Religions” have<br />
been almost classics for years, will be represented<br />
among the authors of February by two new<br />
works of a similar size and character. The first,<br />
“A Primer of Evolution,” will be published by<br />
Messrs. Longmans; and the second, “The Story<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 247 (#261) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
247<br />
of Man,” will form one of a series in preparation<br />
for George Newnes Limited. The first of these<br />
affords an illustration of the practical working<br />
of the American Copyright Act, as it is being<br />
manufactured in America for the British market.<br />
“A Blameless Woman’’ is the title of John<br />
Strange Winter's next novel, to be published, in .<br />
one volume, at 6s., by Messrs. F. W. White and<br />
Co. early in February. It is by far the longest<br />
story that the author of “Bootle's Baby" has<br />
yet written, being her first novel of three-<br />
volume length. The story is mainly a study<br />
In marriage.<br />
Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden, Limited, will<br />
publish innmediately a new volume by Mr. George<br />
Meredith, entitled “The Tale of Chloe ; and other<br />
Stories.” It will consist of the famous “Lost<br />
Stories” of Mr. Meredith, without which, Mr.<br />
J. M. Barrie has said, no edition of his works<br />
can pretend to be complete. The publishers<br />
will also issue an édition de luate of the same<br />
volume, beautifully printed on hand-made paper,<br />
and artistically bound, half-parchment. Price<br />
25s. net. A unique feature of this large-paper<br />
edition is that it will contain as a frontispiece a<br />
recent privately taken portrait of Mr. Meredith,<br />
reproduced by the photogravure process by<br />
Messrs. Walker and Boutall; also a photogravure<br />
of the Châlet at Box Hill, where Mr. Meredith<br />
does the great part of his literary work. The<br />
edition, will consist of 250 numbered copies only<br />
for England and America.<br />
The author who writes under the name of<br />
“Hilarion ” has in the press a new book entitled<br />
“Greece : Her Hopes and Troubles.” A short<br />
story, entitled “Teddy,” by the same writer,<br />
appeared in the December number of “The<br />
Monthly Packet,” and his novel, “A Jersey<br />
Witch,” has been translated into Swedish, and is<br />
now running as a serial in Norra Skane one of<br />
the chief newspapers of Sweden, in which “Gräfin<br />
Kinsky,” also by “Hilarion,” appeared some<br />
time ago.<br />
The author of “A Forgotten Great English-<br />
man,” Mr. James Baker, is about to contribute a<br />
series of articles upon Egypt to some important<br />
journals, and has just left England for that<br />
country. He sailed on the 12th ult. from<br />
Plymouth by the ss. Austral.<br />
Sir William Charley, Q.C., D.C.L., has just<br />
published (Sampson Low, Marston, and Com-<br />
pany) a historical vindication of the House of<br />
Lords, which should be read by everybody<br />
interested in the subject—by those who defend<br />
the House of Lords, and by those who wish to pull<br />
it down ; the former will find arguments, the<br />
latter will learn to moderate their statements. It<br />
is, indeed, astonishing how loose and ignorant is<br />
the common kind of talk about the House of Lords.<br />
What is claimed to be the most complete<br />
history of modern art which has ever been<br />
attempted, will shortly be published by Messrs.<br />
Henry and Co. It is from the pen of Dr.<br />
Richard Muther, keeper of the Royal collection of<br />
prints and engravings at Munich, and will be a<br />
work of considerably over two thousand pages.<br />
The title will be “The History of Modern<br />
Painting.” The story opens with the English<br />
art of the eighteenth century, and treats at<br />
length of the English painters and illustrators<br />
of the present century. France, Germany,<br />
Belgium, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Norway,<br />
Sweden, and Spain occupy a share of the<br />
author's space ; America and American painters<br />
living abroad come in for due notice ; and even<br />
the influence of Japan on European art has not<br />
been overlooked. The work will be profus-ly<br />
illustrated. It will be issued both in parts and<br />
volumes.<br />
“The Old Pastures” is the pleasant and<br />
attractive title given by Mrs. Leith Adams to<br />
her new serial story, which will begin in House-<br />
hold Words On Jan. 26<br />
In the sonnet by the Rev. John Lascelles,<br />
quoted in our last number, there is an error.<br />
In the last line, “and stooped and kissed the<br />
dust” should be “and stooped and kissed my<br />
dust.”<br />
Mr. Headon Hill, the author of “The Rajah's<br />
Second Wife, &c., is correcting the proofs of a<br />
new volume of short stories shortly to be issued<br />
by Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Bowden Limited.<br />
The same author has also just completed and<br />
delivered a serial novel, written to the order of<br />
Mr. C. Arthur Pearson, of Pearson's Weekly,<br />
which will commence in August, and run through<br />
twenty issues of that journal.<br />
The “Confessions of a Poet’” (Hutchinson and<br />
Co.), by Prof. Harald Williams, is a volume of<br />
verse, the third volume which this poet has pro-<br />
duced. Most modern poets appear with a little<br />
dainty volume of tiny poems. Prof. Williams<br />
comes with a volume of closely printed lines, 500<br />
pages in length. We cannot in these pages<br />
review it as it deserves, but those of our readers<br />
who buy and read new books of verse we recom-<br />
mend to make a note of this, and not to be<br />
deterred by its length.<br />
Mr. Percival H. Almy will produce imme-<br />
diately a volume of verse called “Scintilla<br />
Carminis.” The publisher is Mr. Elliot Stock.<br />
The price of the work will be 3s. 6d.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 248 (#262) ############################################<br />
<br />
248<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
AN AMERICAN TRIBUTE TO STEVENSON.<br />
(From the New York Daily Tribune, Jan. 5.)<br />
HE Robert Louis Stevenson memorial<br />
meeting at Music Hall last night proved<br />
to be a worthily appropriate expression of .<br />
the grief that the death of the great romancer<br />
has caused among his numerous readers and<br />
friends in this city.<br />
On the stage were the president of the<br />
evening, Edmund Clarence Stedman, and most of<br />
the vice-presidents, among whom were included:<br />
William Dean Howells, Frank R. Stockton,<br />
Laurence Hutton, Professor George Woodberry,<br />
Moncure D. Conway, David Christie Murray,<br />
Joseph B. Gilder, Brander Matthews, Professor<br />
William M. Sloane, Richard Watson Gilder,<br />
FI. C. Brunner, Charles A. Dana, Professor T. R.<br />
Lounsbury, William Winter, Rudyard Kipling,<br />
Richard Henry Stoddard, George W. Cable, E. L.<br />
Godkin, Henry Marquand, Professor Francis H.<br />
Stoddard. George Parsons Lathrop, Edward<br />
Eggleston, Walter H. Page, and many others.<br />
Mr. Stedman’s address was as follows: “Such<br />
an assemblage—in the chief city in the Western<br />
World—is impressive from the fact that we<br />
have not come together for any civic, or<br />
political, or academic purpose. I have been<br />
thinking of its significance in view of con-<br />
siderations quite apart from the sorrowful cause<br />
of our gathering. But of these this is not the<br />
time to speak. On its face, this demonstration<br />
is a rare avowal of the worth of literary invention.<br />
It shows a profound regard for the career of a<br />
writer who delighted us, a sense of loss instan-<br />
taneously awakened by the news of his death.<br />
For the moment we realise how thoroughly art<br />
and song and letters have become for us an<br />
essential part of life—a common ground where-<br />
upon we join our human love and laughter and<br />
tears, and at times forego all else to strew laurel<br />
and myrtle for one who has moved us to these<br />
signs and emotions. Yes, we are brought together<br />
by tidings, almost from the Antipodes, of the<br />
death of a beloved writer in his early prime. The<br />
work of a romancer and poet, of a man of insight<br />
and feeling, which may be said to have begun<br />
but fifteen years ago, has ended, through fortune's<br />
sternest cyllicism, just as it seemed entering upon<br />
even more splendid achievement. A star surely<br />
rising, as we thought, has suddenly gone out. A<br />
radiant invention shines no more ; the voice is<br />
hushed of a creative mind, expressing its fine<br />
inaginings in this, our peerless English tongue.<br />
His expression was so original and fresh from<br />
Nature's treasure-house, so prodigal and various<br />
its too brief flow, so consummate through an<br />
inborn gift made perfect by unsparing toil, that<br />
mastery of the art by which Robert Louis<br />
Stevenson conveyed those imaginings to us so<br />
picturesque, yet wisely ordered, his own romantic<br />
life—and now, at last, so pathetic a loss which<br />
rene WS<br />
The Virgilian cry<br />
The sense of tears in mortal things<br />
that this assemblage has gathered at the first<br />
summons in tribute to a beautiful genius, and to<br />
avow that with the putting out of that bright<br />
intelligence the reading world experiences a more<br />
than wonted grief.<br />
Stevenson was not of our own people, though<br />
he sojourned with us and knew our con-<br />
tinent from east to west as few of this large<br />
audience can know it. But a British author now,<br />
by statutory edict, is of our own. Certainly his<br />
fame is often made by the American people—yes,<br />
and sometimes unmade. Theirs is the great<br />
amphitheatrum. They are the ultimate court of<br />
review. All the more we are here “for the honour<br />
of literature;” and so much the more it is mani-<br />
fest that the writer who lightens our hearts, who<br />
takes us into some new wonderland of his dis-<br />
covery, belongs, as I say, to the world. His name<br />
and fame are, indeed, a special glory of the<br />
country that bore him, and a vantage to his<br />
native tongue. But by just so much as his gift<br />
is absolute, and therefore universal, he belongs in<br />
the end to the world at large. Above all, it is<br />
the recounter—and the Greeks were clear-headed<br />
in deeming him a maker, whether his story be<br />
cast in prose or verse—who becomes the darling<br />
of mankind. This has been so whether among the<br />
Grecian isles, or around the desert camp fires, or<br />
in the gardens of Italy; and is so when he brings<br />
us his romance, as in our modern day, from Our<br />
Pacific Eldorado, or from Indian barracks and<br />
jungle, or from the land of the Stuarts, or, like<br />
Stevenson and our own Melville before him,<br />
from palm-fringed beaches of the Southern<br />
Sëa,S.<br />
Judged by the sum of his interrupted work,<br />
Stevenson had his limitations. But the work was<br />
adjusted to the scale of a possibly long career.<br />
As it was, the good fairies brought all gifts, save<br />
that of health, to his cradle, and the gift-spoiler<br />
wrapped them in a shroud. Thinking of what<br />
his art seemed leading to—for things that would<br />
be the crowning efforts of other men seemed<br />
prentice-work in his case—it was not safe to<br />
bound his limitations. And now it is as if Sir<br />
Walter, for example, had died at forty-four, with<br />
the Waverley novels just begun. In originality,<br />
in the conception of action and situation, which,<br />
however fantastic, are seemingly within reason,<br />
once we breathe the air of his Fancyland; in the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 249 (#263) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
249<br />
union of bracing and heroic character and adven-<br />
ture; in all that belongs to tale-writing pure and<br />
simple, his gift was exhaustless. No other such<br />
charmer, in this wise, has appeared in this gene-<br />
ration. We thought the stories, the fairy tales,<br />
had all been told, but “Once upon a time” meant<br />
for him our own time, and the grave and gay<br />
magic of Prince Florizel in dingy London or<br />
Sunny France. All this is but one of his provinces,<br />
however distinctive. Besides, how he buttressed<br />
his romance with apparent truth ! Since Defoe,<br />
none had a better right to say: “There was one<br />
thing I determined to do when I began this long<br />
story, and that was to tell out everything as it<br />
befell.”<br />
One or two points are made clear as we look at<br />
the shining calendar of Stevenson's productive<br />
years. It strengthens one in the faith that work<br />
of the first order cannot remain obscure. If put<br />
forth unheralded it will be found out and will make<br />
its way. In respect of dramatic force, exuberant<br />
fancy and ceaselessly varying imagination, on the<br />
one hand, and on the other of a style wrought in<br />
the purest, most virile and most direct temper of<br />
English narrative prose, there has been no latter-<br />
day writing more effective than that of Stevenson's<br />
longer fictions—“Kidnapped,” with its sequel,<br />
“David Balfour; ” “The Master of Ballantrae,”<br />
and that most poetic of absolute romances,<br />
“Prince Otto.” But each of his shorter tales<br />
as well, and of his essays — charged with indi-<br />
viduality —has a quality, an air of distinction,<br />
which, even though the thing appeared without<br />
signature, differentiated it from other people's<br />
best, set us to discovering its authorship, and<br />
made us quick to recognise that master-hand<br />
elsewhere.<br />
Thus I remember delighting in two fascinating<br />
stories of Paris in the time of Francois Willon,<br />
anonymously reprinted by a New York paper from<br />
a London magazine. They had all the quality, all<br />
the distinction, of which I speak. Shortly after-<br />
ward I met Mr. Stevenson, then in his twenty-<br />
ninth year, at a London club, where we chanced<br />
to be the only loungers in an upper room. To<br />
my surprise he opened a conversation—you know<br />
there could be nothing more unexpected than that<br />
in London—and thereby I guessed that he was<br />
as much, if not as far, away from home as I was.<br />
He asked many questions concerning “the<br />
States; ” in fact, this was but a few months<br />
before he took his steerage passage for our shores.<br />
I was drawn to the young Scotsman at once. He<br />
seemed more like a New Englander of Holmes's<br />
Brahmin caste, who might have come from<br />
Harvard or Yale. But as he grew animated I<br />
thought, as others have thought, and as one<br />
would suspect from his name, that he must have<br />
Scandinavian blood in his veins—that he was of<br />
the heroic, restless, strong and tender Viking<br />
strain, and certainly from that day his works and<br />
wanderings have not belied the surmise. He told<br />
me that he was the author of that charming book<br />
of gipsying in the Cevennes, which just then<br />
had gained for him some attentions from<br />
the literary set. But if I had known that he<br />
had written those two stories of sixteenth<br />
century Paris—as I learned afterwards when<br />
they reappeared in the “New Arabian Nights”<br />
—I would not have bidden him goodbye as<br />
to an “unfledged comrade,” but would have<br />
wished indeed to “grapple him to my soul with<br />
hooks of steel.”<br />
Another point is made clear as crystal by his<br />
life itself. He had the instinct, and he had the<br />
courage, to make it the servant, and not the<br />
master, of the faculty within him. I say he had<br />
the courage, but so potent was his birth-spell<br />
that doubtless he could not otherwise. Nothing<br />
commonplace sufficed him. A regulation stay-at-<br />
home life would have been fatal to his art. The<br />
ancient mandate, “ Follow thy Genius,” was well<br />
obeyed. Unshackled freedom of person and<br />
habit was a pre-requisite; as an imaginary artist<br />
he felt—Nature keeps her poets and story-tellers<br />
children to the last—he felt, if he ever reasoned<br />
it out, that he must gang his own gait, whether<br />
it seemed promising, or the reverse, to kith, kin,<br />
or alien. So his wanderings were not only in the<br />
most natural but in the wisest consonance with<br />
his creative dreams. Wherever he went, he<br />
found something essential for his use, breathed<br />
upon it, and returned it fourfold in beauty and<br />
worth. The longing of the Norseman for the<br />
tropic, of the pine for the palm, took him to the<br />
South Seas. There, too, strange secrets were at<br />
Once revealed to him, and every island became an<br />
“Isle of Voices.” Yes, an additional proof of<br />
Stevenson's artistic mission lay in his careless,<br />
careful, liberty of life; in that he was an artist<br />
no less than in his work. He trusted to the<br />
impulse which possessed him—that which so many<br />
of us have conscientiously disobeyed, and too late<br />
have found themselves in reputable bondage to<br />
circumstances.<br />
But those whom you are waiting to hear will<br />
speak more fully of all this—some of them with<br />
the interest of their personal remembrance—<br />
with the strength of their affection for the man<br />
beloved by young and old. In the strange and<br />
sudden intimacy with an author's record which<br />
death makes sure, we realise how notable is the list<br />
of Stevenson's works produced since 1878; more<br />
than a score of books—not fiction alone, but also<br />
essays, criticism, biography, drama, even history,<br />
and, as I need not remind you, that spontaneous<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 250 (#264) ############################################<br />
<br />
250<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
poetry which comes only from a true poet.<br />
None can have failed to observe that, having<br />
recreated the story of adventure, he seemed in<br />
his later fiction to interfuse a subtler purpose—<br />
the search for character, the analysis of mind<br />
and soul. Just here his summons came. Between<br />
the sunrise of one day and the sunset of the<br />
next he exchanged the forest study for the<br />
mountain grave. There, as he had sung his own<br />
wish, he lies “under the wide and starry sky.”<br />
If there was something of his own romance, so<br />
exquisitely capricious, in the life of Robert Louis<br />
Stevenson, so, also, the poetic conditions are<br />
satisfied in his death, and in the choice of his<br />
burial-place upon the top of Pala. As for the<br />
splendour of that maturity upon which we<br />
counted, now never to be fulfilled on sea or<br />
land, I say—as once before, when the great New-<br />
England romancer passed in the stillness of the<br />
night:<br />
What though his work unfinished lies P<br />
The rainbow’s arch fades out in upper air ;<br />
The shiming cataract half-way down the height<br />
Breaks into mist; the haunting strain, that fell<br />
On listeners unaware,<br />
Ends incomplete, but through the starry night<br />
The ear still waits for what it did not tell.<br />
Half bent<br />
*- As 2-se<br />
r- - -e<br />
CORRESPONDENCE<br />
I.—How LONG TO WAIT P<br />
J.<br />
OUILD not all editors agree upon a certain<br />
C set of rules, such as these ?<br />
All MSS. to be sent with stamped<br />
addressed envelopes, months allowed for<br />
reading and decision. A proof sent upon accept-<br />
ance, and the MS. paid for at the end of the month<br />
(or some other given time). Where MSS. are<br />
not returned let a certain time be stated, after<br />
which the author may conclude that his work<br />
is cremated; or, when rejected MSS. are not<br />
returned, let it be noted that acceptance will<br />
be notified to the author within a given time,<br />
otherwise he may conclude that the MS. is<br />
destroyed.<br />
It certainly is a grievance that authors have<br />
no means of ascertaining how long they must<br />
wait for news, good or bad, of their MSS., or<br />
when they are to consider that, having a copy,<br />
they may sent it elsewhere. *<br />
II.<br />
“If I send a contribution to a paper which<br />
declines to return rejected communications, how<br />
am I to know whether it is relegated to the waste<br />
paper basket or reserved for future use? And<br />
am I at liberty, after a month say, to offer my<br />
jeu d'esprit elsewhere, or must it be lost for<br />
ever ??”<br />
[There is no custom by which a contributor<br />
may be guided in such a case. The best way<br />
would be (1) always to keep a copy; (2) to write,<br />
after a month or so, and inform the editor that<br />
the author of such a paper will send it to another<br />
editor unless he hears that it is accepted. A copy<br />
of this letter should be kept.]<br />
II.-A MEMORIAL TO ROBERT Louis<br />
STEVENSON.<br />
I wish to call your attention to the following<br />
letter, which appeared in the Westminster Gazette<br />
of the 17th ult., in reference to a memorial to<br />
Robert Louis Stevenson.<br />
As “a rider” to the letter, may I suggest<br />
that a committee be at once formed, say, of<br />
half a dozen or more, of the best living names in<br />
literature, to discuss and carry out the scheme,<br />
which I think must commend itself to the<br />
followers of literature and to the public.<br />
Will you, Sir, set the ball still further rolling P<br />
THOMAS R. MACQUOID.<br />
The Edge, Tooting Common.<br />
Robert Louis Stevenson’s inimitable work will keep his<br />
memory green ; but his countless readers owe him for this<br />
work a large debt of gratitude, which they are bound to pay<br />
to his memory.<br />
This tribute, I think, should be paid not in the form of a<br />
statue or of any work of art, but rather by the founding of<br />
some institution connected with literature—which has been<br />
made so much richer by this master's work. Will not some<br />
of our leading authors and others form a committee to<br />
carry out this idea, and when a sufficient sum is collected to<br />
determine on the nature of the memorial P<br />
It seems to me a large sum would soon be raised, even by<br />
small contributions, from Stevenson’s admirers.<br />
THOMAS R. MACQUOID.<br />
The Edge, Tooting Common, Jan. I5.<br />
III.-A WHOLE ARTICLE QUOTED.<br />
Some years ago, my friend, the editor of the<br />
North China Daily News at Shanghai, requested<br />
me to write for him an account of a visit paid by<br />
me to Lord Tennyson at Farringford House,<br />
Freshwater. The article was published in due<br />
course, and the editor sent me a few reprints of<br />
it in proof form, which I have kept by me ever<br />
Sll) Ce,<br />
One evening last December I happened to take<br />
up a copy of Galignani’s Messenger. Conceive<br />
my astonishment at finding in it my own article<br />
headed “Reminiscences of Tennyson,” and intro-<br />
duced by a statement that “A correspondent<br />
sends us the following interesting account of a<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 251 (#265) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
25 I<br />
visit,” &c. l I immediately wrote to the editor<br />
claiming the article as my own, inclosing slips of<br />
the original reprint from the North China Daily<br />
News, signed B., together with my card, and<br />
requesting the insertion of my protest. No notice<br />
whatever was taken, After waiting more than a<br />
week I wrote again, with precisely the same<br />
result.<br />
Now, if the editor of Galignani’s Messenger<br />
had been duped by his “correspondent,” he would<br />
surely have lost no time in exposing the fact, and<br />
doing justice to the real author. As he did not<br />
do so, am I unreasonable in attributing his dis-<br />
courtesy to the very possible fact that my article<br />
was simply “conveyed ” to the columns of the<br />
Messenger in his own office, and that his obliging<br />
“Correspondent,” is a myth?<br />
FREDERIC H. BALFOUR.<br />
Willa, Carlandrea, San Remo,<br />
Jan. 1895.<br />
Since the above was written, the following<br />
paragraph has appeared in Galignani :<br />
We are requested to state that Mr. Frederic H. Balfour,<br />
formerly of Shanghai, was the author of the interesting<br />
article entitled “Reminiscences of Tennyson,” published in<br />
our columns on the 26th ult.<br />
This explanation explains nothing. It does<br />
not acknowledge the fact that the paper was taken<br />
from the North China Daily News, and it makes<br />
it appear as if Mr. Balfour had sent the article to<br />
the Messenger.<br />
IV.-AMERICAN REPRINTs.<br />
The other day a friend, who has occasion to see<br />
some of the American papers, saw in one of them<br />
the announcement of a New York publisher offer-<br />
ing several recent successful English novels at 20<br />
cents, a copy. He wrote for four—“The Yellow<br />
Aster,” “Dodo,” “Esther Waters,” and another.<br />
I told him he had thrown his money away, but,<br />
much to my astonishment, he has just received<br />
the books. They have come through the post in<br />
an ordinary wrapper. One would like to know<br />
(1) whether this sort of thing is done to any<br />
extent; (2) whether there is any way of stopping<br />
H. J. A.<br />
it.<br />
W.—EARLY EDITIONS OF By RoN.<br />
May I ask through the columns of the Author<br />
if first or early editions of Byron's works are<br />
scarce or of any value P I have what appears to<br />
be a first edition of “The Prisoner of Chillon,”<br />
in a brown paper cover, and published in 1816.<br />
It contains an advertisement “Published this<br />
day, in 8vo., 5s. 6d., a Third Canto of ‘Childe<br />
FIarold.’” With “The Prisoner of Chillon’’ are<br />
published a “Sonnet,” “Stanzas to —,”<br />
5<br />
“Darkness,” “Churchill's Grave,” “The Dream,”<br />
“The Incantation,” and “Prometheus.” I have<br />
also editions of “The Bride of Abydos,” and<br />
“The Giaour;” the former a second edition, the<br />
latter a fifth, published in 1813.<br />
In my edition of “Mazeppa,” which appears<br />
with “The Ode to Venice,” there is appended a<br />
weird story in prose called “A Fragment,” and<br />
dated June 17, 1816. It deals with a strange<br />
and mysterious incident, which would seem to<br />
have happened to Lord Byron himself, as it is<br />
told in his own person. I should like to know<br />
if this “Fragment” is generally bound up with<br />
Lord Byron's poems ? It is not to be found in<br />
a complete edition which I have. I do not<br />
remember seeing it anywhere else than at the<br />
end of this poem of “ Mazeppa,” printed in<br />
1810.<br />
# may be that some readers of the Author<br />
may be able and willing to give the information<br />
I seek.<br />
CHARLES D. BELL.<br />
The Rectory, Cheltenham,<br />
Jan. I I, I895.<br />
VI.-IIITERARY PENSIONs.<br />
Would it be going outside the province of the<br />
Author, or I may say the Society of Authors,<br />
if they strive to bring before Parliament the<br />
question of literary pensions, both as regards the<br />
inadequacy of the amount at present distributed<br />
and the way it is apportioned P<br />
This matter has been forcibly brought to my<br />
mind through the call at my office some time<br />
back of a technical writer asking for a donation<br />
owing to his destitute circumstances. This<br />
gentleman some years ago wrote several impor-<br />
tant engineering books, which were accepted as<br />
standard works, and I have no hesitation in<br />
saying that they have been of absolute money<br />
value, not only to this country but to the world<br />
at large. Owing to the necessarily limited circu-<br />
lation of purely technical works it is impossible<br />
for the writers thereof to make much money<br />
directly from them, and if they have no other<br />
vocation they may, if lucky, develop into a<br />
technical publisher's literary hack—if not, starve,<br />
In a wealthy country like England the amount<br />
set apart for literary pensions, and for helping<br />
such cases as I have described, appears to me to<br />
be absolutely beggarly, and a standing disgrace<br />
when we bear in mind the vast sums that are<br />
annually lavished in other ways. Is there no<br />
way of altering this, or at any rate trying to ?<br />
M. PowIS BALE.<br />
*º-º-º-º-e<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 252 (#266) ############################################<br />
<br />
252<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
VII.-REVIEWING.<br />
I trust you will not consider it an impertinence<br />
on my part in writing to you upon a subject<br />
which, after all, has some importance with respect<br />
to the vast reading community of England. I mean<br />
the art of criticism, and more particularly that<br />
section of it which has to do with modern fiction.<br />
It is a custom in these days, in lieu of careful and<br />
legitimate criticism, to provide a mere summary<br />
of a book, to lay bare the plot and motive of the<br />
story—the very soul and nervous system. To<br />
illustrate my point I will refer only to “The<br />
Manxman,” the thorough appreciation of which<br />
has been quite spoilt for me owing to the fact that<br />
I have already gathered from certain newspaper<br />
reviews of the story, a concise précis thereof,<br />
and in this case one's chagrin and disappointment<br />
is especially keen, because “The Manxman ’’ is<br />
unquestionably one of the noblest efforts in fiction<br />
of the present generation. Now this certainly<br />
seems to me utterly unfair, both to the author and<br />
his readers, for it must, to some extent at all<br />
events, detract from the popularity and kudos<br />
that would otherwise accrue to the former, as it<br />
very certainly lessens the ardour and interest of<br />
the latter, who is forewarned of every turn of<br />
event, and consequently misses one half of the<br />
interest in the development of character and plot<br />
as the story progresses.<br />
Surely, it is not beyond the wit of man to<br />
estimate a novel, to decide upon its quality and<br />
claims for popular favour, and so forth, without<br />
undraping and laying bare its very skeleton.<br />
*- a -º<br />
a- - -<br />
THE LATE JOHN O'NEILL,<br />
E have to record the death of a member<br />
of the Society who took the deepest<br />
interest in its work, and has from time<br />
to time communicated papers of great interest to<br />
these columns. Only a few days before his death<br />
he offered the editor a collection of notes on<br />
literary matters. The following notice of his life<br />
and work is from the Times of Jan. 2 I :<br />
Mr. John O'Neill, who died a few days ago at<br />
Selling, in Kent, was a man of rare and recondite<br />
erudition. He began his career in the War Office,<br />
where his ability caused him to be often selected<br />
for difficult work lying outside the routine of the<br />
department. After retiring on his pension he<br />
was selected by the Foreign Office as Accountant-<br />
General to the newly appointed British Govern-<br />
ment of Cyprus. He solved to the complete<br />
satisfaction of Sir Garnet Wolseley, the first<br />
Governor, the difficult problem of evolving order<br />
out of the complicated fiscal difficulties left by the<br />
Ottoman administration of the island. Eleven<br />
different currencies had to be dealt with and<br />
reduced to a common denomination, without<br />
injury to the revenues, to commerce, or private<br />
interests, and this task Mr. O'Neill most success-<br />
fully achieved. Endowed with an exceptional<br />
faculty for mastering languages, he made a<br />
special study of Japanese, and the grammar he<br />
compiled in that difficult tongue was adopted by<br />
the Government of the Mikado when the work of<br />
reconstituting the educational system of Japan<br />
was resolved upon. For many years Mr. O'Neill<br />
was a constant contributor to philological and<br />
literary journals in London and Paris; he was a<br />
recognised authority on Provençal literature and<br />
the Provençal languge, as well as on the medieval<br />
literature of France. Recently he published,<br />
through Mr. Quaritch, the first volume of “The<br />
Night of the Gods,” a work in which he em-<br />
bodied the results of his lifelong study of the<br />
origins of religions, not only among the Aryan<br />
and Semitic races, but among the Chinese, Japa-<br />
nese, and Mexicans. The second and concluding<br />
volume of this work is in the press, and will<br />
shortly be published.<br />
*– 2 --><br />
-*<br />
THE REWARDS OF LITERATURE.<br />
I have just heard from Smith and Elder about<br />
the publication of my two volumes on the Catholic<br />
Revival. They offer me 3150. In respect to<br />
“Renaissance in Italy,” I have already received<br />
£950. When, then, I have brought out these two<br />
volumes, I shall have had in all 31 IOO for this<br />
long bit of work. Allowing for periods in which<br />
I was unfit to work, periods in which I sought a<br />
change of work, I find that I have spent eleven<br />
years upon this task, and pretty hard years of<br />
daily labour. The education which enabled me to<br />
attempt it was a very costly one, and the abilities<br />
which qualified me for it, though not first-rate,<br />
were at least unusual in their combination of<br />
many-sided intelligence with acquired knowledge<br />
and literary style. I have then been paid at the<br />
rate of £100 per annum; but I must deduct at<br />
least £50 per annum from my gains for books and<br />
travel, quite indispensable to the production. This<br />
I reckon as really far below the just allowance.<br />
Say, then, I have received £50 a year during the<br />
eleven best years of life for the eaecution of a<br />
laborious work, which implied an earpensive educa-<br />
tion and unusual cast of intellect. The pay is<br />
about equal to the wages of a third-class merchant's<br />
clerk or a second class butler, the latter being also<br />
found in food and lodging.—From the “Life of<br />
John Addington Symons. | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/273/1895-02-01-The-Author-5-9.pdf | publications, The Author |
274 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/274 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 10 (March 1895) | <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.+05+Issue+10+%28March+1895%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 10 (March 1895)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1895-03-01-The-Author-5-10 | | | | | 253–280 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1895-03-01">1895-03-01</a> | | | | | | | 10 | | | 18950301 | C be El u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
Monthly.)<br />
CON DUCTED BY WALTER BES ANT.<br />
VoI. V.-No. 10.]<br />
MARCH 1, 1895.<br />
[PRICE SIxPENCE.<br />
For the Opinions earpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as earpressing the<br />
collective opinions of the committee unless<br />
they are officially signed by G. Herbert<br />
Thring, Sec.<br />
3- ~ *<br />
= * *-es<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
important communications within two days will write to him<br />
without delay. All remittances should be crossed Union<br />
Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered<br />
letter only.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on<br />
all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub-<br />
jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
*— 2- --"<br />
* * *-*.<br />
WARNINGS AND ADVICE,<br />
I . RAWING THE AGREEMENT.-It is not generally<br />
understood that the author, as the vendor, has the<br />
absolute right of drafting the agreement upon<br />
whatever terms the transaction is to be carried out. . .<br />
Authors are strongly advised to exercise that right. In , ,<br />
every form of business, this among others, the right of<br />
drawing the agreement rests with him who sells, leases, or<br />
has the control of the property.<br />
2. SERIAL RIGHTS.—In selling Serial Rights remember<br />
that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that<br />
is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you<br />
object to this, insert a clause to that effect. .<br />
3. STAMP YOUR AGREEMENTS. – Readers are mos<br />
URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements<br />
immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected<br />
for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree-<br />
ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every<br />
case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter<br />
which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at no expense to themselves .<br />
eacept the cost of the stamp.<br />
WOL. V.<br />
4. ASCERTAIN WHAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVEs To<br />
BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself.<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTS.—Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom you appoint as your<br />
agent. Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone.<br />
6. COST OF PRODUCTION.--Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures. -<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.–Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society.<br />
8. FUTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice.<br />
IO. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a MS. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work.<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration.<br />
12. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTS.--Keep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<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 />
Society’s Offices — -<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub.<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
-- A. A 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 254 (#268) ############################################<br />
<br />
254<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
2:3. Send-to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
- 9. The committee have now arranged for the reception of<br />
members’ agreements and their preservation in a fireproof<br />
safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as con-<br />
fidential documents to be read only by the Secretary, who<br />
will keep the key of the safe. The Society now offers :-(I)<br />
To read and advise upon agreements and publishers. (2) To<br />
stamp agreements in readiness for a possible action upon<br />
them. (3) To keep agreements. (4) To enforce payments<br />
due according to agreements. .<br />
*-- ~ *-*<br />
•-<br />
THE AUTHORS, SYNDICATE.<br />
i / TEMBERS are informed : -<br />
1. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. That it<br />
submits MSS. to publishers and editors, concludes agree-<br />
ments, examines, passes, and collects accounts, and, gene-<br />
rally, relieves members of the trouble of managing business<br />
details. -<br />
2. That the terms upon which its services can be secured<br />
will be forwarded upon detailed application.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works only for those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiations<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed ea clusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least two days'<br />
notice should be given. . . . -<br />
6. That every attempt is made to deal with all communi-<br />
cations promptly..., That stamps should, in all cases, be sent<br />
to defray postage. * * - - - - - - - - - *, *<br />
7. That the Authors' Syndicate does not invite MSS.<br />
without previous correspondence ; does not hold itself<br />
responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice; and that<br />
in all cases MSS. must be accompanied by stamps to defray<br />
postage.<br />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department ’’ for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted ” is open. Members are invited to<br />
communicate their requirements to the Manager.<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 />
NOTICES,<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 />
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. r -<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 Awthor 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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
Members and others who wish their MSS. read are<br />
requested not to send them to the Office without previously<br />
eommunicating 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. w<br />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest P Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
<br />
<br />
## p. 255 (#269) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
255<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 />
£948. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth<br />
as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so<br />
elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at.<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 call it.<br />
*= a -ºr<br />
wº- - -<br />
THE GENERAL MEETING OF THE<br />
SOCIETY,<br />
HE General Meeting of the Society of<br />
Authors was held on Monday, Feb. 25, at<br />
4.30 p.m., in the rooms of the Royal<br />
Medical and Chirurgical Society, at 20, Hanover-<br />
square. Mr. W. Martin Conway took the<br />
chair, and amongst those of the committee and<br />
council to support him were Mr. Hall Caine, Mr.<br />
Rider Haggard, Mr. Anthony Hope, Mr. W. E. H.<br />
Lecky, Mr. J. M. Lely, and Mr. E. Clodd.<br />
Mr. Conway stated that as the report had been<br />
circulated to all the members of the Society he<br />
would take it as read, but would be glad to hear<br />
if any of the members present had any sugges-<br />
tions to make, or anything to say on the matter.<br />
He further stated that the work done by the<br />
Society had been very satisfactory. They had<br />
settled virtually IOO cases during the past year,<br />
and had elected 233 new members.<br />
Mr. Stuart-Glennie proposed that there should<br />
be a more detailed statement of account in the<br />
next year's report, and Mr. Conway replied that<br />
he would gladly put the matter before the Com-<br />
mittee at their next meeting.<br />
The report was then unanimously approved by<br />
the meeting.<br />
Mr. Hall Caine was then called upon to propose<br />
the following resolution :-‘‘That in the opinion<br />
of this meeting of the members of the Incor-<br />
porated Society of Authors the Canadian Copy-<br />
right Act is unjust and impracticable, and<br />
calculated to affect injuriously the interests of all<br />
authors.” Mr. Hall Caine stated his diffidence in<br />
speaking on such a subject before the meeting,<br />
as authors were more at home with the pen. He,<br />
however, pointed out what had been the legisla-<br />
tion of all civilised countries with regard to the<br />
matter of copyright. That the property of<br />
authors had after many years of considerable<br />
struggle been recognised universally to be<br />
distinct and apart from any trade considerations.<br />
Then he proceeded to point out the danger of<br />
Canada obtaining the Royal Assent to the Copy-<br />
right Bill in its present condition, and finally<br />
summed up by saying that he thought all authors<br />
should bind together to oppose the passing of the<br />
Act. -<br />
Mr. Rider Haggard seconded the resolution;<br />
discussing shortly the provisions of the Canadian<br />
Act, and pointing out the impracticability of its<br />
working.<br />
Mr. W. Oliver Hodges, who acted on behalf<br />
of the society in conjunction with the Secretary<br />
on the General Committee which was summoned.<br />
last year to consider the question of Canadian<br />
copyright, pointed out the fallacy of the licensing<br />
clause in the Canadian Act, and how unsatis-<br />
factory the collection of the royalties had been in<br />
past years.<br />
Mr. W. E. H. Lecky also spoke of the necessity<br />
of energetic action, as it was understood that the<br />
Royal assent would be given, if at all, within the<br />
next four weeks.<br />
After short speeches on the subject by several<br />
other members, the motion was put and unani-<br />
mously carried. t<br />
Mr. Stuart-Glennie then rose to bring forward<br />
the following resolution: “That the executive of<br />
the Society be now instructed to take more<br />
vigorous action in ascertaining, defending, and<br />
enlarging the rights of authors; and that a<br />
special committee be appointed to report to the<br />
Society with reference to such more vigorous<br />
action.” He referred as one of his reasons to his<br />
own case which had been before the committee<br />
during the past year. He stated, however, that<br />
he did not mean to bring the motion forward as<br />
a vote of censure on the committee.<br />
Mr. Bigelow seconded the motion on Mr.<br />
Glennie's behalf.<br />
As the Chairman (Mr. Conway) considered<br />
that the action of the Committee of the Society had<br />
been called into question, he asked the solicitors<br />
of the Society to make a short statement in<br />
defence of the action of the committee. -<br />
Mr. Emery, the Society's solicitor, pointed out<br />
how it had been impossible to take up Mr.<br />
Glennie's case; that the Society had on two<br />
separate occasions taken legal advice on the sub-<br />
ject, and finally put the issues at stake from a<br />
statement of facts prepared by Mr. Glennie's and<br />
the Society solicitors before counsel; that counsel<br />
had given it as his opinion that Mr. Glennie could<br />
not succeed. Under the circumstances, therefore,<br />
the action of the committee had been thoroughly<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 256 (#270) ############################################<br />
<br />
256<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
justified, and there was no cause for blaming the<br />
committee.<br />
Mr. Rider Haggard then moved the rejection<br />
of the motion on the grounds of the facts stated<br />
by the solicitors, and he further pointed out that<br />
Mr. Glennie's motion virtually amounted to a<br />
vote of censure on the committee.<br />
Mr. Haggard's amendment was seconded by<br />
Mr. Douglas Sladen. -<br />
There were various other speakers, who all<br />
seemed to coincide with the opinion of Mr.<br />
Haggard that Mr. Glennie's motion amounted to<br />
a vote of censure on the committee. -<br />
Mr. Bigelow rose and stated that he had no<br />
idea in seconding the motion that a vote of<br />
Censure had been intended.<br />
Mr. Haggard’s amendment rejecting the reso-<br />
lution was then put, and was carried with but<br />
One dissentient.<br />
The proceedings then terminated.<br />
-**<br />
*<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—MUSICAL PUBLISHING.<br />
\PIE musical composer, like the dramatist, but<br />
unlike the author, has two rights in his<br />
work, the copyright and the performing<br />
right. He ought, therefore, if his work were pro-<br />
perly managed, to have two sources of income, but<br />
this is not the case. -<br />
The musical composer, like the author in<br />
the past, seems to be absolutely ignorant of his<br />
rights, and is still in shackles, bound hand<br />
and foot. The perusal of many of the musical<br />
publishers' agreements in all their varieties<br />
clearly shows this. And the case is more<br />
disastrous, as the performing right and the<br />
copyright might be of great value, both being<br />
good properties, whereas for the dramatic writer<br />
the performing right is virtually his only pro-<br />
perty, and for the author of literary wares his<br />
copyright.<br />
As a matter of fact, the musical composer<br />
recklessly assigns away both his rights to<br />
the publisher in absolute ignorance of their<br />
value. What does he get in return ? For<br />
the performing right nothing, and even the<br />
publisher very seldom uses what might be a<br />
good property.<br />
This abandonment of valuable property has<br />
been going on for so long that it has almost<br />
become a recognised custom. It is not, however,<br />
too late to change the procedure, but the difficulty<br />
is for the composer to bring about this alteration.<br />
If he endeavours to do so, he is met by alternative<br />
answers from the publisher:<br />
(I) A willingness to publish on certain terms,<br />
the composer retaining the performing<br />
right;<br />
(2) A refusal to publish without the assign-<br />
ment of this right.<br />
Under case (I) the terms are generally so<br />
stringent that the composer cannot possibly<br />
accept them. If, however, he should make an<br />
agreement the question is how, to utilise this<br />
right. An intending performer calls on the<br />
publisher and states what he wants. He receives<br />
the answer at once that the performing right is<br />
held by Mr. , who will probably make a<br />
charge, whereas if he purchases from them some<br />
other composer's work they will let him have the<br />
right of performing for nothing. -<br />
It is obvious that handicapped to this extent it<br />
is impossible for the composer alone to make the<br />
alteration. There ought, therefore, to be a<br />
combination between composers and publishers.<br />
For the latter, although originally mere agents,<br />
have become through the stringency of their<br />
agreements and the carelessness of composers<br />
holders of valuable property. Such a combina-<br />
tion would be easy, as the music publishers are<br />
few, and it would not be difficult to arrange so<br />
that the outside public would be forced to pay<br />
for other people's property which they now receive<br />
gratis. The publishers would at once feel the<br />
benefit, as they are the greatest holders of per-<br />
forming rights. The composers would, it is<br />
hoped, feel the benefit in the near future, when<br />
they have come to recognise the value of their<br />
own property.<br />
The argument that the publishers—who do<br />
not care about wandering from their old and<br />
well worn track—would at once bring forward is,<br />
of course, that the public would not pay for<br />
performing rights. This argument may, however,<br />
easily be repudiated, as is shown in the case of<br />
dramatic works. The English musical public is<br />
constantly on the increase, and is as eager for<br />
some new thing as the theatrical world.<br />
These remarks on the performing rights of com-<br />
posers refer chiefly to the longer compositions, such<br />
as Cantatas, oratorios, operas. They only refer<br />
in a minor degree to songs. For the difficulty<br />
in the way of enforcing a claim in the latter case<br />
is obvious, and the charge would be small. If,<br />
however, some simple method of collection<br />
could be devised, the right is still a valuable<br />
OT162,<br />
The next question to be considered is what the<br />
composer receives for his copyright. In many<br />
cases the pleasure of seeing his work produced is<br />
considered sufficient reward. If it should chance<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 257 (#271) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
257<br />
that terms are proposed, he is offered four different<br />
kinds of agreements. These agreements may be<br />
termed:<br />
(1) The commission agreement.<br />
(2) The purchase outright.<br />
(3) The royalty agreement.<br />
(4) The half-profit agreement.<br />
But they differ frºm the ordinary book pub-<br />
lisher's agreements of these names in that the<br />
music publisher appropriates all the performing<br />
rights and copyrights, and is otherwise more<br />
stringent in his terms, and in many cases threatens<br />
the composer with non-publication unless these<br />
rights are transferred.<br />
(I) is perhaps the most unsatisfactory system<br />
for the composer, for, although the publisher<br />
undertakes to publish the work, he in reality<br />
does little more than produce it. He makes<br />
no attempt to place it before singers, does not<br />
advertise it, does not send it round with his<br />
travellers (or, if he does, does so in a half-hearted<br />
way), but lets it lie in a neat brown paper parcel<br />
on One of the shelves of his warehouse. If the song<br />
is to have a success, it must come from the result of<br />
the composer's unaided efforts; but success does not<br />
attend this method of publishing except through<br />
some extraordinary chance. In addition, the com-<br />
poser pays for the cost of production, and this<br />
is generally put at £2 or £3 more than the real<br />
cost. The total result therefore is a considerable<br />
loss to the composer and a slight gain to the pub-<br />
lisher. If, however, through the untiring energy<br />
of the composer, the song is placed before the<br />
public, the publisher reaps a fair commission, a<br />
Commission for which he has mot worked. In<br />
fact, it pays the publisher to let the song lie idle.<br />
He cannot lose, he may make a fair amount; and<br />
perhaps, if the composer subsequently becomes<br />
famous, a great amount<br />
(2) When a publisher purchases a work out-<br />
right he generally does so with the idea of<br />
making it a success. He employs all the means<br />
in his power to bring it to notice. He sends out<br />
copies to singers; he advertises it in the papers;<br />
he gets up concerts for its performance; he pays<br />
singers to sing it, or parts of it; he sees that the<br />
concerts are well reported. The consequence is<br />
very often a great success, and the composer<br />
sees the publisher making hundreds of pounds<br />
where he has only made tens, and where he<br />
cannot hope to make any more. It must be<br />
remembered that the cost of production of a<br />
Cantata or a song compared with its selling price<br />
is much less than the cost of a book, so this is<br />
much sooner covered by the sales, and the profits<br />
are consequently greater. There is only one<br />
advantage to the composer in this method of<br />
publication, and this is a deferred advantage in<br />
case he desires to place another song or other<br />
musical composition before the public.<br />
(3) The royalty system is the only one in<br />
which under the present methods it appears that<br />
the author can reap any proportionate profit.<br />
The ordinary royalty is a variable quantity,<br />
varying sometimes, but not always, with the<br />
prices of the work if it chances that the price<br />
is mentioned in the agreement, an omission which<br />
frequently occurs. In any case the royalty is<br />
always smaller than with the author when the<br />
two costs of production are compared, and<br />
especially when in the payment of these royalties<br />
seven copies count as six. In the booksellers’<br />
trade thirteen copies count as twelve, or twenty-<br />
five as twenty-four, but the iniquity of seven as<br />
six is only reached in the publication of music.<br />
* There are various other arrangements in which<br />
a royalty is paid : sometimes after the sale of a<br />
certain number of copies, sometimes after the<br />
cost of production has been govered. It is, how-<br />
ever, impossible to exhaustively discuss the<br />
different forms of agreement or to show in what<br />
proportion the royalties should be raised in<br />
arrangements where the publisher is virtually<br />
protected from loss before the composer receives<br />
any remuneration. One point, however, it is<br />
necessary to mention before leaving royalty<br />
agreements, that is, on what form of production<br />
a royalty is paid. In the case of songs and small<br />
pieces of instrumental music it is paid on the<br />
vocal part with the piano score, or on the piano<br />
score; and this is fair, for this is the only form<br />
that has a sale. The sale and hire of band parts<br />
must be small, and would hardly cover the<br />
cost of production, possibly might never do so.<br />
In the case of Cantatas, oratorios, glees, and part<br />
songs, it is paid on the vocal part with the piano<br />
score, but there is this difference between the two<br />
instances: in the latter the publisher produces<br />
the vocal parts — treble, alto, tenor, bass —<br />
separately, and sells them or hires them in this<br />
form to choral societies. As on the separate<br />
parts no royalty is paid, he, to a great extent,<br />
nullifies his own agreement with the composer,<br />
and certainly puts his interest as agent and that<br />
•ot the composer as principal at variance. The<br />
curious part of this transaction is that the<br />
publisher, in a half-profit agreement, credits and<br />
debits the accounts with the moneys expended<br />
and received on this item, but in a royalty agree-<br />
ment does not recognise the sale. The composer<br />
should always take care that the publishers’<br />
interest and his own are parallel.<br />
(4) The objections to an half-profit agreement<br />
are most serious, yet can only be mentioned in<br />
this short paper and not discussed:<br />
(1) The complication of accounts.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 258 (#272) ############################################<br />
<br />
258<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
(2) The control of all expenditure, including<br />
advertisements, lying with the publisher.<br />
(3) The ignorance of the author of the cost of<br />
production.<br />
(4) The ignorance of the author of the methods<br />
and necessities of publication.<br />
In short, it must be stated that this form of<br />
agreement which sounds so fair is in reality the<br />
worst for the composer.<br />
Finally, it should be pointed out that there are<br />
certain elements in the cost of musical production<br />
that do not enter into the production of literary<br />
wares. The actual paper, &c., is no doubt much<br />
cheaper compared with the selling price, but in<br />
the first instance the writer of the words has to<br />
be paid. His claim is generally settled by a sum<br />
paid down. In case (1) it is paid by the author;<br />
in cases (2) and (3) by the publisher; and sometimes<br />
in case (3), and always in case (4), it is brought into<br />
account before royalty or profit is paid. Then<br />
the music of songs and smaller pieces is sent out<br />
gratis broadcast. Fifty or sixty copies of a book<br />
may be sent out for review. Five or six hundred<br />
copies of songs are sent out to musical people,<br />
singers, &c. Lastly, the singer has to be paid to<br />
sing the song in public ; for this he is paid by a<br />
sum down or by a royalty. All these items tend<br />
to reduce the profit in songs and pieces to which<br />
they specially apply.<br />
On the other hand, it must be taken into con-<br />
sideration that some of the musical publishers<br />
also run concerts, which are very lucrative invest-<br />
ments, for the special purpose of airing their own<br />
Wą,I'êS. - -<br />
From the business point of view, however, to<br />
sum up the whole situation, musical composers<br />
are in a shocking position, and the sooner they<br />
band together either to run a new publisher or to<br />
refuse to publish except on equitable terms the<br />
better it will be for them. The old stories are<br />
still cropping up of terms settled at the pub-<br />
lisher's dinner table, the unbusiness like propen-<br />
sities of composers, and the absolute impos-<br />
sibility of getting them to sign agreements.<br />
Surely it would be an easy thing for the publisher,<br />
who is a man of business, to insist on business-<br />
like arrangements. The only deduction that can<br />
be made is that it pays him better not to do so.<br />
II.-ANGLo-AUSTRIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
Vienna, Wednesday.—The official Gazette to-<br />
day announces that the operation of the Anglo-<br />
Austrian copyright treaty has been extended to<br />
India, Newfoundland, Natal, Victoria, Queens-<br />
land, Western Australia, and New Zealand.—<br />
Reuter.<br />
III.—EDUCATIONAL AND SCIENTIFIC Books.<br />
Of all kinds of literary profits those in educa-<br />
tional and scientific works are hardest to estimate<br />
before actual publication. There is, however, the<br />
undoubted fact that the educational branch of<br />
literary property is by far the most valuable and<br />
the most profitable. If a work dealing with some<br />
educational or scientific subject gets once an estab-<br />
lished position as a standard book for school use in<br />
England or America, the returns are constant and<br />
most substantial. There would seem, however,<br />
to be no midway between a good and substantial<br />
return and virtually no return at all. Under<br />
these circumstances it is of great importance to<br />
educational and scientific writers never to sell out-<br />
right a work which may be a mine of gold, and<br />
never, under any circumstances whatever, to part.<br />
with the copyright of such a work. It has been<br />
stated by some publishers that they will refuse to<br />
deal in any educational or scientific work unless<br />
the author will assign the copyright to them, on<br />
the ground that it is necessary, should the work<br />
prove a success, that they should be able to<br />
benefit by that success as well as the author. On<br />
the other hand, it must be remembered that it is,<br />
of the most vital importance that the author<br />
should ot lose, but should retain, the command<br />
—which he can only do by retaining the copy-<br />
right—of his work. -<br />
The following are among the reasons why an<br />
author should retain his copyright: º<br />
I. An educational or a scientific book must be<br />
altered from time to time in order to be brought<br />
up to date. New scientific discoveries may make<br />
the best book antiquated. New methods may be<br />
introduced; new theories may be advanced. The<br />
only way for the author to meet these changes is.<br />
by making corresponding changes in his book.<br />
2. But the publisher is interested in these<br />
changes. He may be. He may not be. He may<br />
have a younger man to advance, thinking that he<br />
will be more popular. -<br />
3. He may sell his business, or go into bank-<br />
ruptcy, or buy another man's business. In<br />
either case an author's book goes with his other<br />
Copyrights, perhaps to find himself on the same<br />
shelf with his most important rival. -<br />
It is, of course, always possible to insert<br />
clauses in the agreement by which the publisher<br />
shall have the option of producing second, third,<br />
and subsequent editions on reasonable terms.<br />
Should the publisher refuse to deal except on<br />
the condition of getting the copyright, the author<br />
should go elsewhere. - -<br />
One case, however, has come before the Society.<br />
in which a publisher fully recognised the import.<br />
ance of giving the author a free hand with regard<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 259 (#273) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
259<br />
to alterations in a scientific work, and although<br />
the author had inadvertently assigned the copy-<br />
right to the publisher, the latter consented to<br />
reassign it on consideration that he should have<br />
the option of publishing subsequent editions. It<br />
is necessary that this warning should be con-<br />
stantly before educational and scientific authors,<br />
“that they should on no account whatever assign<br />
their copyright.” They may, if they so desire,<br />
give the publisher every help and assistance with<br />
regard to the right to publish future editions,<br />
but they must make no assignment. If they do<br />
not know how to draw the necessary agreement,<br />
the Society will advise them in the matter.<br />
IV.-AN IMPORTANT CASE.<br />
H. RIDER HAGGARD AND LoNGMANs, GREEN,<br />
AND Co., complainants, against THE WAVERLY<br />
CoMPANY, defendant.<br />
(Circuit Court of the United States, District of<br />
New Jersey.)<br />
Brief of Respondents on demurrer to the Bill of<br />
Complaint. -<br />
STATEMENT. — The principal ground of de-<br />
murrer urged by the defendant is the third :<br />
“That said bill fails to show that due and law-<br />
ful notice of said pretended copyright and copy-<br />
rights was inserted as required by section 4962<br />
of the Revised Statutes of the United States in<br />
the several copies of every edition published in<br />
manner and form in said section aforesaid speci-<br />
fically set forth.” The clauses of the bill thus<br />
attacked are as follows: “Fourth.—And your<br />
orators further show that the aforesaid editions<br />
of their said copyright book, entitled ‘Nada the<br />
Lily,’ were printed from plates made within and<br />
type set within the limits of the United States,<br />
as required by law. That due notice of said<br />
copyrights and entries, and that said copyrights<br />
had been completed, was given by the Secretary<br />
of the Treasury by publication in his official cata-<br />
logues of the title entries of books and other<br />
ar icles in the weekly lists of the title of all books<br />
wherein the copyright has been completed, all of<br />
which said catalogues are ready to be produced<br />
in court. That the notice required by section<br />
4962 of the Revised Statutes of the United<br />
States has been duly and lawfully given in the<br />
several copies of said editions so published as<br />
aforesaid.” Section 4962 of the Revised Statutes<br />
is as follows: “Section 4962. No person shall<br />
maintain an action for the infringement of his<br />
copyright unless he shall give notice thereof by<br />
inserting in the several copies of every edition<br />
published, on the title page, or the page imme-<br />
diately following, if it be a book, or if a map,<br />
chart, musical composition, print, cut, engraving,<br />
WOL. W. - *<br />
photograph, painting, drawing, chromo, statue,<br />
statuary, or model or design intended to be per-<br />
fected and completed as a work of the fine arts,<br />
by inscribing upon some visible portion thereof,<br />
or of the substance on which the same shall be<br />
mounted, the following words, viz.: “Entered<br />
according to Act of Congress, in the year 5<br />
by A. B., in the office of the Librarian of Con-<br />
gress, at Washington,’ or at his option, the word<br />
‘ copyright,’ together with the year the copyright<br />
was entered, and the name of the party by whom<br />
it was taken out, thus: “Copyright, 18 , by<br />
A. B.’” The demurrer claims that the bill is<br />
bad because it does not in its terms declare that<br />
the copyright notice has been inserted “in the<br />
several copies of every edition published; ” the<br />
actual averment being that the notice required<br />
was “duly and lawfully given in the several<br />
copies” of the editions published as set forth<br />
in the complaint, being all the editions men-<br />
tioned therein, except defendant’s alleged pira-<br />
tical edition. Subordinate grounds of demurrer<br />
are that the book in question was not composed<br />
by a citizen or resident of the United States—<br />
which attacks the constitutionality of the Inter-<br />
national Copyright Law—and that the com-<br />
plaimants by asking, in their prayer, for damages<br />
and the delivery for destruction of the unsold<br />
copies of the piratical edition demand more than<br />
a court of equity can grant. A further ground<br />
of demurrer is alleged indefiniteness in the charge<br />
of infringement. These points will be considered<br />
in the foregoing order, which is the order of im-<br />
portance as urged by demurrant.<br />
First.—I. The requirements of the statute<br />
which are conditions precedent to the perfection<br />
of copyright are—I. Deposit before publication<br />
of printed copy of the title. 2. Deposit after<br />
publication of two copies of the book. 3. Print-<br />
ing of the prescribed notice in the copies pub-<br />
lished: (Wheaton v. Peters, 8 Peters, 591 ;<br />
Merrell v. Tice, IO4 U. S. 557; Thompson v.<br />
Hubbard, 131 U. S. 123.) It has been held that<br />
as matter of fact the requirement of notice means<br />
that the prescribed words shall be inserted in the<br />
several copies of every edition which the proprietor<br />
of the copyright, as controlling the publication,<br />
publishes : (Thompson v. Hubbard, 131 U. S.<br />
123; Supreme Court of the United States,<br />
May 13, 1889.) Since the last-named decision<br />
the International Copyright Act has been passed<br />
(March 3, 1891), which greatly widens the field<br />
of application of copyright law. Is it still true<br />
that, to maintain an action on his copyright for<br />
infringement, a person must literally and exactly<br />
give the United States copyright notice “in the<br />
several copies of every edition published” by<br />
him P. The section in question (section 4962)<br />
IB B<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 260 (#274) ############################################<br />
<br />
26o<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
was not altered by the Act of 1891, but was in<br />
force previously. Doubtless the possible effects<br />
of not changing this section escaped the aqtention<br />
of the legislators. For, if there be no limitation<br />
in construction put upon the words “every edition<br />
published,” an English author, for example,<br />
publishing his book not only in the United States,<br />
but also in Great Britain, or in Australia, or in<br />
South Africa, or in China, loses his United States<br />
copyright unless notice of the latter be inserted<br />
in every copy published anywhere in the world.<br />
And this will be the case, notwithstanding he com-<br />
plies fully with the English copyright laws. We<br />
submit that this is not the legal intention of the<br />
Act. That such is not the intention is evidenced<br />
by the provisions of section 4956 of the Copy-<br />
right Act, to the effect that in order to complete<br />
copyright the two copies of the book required to<br />
be deposited with the Librarian of Congress<br />
must be “printed from type set within the limits<br />
of the United States or from plates printed there-<br />
from.” And during the existence of the copy-<br />
right the importation into the United States of<br />
any book so copyrighted, or any edition or edi-<br />
tions thereof, or any plates not made from type<br />
set within the United States, is prohibited. That<br />
is to say, in order to avail himself of the protec-<br />
tion of the copyright law of the United States,<br />
the author, foreign or otherwise, must print and<br />
publish within the United States, and the impor-<br />
tation of any edition printed from type not set or<br />
plates not made within the United States is for-<br />
bidden. It matters not, then, how many foreign<br />
manufactured editions are published outside.<br />
The United States law does not protect them, nor<br />
does it allow them to interfere with books manu-<br />
factured and copyrighted here. They are ex-<br />
cluded from the consideration of the Copyright<br />
Act. Hence it would be absurd to hold that the<br />
notice required by section 4962 means, literally,<br />
“every edition published ” by the person copy-<br />
righting. It means every edition published,<br />
printed from type set or plates made within the<br />
United States—that is, every edition manufactured<br />
in the United States. This must be so, because<br />
no other editions can be made the subject of<br />
copyright law at all. * *<br />
II. It is fundamental that in the construction<br />
of statutes the whole and every part must be con-<br />
sidered. “The intention of the law-maker will<br />
prevail over the literal sense of the terms; and<br />
its reason and intention will prevail over the strict<br />
letter:” (Kent's Com., 461 ; Sutherland on Sta-<br />
tutory Construction (1891), p. 32O.) “The mere<br />
literal construction ought not to prevail if it is<br />
opposed to the intention of the Legislature<br />
apparent from the statute; and if the words are<br />
sufficiently flexible to admit of some other con-<br />
complaint P<br />
struction by which that intention can be better<br />
effected, the law requires that intention to be<br />
adopted: ” (Sutherland on Stat. Construction,<br />
p. 321, and cases there cited.) These well-esta-<br />
blished doctrines have received application in<br />
regard to the international copyright law in the<br />
United States Circuit Court, District of Massa-<br />
chusetts, in the case of Werckmeister v. Pierce<br />
and Bushnell Mfg. Co., decided Aug. 7, 1894,<br />
Putnam, J. This was the case of a painting<br />
sought to be copyrighted by a German subject,<br />
on the original of which no notice of United<br />
States copyright, as required by section 4962, was<br />
ever inscribed, although the other conditions of<br />
copyright were complied with, and the copyright<br />
notice was inscribed on the published photo-<br />
graphs of the painting. In this case the court<br />
departs from the literal reading of the statute,<br />
and holds that the intent of the law must govern,<br />
and that under construction according to the<br />
intent, it is not necessary to place the copyright<br />
notice upon the original, though the statute<br />
expressly says, that if the article be a painting,<br />
the notice shall be inscribed, “upon some visible<br />
portion thereof, or of the substance on which the<br />
same shall be mounted.” If, for the purpose of<br />
sustaining the intent of the legislators, so bold a<br />
departure from the literal sense, as in this case,<br />
may be taken in construing section 4962, how<br />
much more, in the case at bar, is a construction<br />
warranted, which alone can make the Act har-<br />
monious in its parts, and without which the<br />
whole law would become a nullity. Its purpose<br />
in securing international copyright otherwise<br />
would be entirely defeated. As a matter of fact<br />
it is not the custom to put the United States<br />
copyright notice on English editions of a work<br />
copyrighted in America. Much more unlikely<br />
would such notice be thought important in<br />
editions published in more remote countries. The<br />
result would be to make the copyright protection<br />
evidently intended to be given to works manu-<br />
factured in the United States practically null<br />
and void, and to destroy the International Copy-<br />
right Law.<br />
III. Thus much premised, are the allegations<br />
in the bill sufficient? They set up the publica-<br />
tion of the editions described, “printed from<br />
plates made within and type set within the limits<br />
of the United States, as required by law. That<br />
the notice required by section 4962 of the Revised<br />
Statutes of the United States has been duly and<br />
lawfully given in the several copies of said<br />
editions so published as aforesaid.” The only<br />
question here would seem to be will the court<br />
presume, outside the record, that there are other<br />
editions of the work than those set forth in the<br />
If it should be the fact that the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 261 (#275) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
26 I<br />
editions pleaded constitute “every edition pub-<br />
lished,” there is, of course, a sufficient cause of<br />
action. Will the court presume otherwise upon<br />
demurrer? Reasonable presumptions are ad-<br />
mitted by demurrer as well as the matters<br />
expressly alleged : (Foster's Federal Practice,<br />
vol. I, p. 209; Amory v. Laurence, 3 Clifford,<br />
523, 526.) But, says the court in Warfield v.<br />
Fisk (1883; 136 Mass., p. 219), “We cannot draw<br />
inferences of fact upon demurrer.” If it appear<br />
that the required notice was given in the several<br />
copies of every edition of which the court can<br />
take any cognisance, it is a “reasonable pre-<br />
sumption ” that the law has been complied<br />
with. It would be a violent presumption<br />
to assume outside the record, that there are<br />
other editions in which no notice, or defective<br />
notice, was given. The bill would be sufficient<br />
on the hearing if the facts alleged were proved.<br />
It would not be necessary even to prove literally<br />
the insertion of the notice in every copy. Pro-<br />
duction of one copy with the notice and general<br />
testimony as to the issue of the edition would be<br />
sufficient: (Falk v. Gast Lith. and Eng. Co. Ld.,<br />
4o Fed. Rep. 168.) The contention of the defen-<br />
dant would make his pleading a “speaking de-<br />
murrer” where by argument or inference a mate-<br />
rial fact is suggested that is not alleged in the<br />
bill. Such a demurrer will be overruled: (Beach,<br />
Modern Equity Practice, vol. I, p. 265, and cases<br />
there cited.) Moreover, the copyright is per-<br />
fected by taking the three steps required by<br />
statute before and coincident with publication.<br />
Primă facie then, the copyright being perfect,<br />
the complainants are entitled to maintain their<br />
action. A copy of the record in the office of the<br />
Librarian of Congress, with the books showing<br />
the notice, make out a primá facie case against<br />
an infringer. If there has been any omission in<br />
subsequent or other editions than those pleaded,<br />
it is for the defendant to plead and prove that the<br />
complainant has by his omissions lost the copy-<br />
right he once had and which presumptively he<br />
still has. The notice is not a condition to the<br />
obtaining a copyright, but to the maintaining an<br />
action for infringement. If the facts allow it,<br />
the defendant, in case of lack of universality of<br />
the notice, must plead in abatement. He has no<br />
standing on demurrer. It may be added that the<br />
practice books giving forms of bills of complaint<br />
in copyright cases, give a pleading setting out<br />
generally that the complainants are the owners of<br />
a copyright taken out “previous to the publica-<br />
tion of the book in question, and secured according<br />
to law.” No other detail of fact is given in<br />
order to make out a primá facie case: (Beach,<br />
Modern Equity Pleading, vol. 2, p. 1281.) In<br />
Thompson v. Hubbard (131 U. S. 123), on which<br />
VOL. W.<br />
the demurrant seems to rely, the decision was<br />
rendered after the facts appeared on the trial and<br />
not on demurrer.<br />
Second.—Inasmuch as the demurrant in its<br />
brief does not insist upon the ground of demurrer<br />
questioning the constitutionality of the Interna-<br />
tional Copyright Act, the complainants will not<br />
discuss that topic at this time.<br />
Third.—There is no merit in demurrant's con-<br />
tention respecting failure to waive penalties end<br />
forfeitures. At the most the prayer of the com-<br />
plainants in this respect is surplusage. A bill to<br />
obtain relief against an infringement of a copy-<br />
right need not contain a waiver of the com-<br />
plainant’s statutory right to a forfeiture of the<br />
piratical plates: (Foster's Federal Practice (2nd<br />
ed.), vol. I, p. 175; Farmer v. Calvert Lith. Co.,<br />
I Flippin, 228.) If any part of the relief is<br />
proper, the demurrer on this point will be over-<br />
ruled. This is the latest doctrine in these cases:<br />
(Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co. v. Hartshorn,<br />
Treas., &c., 3O Fed. Rep., 54 I (1887; Shiras, J.);<br />
Town of Strawberry Hill v. C. M. & St. P. Ry.<br />
Co. et al, 4 I Fed. Rep. 568 (1890).)<br />
Fourth.-Nor is there room for argument that<br />
the charge of infringement is indefinite. The<br />
defendant is charged with having published,<br />
without authorisation, the book copyrighted.<br />
What has been copyrighted has been set forth in<br />
the bill. This is sufficient to put the defendant<br />
upon his answer.<br />
Fifth. — The questions involved before the<br />
court at this present time are purely questions of<br />
law. The defendant in his brief, has seen fit to<br />
talk “ to the galleries,” and to claim that this<br />
action was brought in bad faith, “solely for the<br />
purpose of intimidating the trade.” This autho-<br />
rises the complainants to say that there is no<br />
doubt whatever that the complainant, H. Rider<br />
Haggard (an author of no mean repute) is the<br />
author of the work “Nada the Lily;” that<br />
Longmans, Green, and Co. (the oldest firm of<br />
publishers in the world, and of undoubted re-<br />
spectability and standing) are the authorised<br />
publishers of the work; that the defendant, the<br />
Waverly Company, has published, without autho-<br />
rity, a piratical edition of this book, with the<br />
idea that through some technical lapse, the copy-<br />
right due to the complainants, and which they<br />
have believed they possess, has been vitiated ;<br />
and the said defendant is now trying to defeat<br />
complainants in the enforcement of these supposed<br />
rights upon which they have always in good faith<br />
relied. The complainants are prosecuting this<br />
action, not alone to secure their own rights, but<br />
also in behalf of the trade to ascertain, for the<br />
benefit of all, what the meaning of the Inter-<br />
national Copyright Law is, by its proper judicial<br />
B B 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 262 (#276) ############################################<br />
<br />
262<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
onstruction. Too important interests are in-<br />
volved for the case to be determined upon tech-<br />
nicalities; and though the complainants are<br />
advised and firmly believe the demurrer should<br />
be overruled, they ask, in case the court should<br />
take a different view, that they may have leave<br />
to amend on the usual terms; whereupon they<br />
will so amend by setting forth fully the exact<br />
facts in the case, and all collateral facts, that a<br />
full adjudication may be obtained upon demurrer<br />
before the highest tribunal, as to the meaning of<br />
the new law. Resting upon such an adjudication<br />
the entire book and publishing trade may intelli-<br />
gently shape its course. The main question<br />
involved is as to the meaning of section 4962, the<br />
complainants' contention respecting which has<br />
been hereinbefore urged. Upon this point, espe-<br />
cially, the complainants pray for an authoritative<br />
expression of judicial opinion. And they asked<br />
that the demurrer in all respects be overruled,<br />
with costs.<br />
(Argued Oct. 6, 1894, before Hon. Marcus W.<br />
Acheson, at Philadelphia.)<br />
DICKINSON, THOMPson, AND MCMASTER,<br />
No. 1, Montgomery-street,<br />
Jersey City, N.J.,<br />
Solicitors for Complainants.<br />
DANIEL GREENLEAF THOMPson,<br />
No. 111, Broadway, N.Y. City,<br />
Of Counsel.<br />
W.—CANADIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
The following letter appeared in the Times of<br />
the 26th Feb. : -<br />
“SIR,-Attention has already been called in<br />
your columns to the fact that the Canadian<br />
Copyright Bill, now awaiting the Royal assent,<br />
seriously menaces the interests of English authors<br />
and copyright owners. It is understood that<br />
a decision will shortly be arrived at on the<br />
question at issue between the Canadian and<br />
Imperial authorities. The danger being therefore<br />
imminent, those whose interests are threatened<br />
must now enter their protest against the Bill.<br />
By it any Canadian publisher will be permitted<br />
to produce, in any form and at any price he<br />
pleases, the work of any British author which has<br />
not, within one month of its first publication in<br />
this country, been reprinted and published in<br />
Canada, on the sole condition of paying a royalty of<br />
Io per cent. on the published price of the book.<br />
The officers of the Department of Inland Revenue<br />
are charged with the duty of collecting and<br />
paying these royalties, but they are specially<br />
exempted from any obligation to ‘account for<br />
any such royalty not actually collected.’<br />
“The objections to these proposals are weighty<br />
and obvious; it will suffice to indicate one or<br />
two.<br />
“The limit of one month is ridiculously insuffi-<br />
cient, and the provision suffices to deprive English<br />
authors, with the possible exception of a few<br />
writers of popular fiction, of any real copyright<br />
in Canada.<br />
“The absurd machinery which makes the Inland<br />
Revenue officials at once responsible and irrespon-<br />
sible for the collection of royalties is not new,<br />
and is of proved inefficiency. English authors<br />
and publishers can only look back with grim<br />
amusement on the futile attempt on the part of<br />
Canada to collect similar royalties on American<br />
pirated reprints with similar machinery. More-<br />
Over, in the absence of accounts, how is an<br />
English author to seek a remedy when he has<br />
reason to believe that a particular publisher has<br />
failed to make due payment P The needful<br />
evidence would not in practice be obtainable.<br />
It is true that the Canadian market is not<br />
large, nor, in the absence of a leisured and<br />
cultured class, is it likely to prove expansive. If<br />
Canada. Only were in question, English authors<br />
would probably submit to the injury likely to be<br />
caused by piracy of their works in a small<br />
literary area. But Canada does not stand alone.<br />
If this Bill becomes law, Canadian reprints will<br />
inevitably flood, as they are intended to flood,<br />
the market of the United States, and the rights<br />
which English owners of literary property now<br />
enjoy there will be seriously endangered. If, in<br />
Consequence of the action of Canada, the United<br />
States were to repeal their International Copyright<br />
Act, English authors would suffer great and<br />
irreparable loss.<br />
“In order to give united expression to the<br />
objections felt by persons whose interests are<br />
threatened by the proposed legislation, a petition<br />
to the Colonial Secretary has been prepared,<br />
which it is hoped will be largely signed<br />
during the next three weeks by authors, pub-<br />
lishers, artists, and owners of copyrights gener-<br />
ally. Copies of this petition may be obtained<br />
from the secretary of the Society of Authors, and<br />
signatures should be forwarded to him at the<br />
Society's offices, 4, Portugal-street, Lincoln’s-inn-<br />
fields, W.C.<br />
“I am, sir, your obedient servant,<br />
“W. M. ConwAy, Chairman of Committee of<br />
the Incorporated Society of Authors.”<br />
*- - -º<br />
w" -<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 263 (#277) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
263<br />
NOTES FROM NEW YORK,<br />
RATHER curious survival of the old<br />
A colonial attitude towards England is<br />
demonstrated by the fact that any impor-<br />
tant series issued in the mother country is sure<br />
to be published over here; while, on the other<br />
hand, when an American series is brought out,<br />
only those volumes having more than a local<br />
interest appear in England. Thus, of the Great<br />
Commanders Series, which contains biographies<br />
of “Admiral Farragut’ by Captain A. T. Mahan,<br />
of “General Taylor " by General O. O. Howard,<br />
U.S.A., of “General Jackson " by James Parton,<br />
of “General Greene’’ by Captain Francis W.<br />
Greene, U.S.A., of “General J. E. Johnston ’” by<br />
Robert M. Hughes, of “General Thomas” by<br />
Henry Copee, LL.D., of “General Scott’ by<br />
General Marcus J. Wright, of “General<br />
Washington’ by General Bradley T. Johnson,<br />
of “General Lee’” by General Fitzhugh Lee, and<br />
of “General Hancock’” by General Francis A.<br />
Walker, only one volume has so far been repro-<br />
duced in England, and that was the first, which<br />
was doubtless due to Captain Mahan's own<br />
reputation. It was evident that the subject of<br />
the biography was not well known, since in the<br />
Times it was announced as “a new book by<br />
Captain Mahan, a life of the great Confederate<br />
Admiral, Farragut.” To another of our impor-<br />
tant series, that on American Men of Letters,<br />
there has just been added the biography of<br />
“George William Curtis,” by Mr. Edward Cary.<br />
This series is edited by Mr. Charles Dudley<br />
Warner, who contributed the first volume, the<br />
life of “Irving.” The other volumes are “Noah<br />
Webster,” by Horace E. Scudder; “Thoreau,”<br />
by Frank B. Sanborn; “George Ribley,” by O. B.<br />
Frothingham; “Cooper,” by T. R. Lounsbury;<br />
“Margaret Fuller Ossoli,” by T. W. Higginson;<br />
“Emerson,” by Dr. Holmes; “Poe,” by George<br />
E. Woodberry; “N. P. Willis,” by Henry A.<br />
. Beers; “Benjamin Franklin,” by John B.<br />
McMaster ; “Bryant,” by John Bigelow; and<br />
“William Gilmore Simms,” by William P. Trent.<br />
Of all these, the volumes on Cooper and on<br />
Emerson are the only two published in England.<br />
Two books of the series are model biographies<br />
—the “Cooper’ by Professor Lounsbury, and<br />
the “Poe’” by Professor Woodberry. In each<br />
case the authors took an immense amount of<br />
trouble to amass material, and then wrote a clear,<br />
concise, and comprehensive biography, which<br />
protruded no trace of the work behind it. There<br />
are soon to be added to this series the lives of<br />
“Lowell,” by Professor Woodberry, of Columbia<br />
College; “Whittier,” by Professor George R.<br />
Carpenter, of Columbia; “Motley,” by Professor<br />
Brander Matthews,<br />
Jameson; and “Parkman,” by Mr. John Fiske.<br />
This series is modelled on Mr. John Morley's<br />
“English Men of Letters,” only that the<br />
American volumes always contain a steel<br />
engraved portrait and a careful index—adjuncts<br />
lacking in the British books.<br />
An instance of failure to give “every man his<br />
due,” which would never have occurred in America,<br />
is to be found in the case of the “Great Educators<br />
Series.” This series was thought out, planned,<br />
brought out, and edited by Professor Nicholas<br />
Murray Butler. It is an international series<br />
having volumes by American, French, and<br />
British authors. It is printed in America and<br />
published here by Scribner's. Certain of the<br />
volumes have been exported to England and<br />
issued by Heinemann, and it is there known<br />
as Heinemann’s “Great Educators Series,” no<br />
mention whatsoever being made about Professor<br />
Butler's share in its production, or of its<br />
American origin.<br />
Macmillan and Co. are continuing their two-<br />
volume experiment at a dollar a volume, or 8s.<br />
for the work. This experiment was begun with<br />
“ Marcella,” and then continued with “ Katherine<br />
Lauterdale,” and now with “The Ralstons.” Mr.<br />
Crawford is the most popular of American<br />
novelists, and every new book of his sells at the<br />
rate of from 50,000 to 60,000 copies, while its<br />
immediate predecessor has a renewed sale of<br />
about Io,000. Although an American, Mr.<br />
Crawford does not know his New York as he<br />
does his Italy, and it is pleasing to note that in<br />
“Casa Braccia *-now running in the Century—<br />
he has returned to his old fields of operation,<br />
and is telling a new melodramatic tale of cos-<br />
mopolitan life.<br />
Four seasons ago Mr. T. J. B. Lincoln founded<br />
a literary club, called “The Uncut Leaves.” The<br />
club began very modestly with only a few<br />
members, who met once a month either at each<br />
other's houses or in a small hall hired for the<br />
occasion, where they listened to authors of various<br />
nationalities read from their unpublished manu-<br />
scripts. The success of this venture has been so<br />
great that the club now has several hundred<br />
members enrolled on its lists, and a suite of rooms<br />
is engaged for its monthly meetings at one of the<br />
best known halls in New York. Six readings are<br />
given during a season, and prominent men of<br />
letters are most happy to read or talk before such<br />
a sympathetic audience as is found gathered<br />
together on these occasions. Strangers are<br />
heartily welcomed, and Mr. Christie Murray has<br />
twice been present at the meetings, and each time<br />
succeeded in amusing the members. Mark Twain,<br />
Edward Eggleston, Mrs.<br />
Wiggin, and Mr. H. C. Bunner have all either<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 264 (#278) ############################################<br />
<br />
264<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
read or spoken before the club this winter or last.<br />
There are no committees, nor is there even a<br />
president to run the club, Mr. Lincoln under-<br />
taking all the work, such as getting the speakers,<br />
fixing dates, hiring the hall, seeing to the<br />
announcements, and even constituting himself<br />
treasurer and presiding officer for the introduc-<br />
tion of the readers.<br />
An experiment has recently been tried by Mr.<br />
Alexander Black, who is both an amateur photo-<br />
grapher and a journalist. It is a form of enter-<br />
tainment which he calls a “picture play.” Mr.<br />
Black has written a story entitled “Miss Jerry,”<br />
which he reads to his audience, giving each<br />
character its own individuality by a slight change<br />
in his voice. At the same time numerous photo-<br />
graphs, which illustrate the many situatiºns, are<br />
thrown by a magic lantern slide on a large sheet.<br />
The plot of the story is a mere thread on which is<br />
strung many incidents that introduce well-known<br />
people. Miss Jerry is a bright, vigorous girl,<br />
who takes up the business of reporter as a con-<br />
genial means of livelihood, and her adventures in<br />
that capacity form the basis of the plot, around<br />
which is woven a slight love story. Mr. Black<br />
has been to much pains to make his photographs<br />
as realistic and natural as possible, and thus we<br />
See Miss Jerry boarding an elevated train, inter-<br />
viewing Mr. Chauncey Depew in his office, visiting<br />
the slums, and taking part in a brilliant ball.<br />
These are only a few of the many sides of New<br />
York that Mr. Black has written about and<br />
depicted. Whether this venture will prove a<br />
lasting success it is impossible to say, but that it<br />
is a mºst enjoyable form of entertainment, and<br />
has many as yet undeveloped possibilities in it, is<br />
very evident. -<br />
The travelled American has often stated that<br />
he wondered why no American periodical had as<br />
large a circulation as the Strand Magazine. As<br />
a matter of fact, two of our periodicals have over<br />
three-quarters of a million circulation, yet neither<br />
of them is published in New York, the centre of<br />
the publishing trade. The papers referred to are<br />
the Ladies' Home Journal, issued in Philadelphia,<br />
and the Pouth's Companion, issued in Boston. It<br />
was on the former of these that the English<br />
Woman at Home was modelled. The Ladies’<br />
Home Journal is a monthly of thirty or forty<br />
pages of the size of the Illustrated London News,<br />
and its sale is principally outside this metropolis,<br />
for it aims to appeal to a more provincial audience.<br />
From its title it would be judged exclusively a<br />
woman’s paper, but this is not the case. There<br />
are always running through the year some articles<br />
especially applicable to men, such as the series<br />
called “When He is Sixteen,” articles written by<br />
four prominent women on all that concerns a boy<br />
at that age—his studies, amusements, choice of<br />
professions, &c. Now a new series has been begun<br />
entitled one month “The Woman Who Has Most<br />
Influenced Me,” and the next “The Man Who Has<br />
Most Influenced Me ;” these naturally are written<br />
alternate months by men and women. The<br />
monthly always contains at least one serial story,<br />
and it was in this paper that Mr. Howell’s<br />
“Coast of Bohemia’’ appeared, and also Mr.<br />
Stockton’s “Pomona's Travels;” and there is,<br />
besides, generally a short story or two. A most<br />
delightful series of articles are now being written<br />
for it by Mr. Howells on “My Literary Passions.”<br />
The editorials are always timely, and on some<br />
broad subject. Besides this there are articles of<br />
general interest, comic or otherwise, and a poem<br />
or two. Another feature of this paper is the<br />
separation of the departments for answering<br />
correspondents, divided under the heads of<br />
“Floral Helps and Hints,” “Side-Talks with<br />
Girls,” “Hints on Home Dressmaking,” “Sug-<br />
gestions for Mothers,” “Art Help for Art<br />
Workers,” “Literary Queries,” and, lastly, “The<br />
Open Congress;” these (i.epartments are all under<br />
the direction of what might be called specialists.<br />
The illustrations and printing are both of a high<br />
order, and it would be hard to cite a periodical<br />
that has more widespread influence—an influence<br />
which is elevating both morally and intel-<br />
lectually.<br />
The Youth's Companion is a paper of an<br />
entirely different stamp, and with a different<br />
mission to fulfil. It is a wholesome weekly of<br />
good literary style, designed for readers of both<br />
sexes from fourteen to twenty-four years.<br />
Amongst its announcements for 1895 appear<br />
the following: A paper on “Nursing,” by<br />
Princess Helena of Schleswig-Holstein, and an<br />
account of a sculptor's work, called “The Story<br />
of a Statue,” by Princess Louise (Marchioness of<br />
Lorne); an article on the “Recollections of My<br />
Physician,” by Mr. Gladstone; a reminiscent<br />
account by Mr. J. M. Barrie, entitled “A School<br />
Revisited;” an article by Mr. Rudyard Kipling,<br />
“The Bold 'Prentice;” a speculative paper, “If<br />
Telescopes were Bigger,” by Camille Flammarion;<br />
an article on “How to Tell a Story,” by Mark<br />
Twain, and one on “An Editor's Relations with<br />
Young Authors,” by Mr. Howells; also “Bits of<br />
Scottish Character,” by the late Robert Louis<br />
Stevenson. From this array of names it is easy<br />
to see that the taste of the American youth is as<br />
much considered as that of his seniors. Indeed,<br />
we are singularly lucky in the type of our<br />
juvenile periodicals, for Harper's Young People<br />
and St. Nicholas have enormous circulations and<br />
much influence, and both have very high<br />
standards of literary and artistic merit. Thus<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 265 (#279) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
265<br />
the young American mind is not only catered to,<br />
but elevated.<br />
A circular has recently been sent around to the<br />
various members of the writing craft that a table<br />
of statistics concerning newspaper reviews had<br />
been made, and that the New York Times “led<br />
all the rest " in regard to the number of books<br />
criticised in its columns, and in regard also to the<br />
space it devoted to literature. On looking through<br />
the table, it is surprising to find that of the 419<br />
American and British works appearing during the<br />
period of Oct. I to Dec. 31, 1894, the Times has<br />
actually reviewed 277, and that these reviews<br />
have occupied 117 columns. The promptness<br />
with which these reviews appeared after the<br />
publication of the books is also much to be com-<br />
mended—out of the 277, at least 240 were reviewed<br />
within a month. The statistical pamphlet is<br />
arranged in alphabetical order as regards the pub-<br />
lishers, and thus, as an example, out of the<br />
fifteen books issued by Longmans, Green, and<br />
Co., the Times reviewed eleven, and devoted<br />
fifty and one-half columns to them, whereas the<br />
Tribune reviewed five of them, the Post four, and<br />
the Sun only two. But, on the other hand, the<br />
JPost has far more book advertisements than the<br />
Times; sometimes it has as many as three pages.<br />
It is a great convenience to authors and publishers<br />
to know where books are most likely to receive<br />
prompt attention, and so this table of statistics is<br />
welcome.<br />
Ibsen's latest play “Little Eyolf’’ has just<br />
been published by Stone and Kimball, of Chicago,<br />
in the Green Tree Library. The volume is a<br />
dainty specimen of bookmaking, being tastefully<br />
and well bound, of a convenient size, and printed<br />
with care and thought. It has been most warmly<br />
received. It is interesting to note how curiously<br />
alike it is in subject to Mrs. Margaret Deland’s<br />
recent novel, “Philip and His Wife.” Although<br />
differing in every detail and in most of the inci-<br />
dents, yet the two books are almost parallel in<br />
the problem they present. It is a pleasure to<br />
announce that Mrs. Deland’s book has been<br />
deservedly a great success, and is already in its<br />
fifth edition.<br />
It is astonishing how the “Trilby’’ boom keeps<br />
up, and even seems on the increase. Word has<br />
come from Harper and Brothers that so far in<br />
printing the book IOO tons of paper have been<br />
used. It is a great pleasure to mention the fair-<br />
ness with which Harpers have dealt with Mr.<br />
Du Maurier. Upon accepting “Trilby,” the<br />
publishers, believing in the book, offered Mr.<br />
Du Maurier a very handsome royalty; but the<br />
author preferred a lump sum in proportion to<br />
their belief in the book, which was very great.<br />
Now, seeing the enormous success of the story,<br />
: Hugo's remarks.<br />
Harper and Brothers have notified Mr. Du<br />
Maurier that from Jan. I of this year he<br />
will receive a royalty, and not only a royalty on<br />
“Trilby,” but also on “Peter Ibbetson,” for<br />
which they had also paid a large sum down, but<br />
which has been lately carried along by the success<br />
of its author’s more recent book. A parody has<br />
just appeared, entitled “Biltry,” and the drama-<br />
tisation of “Trilby " by Mr. Paul Potter<br />
is quite completed, and Mr. A. M. Palmer<br />
expects to produce it on March 4 in Boston. A<br />
“Trilby’’ afternoon has been arranged in aid of<br />
the New York Kindergarten Association. There<br />
are to be tableaux, taken from the illustrations,<br />
and all the songs mentioned in the story will be<br />
sung—thus it will be seem that “Trilby’’ has<br />
taken New York hearts by storm. One of the<br />
latest jokes current at present is the answer<br />
which supposedly appeared in a paper to an<br />
anxious inquirer—“No, Napoleon did not write<br />
‘Trilby;” you have confused the magazines.”<br />
HALLETT ROBINSON.<br />
*~ - ~-'<br />
r—- - ---,<br />
LETTER FROM PARIS,<br />
AM writing this in the melancholy of the<br />
loss of our dear Auguste Vacquerie, a<br />
friend of twelve years' standing, a very<br />
kindly man, who, for his way of life, was one<br />
to be looked up to in this career of ours. He<br />
was in every sense of the word a gentleman of<br />
letters, and these are few in France.<br />
The first time that I met Auguste Vacquerie was<br />
twelve years ago, at the house of Victor Hugo,<br />
whose inseparable companion he was. Of the<br />
two poets, the disciple—for Vacquerie always pro-<br />
claimed himself but the disciple of Victor Hugo—<br />
haddecidedly the superior distinction, and, to con-<br />
fess the truth, I listened with far more interest to<br />
the things that he said that night than to Victor<br />
I frequently met him after-<br />
wards at the same house, and was on one occasion<br />
invited to call and see him at his own home, a<br />
fine mansion in the Rue Durmont d'Urville. I<br />
called there one morning and found Vacquerie in<br />
bed, for, as he told me, he never rose till noon.<br />
“I wake at seven,” he said, “and immediately<br />
read all the morning papers ”—the floor of the<br />
bedroom and the counterpane of the bed were<br />
strewn with gazettes—“ and when I have read<br />
all the news, I write my daily article for the<br />
Rappel.” By the bedside stood a little table,<br />
with writing materials on it, and a bowl<br />
of bouillon, in draughts of which the editor<br />
sought inspiration. His process was different from<br />
that of Victor Hugo, and indeed he remarked on<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 266 (#280) ############################################<br />
<br />
266<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
this, for Hugo always wrote standing, imitating<br />
Voltaire in this respect. “But,” said Vacquerie,<br />
“I am only a disciple.” Ithink that it was a pity<br />
that he contented himself with his position of<br />
disciple and imitator of Hugo, for he had decided<br />
originality and a particular sweetness of style,<br />
which would have sufficed to give him an excellent<br />
standing of his own in French literature. I shall<br />
never forget the kindness of his reception of me<br />
on that occasion, miserable little journalistic hack<br />
that I was at the time. He insisted on keeping<br />
me to breakfast, and after breakfast showed me<br />
over his art collection. I remember with what<br />
glee he pointed to a Delacroix, a picture of the<br />
good Samaritan, which he had bought for<br />
50 francs, “a picture worth a hundred times that<br />
sum to-day.” He pressed me to return and see<br />
him, and I did so once or twice, but it is now a<br />
long time since I saw him last. I contented my-<br />
self with being his contemporary, and liked to<br />
think that there was a kindly Auguste Vacquerie,<br />
who was well disposed towards me, living in<br />
Paris. One has many friends like that. And<br />
now he is dead and buried, and I shall never<br />
see him again Paris seems different to me<br />
to-day.<br />
I noticed that several papers commented on the<br />
divorce between Jeanne Hugo and Léon Daudet<br />
with comments which were unjustifiable. Thanks<br />
to the excellent French law in this matter,<br />
no particulars of divorce cases may be published<br />
in the French papers—a law that might well be<br />
introduced, in despite of the penny and half-<br />
penny editors, into England—and, as In conse-<br />
quence nobody except the friends of the family<br />
knew anything about the case, nobody was in a<br />
position to comment upon it. It was a mere case<br />
of incompatibility of temper, and, though<br />
separated, the two ex-spouses have remained<br />
excellent friends. This is a good thing for the<br />
sake of the little boy, Victor Hugo’s great-grand-<br />
SOIl.<br />
I had expected to be able to give a description<br />
in this letter of the banquet which was to be<br />
given on Friday last to Edmund de Goncourt by<br />
his friends and admirers. In consequence, how-<br />
ever, of the sudden and regretted death of<br />
Auguste Vacquerie, M. de Goncourt wrote<br />
to the organisers of the banquet to ask them<br />
to postpone it till the following week. This<br />
being so, I fail to understand why certain French<br />
journalists have pointed to this postponement as<br />
another proof of the persistent bad luck which<br />
has pursued the de Goncourts through life. It<br />
is true that their first book was killed by the fact<br />
that it was published on the very day on which<br />
the coup d'état was carried out in Paris, and<br />
consequently passed unnoticed ; but since then<br />
Having done so,<br />
fortune has, in my opinion at least, made ample<br />
reparation to the surviving brother. He holds a<br />
unique place in French literature, and will remain<br />
standing after many of the apparently more<br />
fortunate ones have been swallowed up in<br />
obscurity. Certainly his books have not sold by<br />
the hundred thousand, but that is a circum-<br />
stance on which so perfect an artist may rather<br />
congratulate himself.<br />
I am greatly interested at present in the<br />
writings of the German philosopher Nietzsche,<br />
which are being greatly read in Paris. The<br />
writer, I am sorry to say, will be silent hereafter,<br />
for his brain has given way, and he is confined in<br />
some German madhouse. Possibly this may be a<br />
subject for congratulation, for it is evident, from<br />
the direly pessimistic tone of his enunciations,<br />
that he was a very unhappy man—a Schopenhauer<br />
without Schopenhauer’s obvious insincerity—a<br />
Leopardi without the consolation of the poet’s<br />
art; and where ignorance is bliss—you know<br />
the rest<br />
The following is one of Nietzche's sayings<br />
about bad books: “Das Buch soll nach Feder,<br />
Tinte und Schreibtisch verlangen: aber gewöhnlich<br />
verlangen Feder, Tinte und Schreibtisch nach.<br />
dem Buche. Deshalb ist es jetzt so wenig mit<br />
Büchern.”<br />
The study of pessimism is an excellent one for<br />
young people. Pessimism is a disease, which,<br />
like measles, attacks everybody at least once in a<br />
lifetime. It is well to inoculate oneself with it<br />
early in life, so as to be protected against it at a<br />
time when it might less easily be borne. Ten years<br />
ago I was the gloomiest of melancholy Jacques.<br />
To-day the world seems a charming place to live<br />
lll.<br />
Amongst my papers I find the following auto-<br />
graph letter from William Wordsworth. It has<br />
never been printed before, and so I give it.<br />
Things have not greatly changed in the matter<br />
of poetry since the day on which it was<br />
written :<br />
MY DEAR SIR,<br />
Very pressing engagements have prevented me.<br />
looking over the MSS. you sent me till this evening.<br />
and remembering your conversation<br />
with me upon the subject, it seems unnecessary that I<br />
should say more than that the verses in some respects do<br />
much credit to their author, and show an easy command of<br />
language and are not deficient in harmony; and the story of<br />
the tale, though not having much novelty in it, is agree-<br />
able.<br />
I mention to you what is apparent enough, that poetry is<br />
not much in favour with the public at present, and there-<br />
fore if I thought these specimens of merit much superior to<br />
what, candidly speaking, I reckon them to be, I could not<br />
feel confident that their publication would be profitable to<br />
the writer.<br />
I must add, however, on the other side, that, as tastes and<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 267 (#281) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
267<br />
fancies are so various, it is impossible to foresee what would<br />
or would not succeed.<br />
- I remain, my dear sir,<br />
Faithfully yours,<br />
WM. WORDSwor'IH.<br />
Rydal Mount,<br />
Jan. 28, 1841.<br />
Wordsworth used to be overwhelmed with<br />
MSS. from all parts of the world—an experience<br />
common to most writers whose names are known<br />
to the public. A whole room in Rydal Mount<br />
was set aside for the storage of these manuscripts,<br />
but, in spite of every precaution, many used to get<br />
lost. I remember my mother telling me that<br />
when she was quite a little girl, and was staying<br />
at Rydal Mount, she was one morning greatly<br />
upset by a pathetic letter from some poet in the<br />
South of England, who wrote saying that he had<br />
sent a long epic to Wordsworth some months<br />
previously, and that, though he had applied for<br />
its return several times, he had never received<br />
any answer. He added that all his hopes in this<br />
world were based on that epic, and implored for<br />
its return. She spent all that day, and the next<br />
day too, in looking for this manuscript, but was<br />
unable to find it. In the end she selected from<br />
a pile of poems, which for some reason or other<br />
could not be returned to their writers, one which<br />
was also an epic, and of about the same length<br />
as the missing one, and sent it to the poet, saying<br />
that she hoped that this one would as well. She<br />
inclosed in the letter the sum of half-a-crown,<br />
the whole contents of her savings-box, and asked<br />
the poet to accept this as a solatium. He was<br />
apparently satisfied, for he never wrote again.<br />
Speaking of the old days reminds me that a<br />
day or two ago I was looking over a book of<br />
accounts, which was kept in the house of an<br />
English nobleman, in the years 1622-23-24.<br />
It is most methodically kept, and includes every<br />
penny that was spent in that family during that<br />
period. The items vary from “Almesmonie,” as,<br />
for instance, “Item given to the prisoners in the<br />
Fleet,” or “Item given to my sister Anna Walker<br />
to helpe to buy her a wedinge gown,” to<br />
“Chardges in Travell,” &c. I have read all the<br />
items through without finding that during those<br />
three years there was spent in that nobleman's<br />
family a single penny on literature in any shape<br />
or form, and this in spite of the fact that<br />
periodical visits were paid by his lordship and<br />
family to town. Things have certainly improved<br />
in England since those days, and fortunate it is<br />
for us who write that this is so.<br />
Is it not a pity that the very best portrait of<br />
our gentle Stevenson should be in America, and<br />
that there is little chance of its ever being seen in<br />
England again P. This is the portrait painted by<br />
Mr. Alexander, of Paris, whom many consider,<br />
with Whistler and Sargent, the finest portrait<br />
painter in the world. More than this, it is, next<br />
to his remarkable portrait of Walt Whitman, the<br />
painter's best work. What good portraits of<br />
Stevenson are there in England for our great-<br />
grandchildren to look at P<br />
Any publisher or editor who wants a cheap<br />
advertisement need only follow the example of<br />
various American editors and publishers in offering<br />
fantastic sums to Count Tolstoi for the right of<br />
publishing his new works. Tolstoi always refuses<br />
any dealings with his books and so no risk is run<br />
and Messrs. Puff, Quack, Réclame, and Co., of<br />
Paternoster-row, can safely offer him 2 dollars<br />
a letter for his work, as the American publisher<br />
did the other day. Nay, they might offer<br />
£10 a word, provided that they let the fact be<br />
known, and the paragraphists would do the rest.<br />
Are we not all very glad of the great success of<br />
Mr. Sala's last book—the most entertaining set of<br />
memoirs which has appeared for some years P. It<br />
is a book that every literary aspirant should read<br />
for his encouragement—the story of a brave life in<br />
a hard career of persistent heroism. One is proud<br />
to be the confrère of such a man.<br />
Daudet's new book, “La Petite Paroisse,” is a<br />
very clever study of jealousy—a passion much<br />
à la mode for literary treatment in Paris just<br />
now. Lemaître expounds it after his fashion in<br />
“Le Pardon ’’ at the Comedie. In the copy which<br />
Daudet sent me he wrote that he hoped I had<br />
been jealous, so that I might tell him if his book<br />
were true. I was glad to be able to tell him that,<br />
since childish jealousies in the matter of tops or<br />
tarts, I had never experienced that feeling which<br />
is said to be the only mental suffering which is a<br />
physical suffering at the same time. I under-<br />
stand that jealousy produces a very painful<br />
feeling below the breastbone, as when one has<br />
eaten too many blackberries. These are not<br />
sensations that I run after. Daudet's hero suffers<br />
badly, but is very brave through it all, and here<br />
again Daudet has shown that, in spite of all, he<br />
will look on the bright side of life, and on what is<br />
good in human nature. This is what is so<br />
excellent in his work. -<br />
I was very sorry to hear of the death of John<br />
O'Neill, announced in last month's Author. I<br />
had never met him, but just before I last left<br />
London I received a very kind and encouraging<br />
letter from him, which came at a time when I<br />
was extremely despondent. Letters like that are<br />
a blessing to struggling authors. I had hoped<br />
to thank John O'Neill for writing to me in<br />
person, and now that can never be.<br />
Marcel Schwob’s translation of “Moll Flanders”<br />
is the book of the season in Paris, next to<br />
Daudet's latest. Schwob has an excellent know-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 268 (#282) ############################################<br />
<br />
268<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
ledge of English literature, and is the personal<br />
friend of many of our leading writers. We<br />
English owe him a debt of gratitude for his<br />
championship of English literature in a country<br />
where people are singularly ignorant of its<br />
beauties. RobºFT H. SHERARD.<br />
I23, Boulevard Magenta, Paris.<br />
*- -*<br />
- * *-y<br />
NOTES AND NEWS,<br />
E need merely chronicle here the elections<br />
of Mr. W. Martin Conway as chairman<br />
of the committee of management, and of<br />
Mr. Anthony Hope Hawkins as a member of the<br />
council and of the committee of management.<br />
A brief report of the general meeting of the<br />
Society, which was held in the room of the<br />
Medical and Chirurgical Society, on the afternoon<br />
of the 25th ult., will be found in another column.<br />
We wish to call the attention of members to the<br />
resolution moved by Mr. Hall Caine and seconded<br />
by Mr. Rider Haggard, relating to Canadian<br />
Copyright. In another column will be found<br />
the Chairman's invitation to members to sign the<br />
petition which has been drawn up, and is lying<br />
for signature at the offices. It should be borne<br />
mind that the threatened legislation would<br />
destroy the homogeneity of British copyright,<br />
and would jeopardise the whole of the benefits<br />
resulting from American copyright. The danger<br />
is real and urgent, and members are invited to<br />
send in their names forth with.<br />
A communication addressed by Mr. R. Under-<br />
wood Johnson, the secretary of the American<br />
Copyright League, to the (New York) Evening<br />
Post is disquieting. From this it appears that a<br />
Copyright Bill has been introduced and reported<br />
by the Committee on Patents with a proviso which<br />
limits the total sum to be recovered under the<br />
statute (sect. 4965, ch. 3, title 60) to double the<br />
value of the “thing infringed upon,” &c. Mr.<br />
Johnson enters a protest against this reform on<br />
many grounds, and points out that the proviso<br />
extends so as to cover literary as well as artistic<br />
work, so that, while this legislation is ostensibly<br />
intended to protect innocent infringers of photo-<br />
graphic copyright from blackmailing proceedings,<br />
it promises to enable any pirate to copy any<br />
periodical matter, whether literary or artistic,<br />
with comparative impunity.<br />
Though belated, for reasons which need not be<br />
explained, we lay a wreath upon the grave of<br />
Christina, Rossetti, The words found in another<br />
column are written by one who knew her. These<br />
are the occasions on which the mere critic, even<br />
the admiring or the reverential critic, must stand<br />
aside to let those speak who had the privilege of<br />
knowing the dead poet.<br />
*– ~ *<br />
e- - -<br />
THE LOSSES IN LITERATURE, 1894.<br />
BIE losses in literature, which have been both<br />
numerous and severe, include Professor<br />
James Anthony Froude, LL.D. ; Mr.<br />
Robert Louis Stevenson; Mr. Walter Pater; Dr.<br />
Oliver Wendell Holmes ; Professor William<br />
Robertson Smith, D.D., LL.D. ; Professor Henry<br />
Morley, LL.D.; Rev. Richard Morris, LL.D.; Sir<br />
James F. Stephen, the legal writer and essayist;<br />
Sir Austen H. Layard, of Nineveh fame; Miss<br />
Christina Georgina Rosetti; Professor John<br />
Nichol, biographer and poet, late Professor of<br />
English Literature in Glasgow University; Dr.<br />
John Weitch, Professor of Logic and Literature in<br />
Glasgow University; M. Leconte de Lisle, the<br />
distinguished French poet; the Comtesse Agenor<br />
de Gasparin; Professor William Dwight Whitney,<br />
the philological and Orientalist author; Mr.<br />
Edmund Yates ; the Hon. Roden Noel ; Mr.<br />
Charles H. Pearson, LL.D., the constitutional<br />
writer; Mrs. Augusta Webster; Mr. R. M.<br />
Ballantyne, the popular story writer; M. Maxime<br />
du Camp, the French author and academician;<br />
Professor James Darmesteter; Dr. George<br />
Bullen, formerly keeper of the Printed Books at<br />
the British Museum; Mr. William T. M'Cullagh,<br />
Torrens; Miss Alice King, the blind novelist ;<br />
Rev. R. Brown-Borthwick, the hymnologist; Mr.<br />
George Ticknor Curtis; Rev. Alexander J. D.<br />
D'Orsey; Rev. Edmund S. Ffoulkes; Dr. Brian<br />
Houghton Hodson, the Orientalist writer; F. W.<br />
Weber, the Prussian poet ; Dr. Francis Henry<br />
Underwood ; Señor Oliveira Martins, the eminent<br />
Portuguese historian ; Mr. John Francis Waller,<br />
LL.D.; Miss Elizabeth Peabody; Dr. H. W.<br />
Dulcken ; Miss Constance Fenimore Woolson;<br />
Dr. Terrien de Lacouperie, the Orientalist writer<br />
and scholar ; Dr. John Lord, LL.D., the his-<br />
torian; M. Armand Pagès, the French novelist;<br />
Dr. James M'Cosh, the philosophical writer;<br />
Captain Lovett Cameron ; Mrs. Pitt-Byrne; Mrs.<br />
Jane Austin, the American authoress; Miss<br />
Sophia Dobson Collett, writer on Theism and<br />
Atheism; Miss E. Owens Blackburne, the Irish<br />
novelist; the Rev. Robert Anchor Thompson,<br />
historical writer; Miss Patton-Bethune, writer of<br />
sporting novels; M. Dugast-Matifeux, an eminent<br />
French antiquary ; Rev. J. Hamilton Thom ; Rev.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 269 (#283) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
269<br />
John Nassau-Simpkinson; Ludwig Pfau, the<br />
German poet and art critic; Mrs. Augusta<br />
Theodosia Drame, a well-known Roman Catholic<br />
writer; M. Victor Fournel, the literary critic;<br />
Mr. Andreas Edward Cokayne, antiquarian<br />
writer; Professor Karl Dillmann the emi-<br />
ment Ethiopic writer; Mr. Thomas George<br />
Stevenson, an Edinburgh author and publisher;<br />
M. Foucaux, Professor of Sanskrit at the Collège<br />
de France; M. Astié, Professor of Philosophy at<br />
Lausanne ; the Rev. Naphthali Levy, Jewish<br />
writer; Mr. Walter H. Tregellas, a Cornish<br />
author; Mr. Thomas Farrall, a popular Cumber-<br />
land writer; Mr. Henry Vizetelly, author of<br />
“Glances back through Seventy Years,” &c.;<br />
Mr. J. J. Shean, of Hull, a county historian ; Mr.<br />
John Chessell Buckler, antiquarian writer; Mr.<br />
Mansfield Parkyns, writer on Abyssinia; Herr<br />
J. ter Gouw, author of the “History of<br />
Amsterdam. ”; Mr. Brackstone Baker, writer on<br />
Canadian and railway subjects; Herr Max Moltke,<br />
the German poet, philosopher, and translator;<br />
Mr. John Patrick Prendergast, author of “The<br />
Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland”; M. Dussieux,<br />
author of works on the reign of Louis XIV. ;<br />
Professor J. Von Dümichen, the eminent writer<br />
on Egyptology; Dr. J. Bradshaw, editor of<br />
“Grey ’’ and “Milton,” and of “The Chesterfield<br />
Letters ”; Voislav Ilic, the “Servian Heine ‘’;<br />
Helgi Hálfdanorson, the Icelandic poet ; Mr.<br />
Henry Manners Chichester, writer on British<br />
military history; Dr. William F. Poole, compiler<br />
of the “Index to Periodical Literature"; Dr.<br />
Frankl, Austrian poet and prose writer; Professor<br />
Wilhelm Roscher, the eminent political economist;<br />
Mr. Edward Capern, the postman poet of Bide-<br />
ford; Mr. Cecil Robertson; Rev. Josiah Wright,<br />
classical writer; M. Louis Roumieux, the French<br />
“Provincial Ovid’’; Mr. W. O'Neill Daunt,<br />
Irish historical writer; Mme. Betty Paoli (Barbara<br />
Glück), the Austrian poetess; Mr. Herbert Tuttle,<br />
historical writer; Mr. J. Dobie, Professor of<br />
Hebrew in Edinburgh University ; Nikolai<br />
Michailowitsch Astyrew, the Russian author;<br />
Mrs. Celia Thaxter; M. Jean Fleury; Mr. Eugene<br />
Lawrence, American historical writer; Dr. Siegfried<br />
Szamatolski, a promising German writer; Miss<br />
Augusta de Grasse Stevens; Mr. W. Douglas<br />
Hamilton, historical writer; Mr. John Russell,<br />
assistant editor of Chambers’s Journal; Dr. H.<br />
N. Van der Tunk, the greatest Malayan scholar<br />
of the century; Mr. Francis Romano Oliphant;<br />
Mr. John Askham, the Northamptonshire poet;<br />
M. Léon Palustre, a learned writer on the French<br />
Renaissance ; Professor Dr. Henrich Rudolf<br />
Hildebrand, the linguist and lexicographer; Mr.<br />
J. Bedford Leno, the Buckinghamshire poet; Mr.<br />
George H. Jennings; M. François de Caussade,<br />
of an almost unique personality.<br />
librarian of the Mazarine Collection; M. Claudio<br />
Jannet, Professor of Political Economy in the<br />
Catholic University of Paris; M. Victor Duruy,<br />
the historian; Rev. Caesar Malan, the Oriental<br />
scholar; Dr. John Chapman, proprietor and<br />
editor of the Westminster Review ; Mr. Alexander<br />
Ireland; Dr. Heinrich Hoffman, author of the<br />
famous “Struwwelpeter’”; and the Rev. William<br />
John Blew, hymnologist, &c.—The Times, Jan. I.<br />
*- : *-*<br />
* * -<br />
CHRISTINA, G, ROSSETTI.<br />
ſ TVHE editor of this periodical has courteously<br />
T requested me to say something about<br />
Christina Rossetti in the March number of<br />
the Author, and I comply with his request,<br />
though with diffidence.<br />
Words are only the means whereby we strive<br />
to express our conceptions or to convey our<br />
impressions. And never does a writer feel so<br />
keenly how inadequate words are at the best as<br />
when he strives to show to others in some<br />
measure the sweetness, the irresistible fascination<br />
For the<br />
influence of personal qualities, such as those<br />
possessed by Christina Rossetti in so remark-<br />
able a degree, is well-nigh untranslatable into<br />
words.<br />
Time, skill in word-painting, and above all<br />
much preparatory thought, are needed before any<br />
success, however small, can be attained in such an<br />
endeavour. But if a volume is ever written,<br />
revealing the inner aspects of her character, as far<br />
as these could be revealed with a due sense of<br />
delicacy and proportion, the volume will be a<br />
permanent and priceless addition to English litera-<br />
ture. And, despite the difficulty of his task, I<br />
envy him who shall write the volume; the con-<br />
templation of such a character as that of<br />
Christina Rossetti will alone recompense him for<br />
his labour.<br />
The critic of the far future, of whom we hear<br />
so much and think so little, will accord a high<br />
place among the great poets of the century to<br />
the poet to whom we owe “Amor Mundi,” “An<br />
Apple Gathering,” “Maude Clare,” “The Con-<br />
vent Threshold,” and “Maiden-Song.” He will<br />
single out as among the finest love songs in our<br />
language such a flawless lyric as “When I am<br />
dead, my dearest "-a lyric so full of atmosphere,<br />
so perfect in its tenderness and portrayal of<br />
unchanged and unchangeable affection. Nor<br />
must we forget that Christina Rossetti—whether<br />
we look to the quality or quantity of her<br />
devotional poetry—was pre-eminent among the<br />
illustrious English poets who have enriched<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 270 (#284) ############################################<br />
<br />
27O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Christian literature by their genius. As long as<br />
Christianity remains the most vital force in the<br />
lives of millions of English-speaking people<br />
the memory of that poet of their faith who<br />
gave them such a poem as “Passing away, saith<br />
the world, passing away,” or “Paradise,” with<br />
its exquisite last stanza, the very quintessence of<br />
Christian expectation — who gave them that<br />
beautiful hymn, part of which, beginning “The<br />
Porter watches at the gate,” was sung so fittingly<br />
at her funeral service — who gave them the<br />
perfect lines, beginning “Thy lovely saints<br />
do bring Thee love,” will be cherished and<br />
honoured.<br />
Personally, Christina Rossetti had the quiet<br />
simplicity of real greatness, and this simplicity<br />
was doubtless in itself an evidence of genius. In<br />
intercourse with her one lost consciousness of<br />
being in the presence of a distinguished poet,<br />
because one became conscious of being in the<br />
presence of a woman distinguished in the more<br />
noble womanly qualities. Nature evidently had<br />
endowed her not only with the gifts proper to a<br />
poet, and these in a lavish degree, but also with<br />
choicest gifts of the heart and soul. But if this<br />
was so, it was equally true that Christina Rossetti<br />
had herself matured and perfected her natural<br />
gifts by that sublimest education of all—the<br />
education of the soul.<br />
She was a recluse, but she never talked to me as<br />
such, and even amid weakness and suffering she<br />
was constantly cheerful. The very tones of her<br />
voice, in their slow and distinct intonation, were<br />
pleasant to hear. She was quite willing to talk<br />
about her favourite authors, and I remember the<br />
amusement she betokened on learning that a<br />
French translation of “David Copperfield,” which<br />
I had picked up secondhand on the Quais during<br />
a recent visit to Paris, was entitled “Le Neveu<br />
de Ma Tante.”<br />
Deeply religious, she never obtruded her piety,<br />
yet I felt instinctively that I was in the company<br />
of a holy woman. In a copy of her “Verses,”<br />
given to me, she wrote in her own clear hand-<br />
writing—handwriting firm as long as she could<br />
continue to write at all—“Faith is like a lily,<br />
lifted high and white,” and to her the things and<br />
persons of the future life were realities. Probably<br />
this was the reason of her wonderful—her<br />
heroic endurance of pain. Despite her profound<br />
humility, and her vivid sense of human short-<br />
comings, she was sustained by the conviction<br />
that God’s angel Death would soon release<br />
her, and she no more doubted the existence<br />
of a state of coming blessedness than the<br />
traveller doubts the existence of the place for<br />
which he is bound, when setting out on a<br />
journey. I shall always feel proud and glad<br />
that I knew personally one of the most lovable<br />
women who ever lived.<br />
MACKENZIE BELL.<br />
*~ - --"<br />
r- * ~,<br />
MRS. CARLYLE.<br />
ILL a voice ever be raised in defence<br />
of Carlyle P Much has been written<br />
touching Mrs. Carlyle’s married un-<br />
happiness, which everyone lays at the door of<br />
this long-suffering philosopher.<br />
In a recently published article, by the late<br />
Mrs. Alexander Ireland, she describes a visit she<br />
paid to Froude, in order to gain his permission<br />
to write Mrs. Carlyle's life. She gained Froude's<br />
permission because their view of Mrs. Carlyle's<br />
character was identical, for she says that Froude<br />
“deeply compassionated Mrs. Carlyle.”<br />
Perhaps it hovers closely on superfluousness.<br />
and temerity to argue so difficult a question, or<br />
to seek to readjust the balance between these<br />
two vexed and irreconcilable immortals; yet, in<br />
justice to Carlyle's memory, I would affirm that<br />
there was no lack of love, or even tenderness, on<br />
his part towards his wife.<br />
I have often heard one speak, who, in a quiet<br />
unobtrusive way, held intimate intercourse with<br />
the Carlyles, having experience of them in one of<br />
their gloomiest periods, for it was in the ten years<br />
during which Carlyle, under the shadow of his<br />
“Frederick the Great,” wrestled with the writing<br />
of his history. It was also the time when the<br />
unconscious philosopher paid his much resented<br />
visits to Lord and Lady Ashburton—at least, the<br />
period when Mrs. Carlyle most resented his so<br />
doing.<br />
But the impression this lady received, when<br />
she saw them together, which she did often, was<br />
of Carlyle's deep and abiding love for his wife,<br />
and of the high value he set upon her literary<br />
judgment, always reading to her his MS. and<br />
altering passages at her advice; how he strove<br />
with these emendations the following little<br />
touch by Mrs. Carlyle, related tâté-à-tête, best<br />
shows:–<br />
“The first day Mr. Carlyle came down very<br />
cross, in the evening, saying that he had done<br />
nothing all day, hang it ! had spent all the after-<br />
noon trying to alter that paragraph of hers, and<br />
he could not. The second day uneasy; the third<br />
day more so ; the fourth, sent J. in post haste to<br />
recall the proofs, that he might strike out<br />
the whole of “our melancholy friend's remarks.’<br />
Mrs. Carlyle sorry to find fault, and not to<br />
seemed pleased, as he is always dispirited himself<br />
at first, and wants encouraging.”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 271 (#285) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
27 I<br />
One questions if from the mocking satirical<br />
spirit of Mrs. Carlyle there ever flowed much<br />
encouragement, prone as she was to discourse of<br />
him to friends and acquaintances in a carping,<br />
unkindly spirit. On the other hand, I have<br />
heard this lady before quoted assert that in his<br />
bearing to his wife there was a chivalrous,<br />
reverent strain, difficult to describe; said she<br />
always in conclusion, “his manner to Mrs.<br />
Carlyle was beautiful.” As tending to the cause<br />
of some unhappiness between them, much stress<br />
has been laid upon her superior position socially,<br />
and of the luxury and comfort she relinquished<br />
on her marriage; but between a Scotch country<br />
doctor's daughter, at the beginning of this<br />
century, and a farmer's son, was there such a<br />
yawning gulf fixed P Might not genius and love<br />
have bridged it over P at least if Mrs. Carlyle had<br />
been dowered with but a little more of the latter<br />
golden elixir—then perhaps she would not have<br />
deemed it such an unmitigated misfortune to<br />
have made a pudding, or baked a loaf of bread;<br />
though her biographers have dealt as darkly<br />
upon her days of domestic activity at Craigen-<br />
puttock as did Charles Dickens, with more reason,<br />
upon his days of degradation in the blacking<br />
factory. -<br />
Mrs. Carlyle, or rather wayward Miss Jane<br />
Welsh, desired before all things to marry a man<br />
of genius. It was the survival of an early girlish<br />
ambition, and, unlike the general course of girlish<br />
ambition, it was fulfilled, for fate, a trifle<br />
maliciously, as the sequel proved, chose to fasten<br />
it upon her by producing the man. It failed to<br />
make her happy, because she was unable, partly<br />
by health and temperament, to face all the<br />
discomforts and disenchanting details which fall<br />
to the lot of the wife of a struggling, ill-paid<br />
man of genius; and “the plain living and high<br />
thinking,” coupled with the absolute silence and<br />
solitude necessary to the “high thinking,” grew<br />
irksome to her. These were the conditions of her<br />
early married life; then, when success came, with<br />
social homage to herself, it found her a dis-<br />
appointed, embittered woman, bereft of any but<br />
the most fitful power of enjoyment, seeing all<br />
things clad in her own feverish distaste for them.<br />
In a letter written to her from her intended<br />
husband not long before their marriage, he<br />
strenuously insists upon that which eventually<br />
proved to be the essential need of her whole life,<br />
for he writes:<br />
“You have a deep, earnest, and vehement spirit,<br />
and no earnest task has ever been assigned to it.<br />
You despise and ridicule the meanness of the<br />
things about you. To the things you honour you<br />
can only pay a fervent adoration, which issues in<br />
no practical effect.” Was not this the root of the<br />
restless misery in her life? Destitute of any earnest<br />
purpose, her brilliant gifts found no outlet; instead<br />
her mocking spirit played round men and things,<br />
and her keen satire, like sheet lightning, lit up<br />
the words and the deeds of the men and women<br />
round her with the cold light of destructive irony,<br />
which recoiling at the last upon her heart, warped<br />
it from all invigorating effort. But she was a<br />
shrewd and kindly friend to those she loved. Far<br />
be it from me to dwell upon her character, or<br />
life, in a censorious spirit. Novalis has it,<br />
character is destiny; and her perpetual malady<br />
of unhappiness was in a measure due to lack<br />
of health, but still more to that which she<br />
herself described, in humorous despair, as an<br />
absence of “the faculty of being happy.” At<br />
times one is almost tempted to think she wore<br />
her grief as a fantastic garment, for in the<br />
dolorous liturgy of her diary there is some-<br />
thing theatrical and unreal. When all literary<br />
and fashionable London rolled up to her door,<br />
still she railed at fate, because it failed to amuse<br />
her.<br />
There must be a great many “mute, inglorious ”<br />
Mrs. Carlyles in the world who cannot give voice<br />
to their disillusionment with life as wittily as<br />
did she, who yet make a very cheerful fight of it,<br />
having successfully learnt the gentle art of being<br />
happy ; therefore is not the world a little harsh<br />
in its judgment when it ascribes all Mrs. Carlyle's<br />
lamentations due to the temper of the melancholy<br />
Creator of “Sartor Resartus P”<br />
GRACE GILCHRIST.<br />
*- Am aims--><br />
,- w -.<br />
AN AUTHORS BEST WORK<br />
T is important to an author to know the<br />
circumstances under which he ordinarily<br />
does his best work. The experience of the<br />
majority of writers shows that the hour at which<br />
a man works, the place, and not a few other<br />
attendant circumstances of his labours—circum-<br />
stances in themselves apparently unimportant—<br />
exercise a great effect upon his ordinary capacity<br />
for literary production. The phenomenon is not<br />
quite universal. Anthony Trollope trained him-<br />
self into writing at any time, and in almost any<br />
place. Charles Dickens, when he was young,<br />
would write his newspaper reports on the palm<br />
of his hand, by the light of a dim lamp, in a<br />
post-chaise. But these were exceptional cases.<br />
Later Dickens' letters mention predilections for<br />
quiet spots in which to write, and yearnings for<br />
strolls in the streets of London to inspire him;<br />
and probably nineteen authors out of twenty<br />
will echo the sentiments of a dramatist of some<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 272 (#286) ############################################<br />
<br />
272<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
note who has said that all his happiest ideas<br />
present themselves to him in his own library.<br />
Nevertheless, many authors seem to give no<br />
serious attention to the lessons that might be<br />
derived from their experience of the difference<br />
both in quantity and quality of copy produced<br />
under more or less favourable circumstances.<br />
That is a mistake. The time of an author who is<br />
at all successful soon becomes very valuable,<br />
and its loss by mismanagement—and more time<br />
is lost by mismanagement than in any other way—<br />
is a real misfortune. The greater too a man’s<br />
success, the greater his reason for doing every-<br />
thing in his power to maintain his work at its<br />
highest level. It would be, in consequence,<br />
mere common prudence for an author to watch<br />
himself, and to take to heart as many lessons<br />
about his own strength and weakness, and about<br />
the circumstances under which he does his best<br />
work, as his experience will afford him. Such<br />
lessons are sometimes valuable results of failures,<br />
things that “one learns by making mistakes *-<br />
to quote Metastasio.<br />
It is true that some writers fall into an oppo-<br />
site error. Quite recently, amongst an author’s<br />
papers, was found a journal, not of hours only<br />
but of minutes, covering months and years, in<br />
which the employment of every moment had been<br />
chronicled with scrupulous accuracy with a view<br />
to ascertaining what time had been most<br />
profitably employed. Such finicking attention to<br />
infinitesimal details is a temptation to minds of<br />
a certain mould. It leads, of course, to waste,<br />
and not to economy of energy.<br />
Without, however, falling into this mistake,<br />
those who will “know themselves” may learn<br />
from a little self-observation a great deal that<br />
is well worth remembering. Personal experience<br />
will immediately suggest in every case to what<br />
the individual should turn his more particular<br />
attention, and to enumerate all that an author<br />
might with advantage try to observe would far<br />
exceed the limits of the present article. The<br />
following seem to be leading points which might<br />
suggest others.<br />
Where does a man find his finest stimulants of<br />
thought and invention ? Dickens found them in<br />
the crowded streets of London. More men have<br />
found them in the completest solitude. Few<br />
realise to how great a degree all that seems most<br />
spontaneous is really recollection. In conse-<br />
quence many men never adequately work the<br />
mine of their own memories. Instead they go<br />
about seeking—honestly, painfully, and often<br />
with many disappointments—what they all the<br />
time carry within themselves. M. Dumas, Fils,<br />
observes that “books teach nothing.” Those<br />
who, like Molière, take men rather than books for<br />
their study, will immediately understand the<br />
statement. Still Molière's favourite author was<br />
Lucretius, and Lucretius was never yet a favourite<br />
with any man who was not a close and careful<br />
reader. M. Dumas' dictum has also been flatly<br />
contradicted, and the assertion made that “books<br />
teach everything.” That may be an exaggera-<br />
tion or an epigram, two things much alike; yet<br />
De Balzac observes, with truth, “the mission of<br />
art is not to copy nature, but to express nature,”<br />
which means, for the novelist, that the literary<br />
habit of thought is indispensable. But how wide<br />
a question is here opened for every author who<br />
would know what amount of inspiration he<br />
draws from the world, and how much from his<br />
reading.<br />
What assistance does an author get from his<br />
common-place books? Some years have passed<br />
since Mr. James Payn recommended the memo-<br />
randum-book to every one who desired to write.<br />
And it is needless to say how many authors have<br />
availed themselves of the help of note-books.<br />
But may not every author with advantage ask<br />
himself how much aid his note-books, have given<br />
him, or how little P And, if so, why little P<br />
One phenomenon connected with note-books must<br />
be familiar to all who have used them, their tire-<br />
Some suggestiveness of what is not wanted, and<br />
the temptation, never to be allowed an instant’s<br />
influence over the judgment, to use something,<br />
because it is in the note-book, and because it<br />
looks telling, when it is evidently not quite in<br />
place. An author, who has made his memoranda,<br />
has still something of importance to learn in dis-<br />
covering the best way of using them.<br />
What time and what labour an author saves<br />
who has found out what is, in his own case, the<br />
best method of perfecting a plot, and of resolving<br />
upon the lines of each successive chapter after<br />
the plot has been constructed Mr. William<br />
Black has said that many of his tales have been<br />
planned in the open air. M. Zola confesses his<br />
absolute inability to think out anything unless he<br />
has a pen in his hand. “My ideas only come in<br />
writing. I could never evolve any idea.<br />
by sitting in my arm-chair and thinking.” An<br />
English authoress has said the exact contrary.<br />
“I never attempt to write anything until I have<br />
Sat still for a long time thinking.” Here are<br />
three different ways of proceeding. And there<br />
are no doubt many others. Only it must be<br />
most important for an author to know which way<br />
is most helpful to himself. A man, who has not<br />
yet discovered that, might be in the position of<br />
Zola in an easy chair. On the other hand, here<br />
is a passage from a letter of Dickens: “I didn’t<br />
stir out yesterday, but sat and thought all day;<br />
not writing a line, not so much as the cross of a,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 273 (#287) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
273<br />
“t” or the dot of an “i’ I imagined forth a good<br />
deal of Barnaby by keeping my mind steadily<br />
upon him ; and am happy to say I have gone to<br />
work this morning in good twig, strong hope, and<br />
cheerful spirits.”<br />
Another complete contrast between Dickens<br />
and Zola, suggests how great a difference there<br />
may be in the degree of elaboration which diffe-<br />
rent authors find it worth their while to give a<br />
scenario. Zola's scenario is longer than his book.<br />
Dickens, when he made a scenario, wrote only a<br />
few suggestive lines for each chapter. One<br />
author may waste his energies and tie his own<br />
hands by preparing a scenario that affords no<br />
scope for the development which the tale will<br />
take under his hands; and another lose time by<br />
constructing a scenario inadequate for his needs,<br />
so that he is compelled to recommence inventing<br />
his tale when he wants to be writing it. A<br />
writer ought to know exactly what form of<br />
scenario is most helpful to himself. A little<br />
attention to his own experiences would always<br />
show him how to construct it.<br />
That naturally next suggests the question of<br />
rapidity of composition. Rapid work is generally<br />
successful work. Hurried work is never rapid<br />
work. Any attempt to hurry invariably results<br />
in the composition dragging and everything going<br />
wrong. On the contrary, composition that flows<br />
out rapidly of itself is ordinarily a man’s best<br />
work. “The works and passages in which I have<br />
succeeded have uniformly been written with the<br />
greatest rapidity the parts in which I<br />
have come off feebly were by much the more<br />
laboured,” says Sir Walter Scott. “Slowness of<br />
production,” wrote Eugéne Delacroix, “is a blot<br />
on the talent of the artist. It leaves a stamp of<br />
fatigue.” Now, no phenomenon of literary work<br />
is so remarkable as the astonishing speed at which<br />
literary work can be done, at which some of the<br />
most remarkable literary work in the world has<br />
been done. Does it not follow that a man, who<br />
discovers something perpetually standing in the<br />
way of his getting on with his work, is probably<br />
pursuing a mistaken method, one perhaps con-<br />
genial to another man, but fatal to himself. He<br />
has not yet discovered the circumstances under<br />
which he does his best work. Many writers, for<br />
instance, never find a rapid flow of composition<br />
possible until after they have been writing for an<br />
hour or two. Dickens mentions this peculiarity.<br />
“I worked pretty well last night, but I have four<br />
slips to write to complete the chapter; and, as I<br />
foolishly left them till this morning, have the<br />
steam to get up afresh.” Suppose that a man<br />
who had thus “to get up steam ” thought that<br />
he could write easily and without fatigue by<br />
“doing a little every day,” then he would never<br />
reach the point where, in his case, the real flow of<br />
spirits and invention commenced.<br />
Connected with this difficulty of “getting up<br />
the steam ” may be the indisposition some men<br />
feel to set to work. Others start with a real zest.<br />
Perhaps these do not have to get up steam. But<br />
many can certainly echo De Balzac's Je m'y mets<br />
avec désespoir. It is almost impossible to exag-<br />
gerate the reluctance such men feel to beginning.<br />
When this is the case an author should certainly<br />
discover what is, in his case, the best method of<br />
dealing with this dislike to going to work.<br />
Another question there is of a very different<br />
kind. An ancient adage runs, “Tailors and<br />
writers must follow the fashion.” The highest<br />
work will always lead the fashion rather than<br />
follow it; but failures are occasioned by insuffi-<br />
cient attention to what people desire to read, and<br />
it is possible for an author, annoyed by ill-<br />
success, to turn his attention to writing rather<br />
what is popular than what his own feelings<br />
prompt him to write. It would be most valuable<br />
to him to observe the results of his experiment.<br />
More is involved than at first sight appears in a<br />
consequent success or failure. He may find that<br />
it was a mistake to quit, a speciality that suited<br />
him. He may discover that he has a much<br />
greater versatility than he suspected himself of<br />
possessing. He may even descry a path leading<br />
to successes never previously obtained because<br />
the direction in which they lay had escaped his<br />
observation.<br />
This is touching up on a few salient points<br />
alone. Only in the cases mentioned would it be<br />
possible to overrate the value to the author of<br />
knowing the circumstances in which he could<br />
reckon upon doing his best work.<br />
HENRY CRESSWELL.<br />
*--<br />
z- - --><br />
THE WALUE OF A NOWEL,<br />
Tº: following case is reported, as follows, in<br />
the Daily Chronicle for Feb. 17:<br />
Yesterday, in the Westminster County Court, the case of<br />
Johnson v. Dicks came before his Honour Judge Lumley<br />
Smith, Q.C., and was a claim in formá pawperis for £50,<br />
as damages for the loss of MS. The plaintiff said that in<br />
1888 he was at the house of Mr. John Dicks, at Streatham,<br />
and he asked him to write a story, which he sent to the<br />
defendant's place of business in the Strand, and was told<br />
a cheque would be forwarded, but he was afterwards<br />
informed that the story had been destroyed. He therefore<br />
claimed 350 for the damage. He had published many<br />
books, “Fairy Tales” in 1869, and others. Plaintiff said<br />
this was a large volume novel, and he was a well-known<br />
author. His Honour: But “Paradise Lost’’ was sold for<br />
£15, was it not P Plaintiff : But Black gets £1000 for a<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 274 (#288) ############################################<br />
<br />
274<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
short novel, and reserves to himself the copyright. I have<br />
had 3 Io a week for thirteen weeks from the London<br />
Journal. Defendant said he never saw the story, and was<br />
not a member of the firm now. His Honour : I think 392<br />
will pay you well. Defendant : But I am not liable. His<br />
Honour: 382 will not hurt you. (Laughter.) Judgment for<br />
the plaintiff for £2.<br />
If this case is accurately reported, and there is<br />
no reason for believing the contrary, it is a most<br />
extraordinary and wonderful case. The author<br />
sues in formá pauperis (thus keeping up the<br />
glorious traditions of the literary profession)<br />
for the sum of £50 as damages for the loss of<br />
a MS. -<br />
Very good. He said that he was at the house<br />
of Mr. John Dicks in 1888, and was by him<br />
invited to write a story for him, i.e., one supposes<br />
for one of his papers. Here come one or two<br />
questions: (1) Was he asked to write a story<br />
without specification of length or subject? (2)<br />
Was his story to be sent in on approval, or was<br />
the author's reputation taken as a guarantee of<br />
good work P. (3) What price was proposed by<br />
the publisher ? (4) What price did the author's<br />
stories usually command, i.e., what was he accus-<br />
tomed to receive P (5) Would the author name<br />
some of his stories, and mention what prices he<br />
received for them P (6) Was Mr. John Dicks<br />
authorised to invite novelists in the name of the<br />
firm or company P<br />
These questions, observe, are not hostile to<br />
either party; they are only necessary to get at<br />
the truth. The plaintiff then said that he was<br />
promised when he delivered the story that a<br />
cheque should be sent. What was the amount<br />
he was to get by that cheque? It does not<br />
appear. He was then told that the MS. had been<br />
destroyed. How P By fire! If so it would be<br />
arguable whether the firm was liable.<br />
dentally P Also it might be arguable whether<br />
the firm was liable. He assessed his own damages<br />
at £50, and said it was a “large volume novel.”<br />
What is a “large volume novel P” Is it a three-<br />
volume novel, or one of the average length of a<br />
three-volume novel, which is about 180,000<br />
words P<br />
The defendant said that he had never seen the<br />
story; that he was not a member of the firm ;<br />
and that he was not liable.<br />
to leave a firm in which he has been a partner,<br />
is he still liable to that firm’s engagements P<br />
Then the judge, after some irrelevance about<br />
“Paradise Lost,” ordered the defendant to pay<br />
£2 | Now, either the defendant was liable or<br />
he was not. If he was not, why should he pay<br />
anything P If he was, he ought to have paid the<br />
value of the work, calculate 1 on the value of<br />
other works by the same author. As it is, the<br />
author appears to have been insulted, and the<br />
Acci-<br />
If a man is allowed<br />
publisher appears to have been fined. One more<br />
question ought to have been asked, Why did<br />
the author wait for seven years before bringing<br />
his claim P<br />
*- a -º<br />
r- - -<br />
ON, SELLING A BOOK OUTRIGHT.<br />
HIS is a method which has one or two<br />
obvious advantages. It gives the author<br />
what he very likely wants, a sum of money<br />
down; and it relieves him of any anxiety about<br />
the commercial success of his book. On the other<br />
hand, it sometimes makes him part with a very<br />
valuable copyright for a song ; and it tempts him<br />
to spend at once what should be spread over a<br />
term of years, viz., the whole life of his book.<br />
Most of the miseries of authors have been due to<br />
their regarding as income the lump sum obtained<br />
by selling the work of years. When, however,<br />
an author wishes to sell his book outright, or a<br />
publisher wishes to buy it, there are certain<br />
obvious considerations. To capitalise an author's<br />
interest in his book should be Conducted, as in<br />
every piece of business, with due regard to the<br />
probable, or the certain, results of the book. For<br />
instance, to buy a book of an author for a sum of<br />
money not one-tenth of what it will produce, as<br />
the purchasers know, but the author does not<br />
Know, is very commonly done.<br />
The following figures will show some of the<br />
points to be considered : We take our old friend<br />
the 6s. volume. It costs, we will say, Is. a copy<br />
to produce. It is sold to the trade at 3s. 7#d. ;<br />
the author on a 20 per cent. royalty would receive<br />
about 1s. 2%d. a copy; the publisher about 1s. 5d.<br />
If an author sells his book for a certain sum,<br />
what amount of sales would that cover ?<br />
Say he takes £50, that would cover royalties<br />
representing a sale of 825 copies.<br />
Say he takes £100, that would cover royalties<br />
representing a sale of 1650 copies.<br />
Say he takes £400, that would cover royalties<br />
representing a sale of 3400 copies,<br />
and so on. All copies beyond that limit would<br />
belong to the publisher, together with his own<br />
royalty on the preceding copies. -<br />
If, on the other hand, there is a certainty that<br />
the book will sell so many copies as a minimum,<br />
and a probability that it will sell so many more,<br />
the sum to be paid must represent that minimum<br />
first and the probability next ; and, of course, in<br />
such a transaction there is always the element<br />
of chance on both sides, so that one may<br />
give too much—of which we seldom hear—and<br />
the other may get too little, of which we often<br />
hear. -<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 275 (#289) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
275<br />
In making any such calculation or bargain as<br />
the above one must remember that the old-<br />
fashioned half-profit system still lingers as a<br />
rough-and-ready recognised method of apportion-<br />
ing the returns. Without accepting it formally,<br />
one may take it as a basis.<br />
The purchase of a book for a small sum, either<br />
knowing that it is going to prove a certain pro-<br />
perty or in the well-founded hope that it will do<br />
so, is a very important secret in the art of getting<br />
rich by the labour and brains of other people.<br />
Readers of the Author will remember how the<br />
venerable and religious Society for the Promotion<br />
of Christian Knowledge was proved to be in pos-<br />
session of this important secret, and how its<br />
righteous committee used the secret in a manner<br />
truly Christian by purchasing for £12, 320, £25,<br />
books which ran into thousands upon thousands.<br />
Let us take another case—a book sold for<br />
3s. 6d. costing, in quantities, about 8d., a copy.<br />
As a rule it would be less.<br />
The author receives, say, £20, £25, or 330.<br />
The book is sold for 2s., which leaves a profit of<br />
Is. 4d.<br />
Tor the price of<br />
.820 means a royalty of 7d. for a<br />
sale of ................................. 700 copies.<br />
£25 means a royalty of 7d. for a<br />
sale of .............. ................ 850 copies.<br />
330 means a royalty of 7d. for a -<br />
sale of ................................. I IOO copies.<br />
After which the publisher has the whole future<br />
proceeds o' the book for himself.<br />
* ~ *-**<br />
e- * =<br />
BOOK TALK,<br />
Sº authors will doubtless appre-<br />
ciate the following extract from Harriet<br />
Martineau’s “Autobiography:” “I do not<br />
very highly respect reviews, nor like to write<br />
them ; for the simple reason that in ninety-<br />
nine cases out of a hundred the author under-<br />
stands his subject better than the reviewer.<br />
It can hardly be otherwise while the author<br />
treats one subject, to his study of which his<br />
book itself is a strong testimony; whereas the<br />
reviewer is expected to pass from topic to topic to<br />
any extent, pronouncing, out of his brief survey,<br />
on the results of deep and protracted study. Of<br />
all the many reviews of my books on America and<br />
Egypt there was not, as far as I know, one which<br />
did not betray ignorance of the respective coun-<br />
tries. And, on the other hand, there is no book,<br />
except a very few which have appeared on my own<br />
particular subjects, that I could venture to pro-<br />
nounce on ; as, in every other case, I feel myself<br />
compelled to approach a book as a learner, and<br />
not as a judge. This is the same thing as saying<br />
that reviewing, in the wholesale way in which it.<br />
is done in our time, is a radically vicious practise;<br />
and such is indeed my opinion. I am glad to see<br />
scientific men, and men of erudition, and true<br />
connoiseurs in Art, examining what has been done<br />
in their respective departments; and everybody<br />
is glad of good essays, whether they appear in<br />
books called Reviews, or elsewhere. But of the<br />
reviews of our day, properly so-called, the vast<br />
majority must be worthless, because the reviewer<br />
knows less than the author of the matter in<br />
hand.”<br />
The sixth volume of the fifth edition of<br />
“Chitty's Statutes of Practical Utility,” which is<br />
being published in about twelve volumes by<br />
Sweet and Maxwell Limited and Stevens and<br />
Sons Limited, under the editorship of Mr. J. M.<br />
Lely, has just appeared. The arrangement of the<br />
statutes is in alphabetical and chronological<br />
Order, under about 200 titles, such as “Act<br />
of Parliament,” “Adulteration,” “Copyright,”<br />
“Death Duties,” “Intoxicating Liquors,” “Local<br />
Government,” “Poor,” “Water,” and the like.<br />
Each title is prefaced by a separate table of<br />
contents, and so are many of the particular Acts.<br />
The foot-notes give the effect of or reference to<br />
decided cases and statutory rules. The final<br />
volume will contain a chronological table of the<br />
statutes printed in the work, an alphabetical table<br />
of short and popular titles of statutes, and a<br />
“general index,” in the compilation of which Mr.<br />
Ormsby will assist. Assistance in the annotation<br />
has been given by Mr. Craies as to the Metropolitan<br />
Acts, the Local Government Act 1894, and other<br />
subjects; by Mr. Mundahl as to the Extradition<br />
Acts; by Mr. W. A. Peck as to the Conveyancing<br />
Acts, the Settled Lands Acts, and the Trustee<br />
Acts; by Mr. Pulling as to the Merchant Shipping<br />
Act; and Mr. Simey as to the Factors Act and<br />
Highway Acts. The price of the whole work to<br />
subscribers was six guineas, but the price is now<br />
One guinea per volume.<br />
“A Mountain Path" is the title of a book by<br />
Mr. John A. Hamilton (Sampson Low, Marston,<br />
and Co. Price 3s. 6d.). It is a collection of<br />
parables, fables, and talks about natural things<br />
which have already appeared in periodicals. The<br />
author states that the only aim in writing this<br />
book was to foster natural piety in children.<br />
“Walter Inglisfield” is publishing through<br />
Messrs. Sonnenschein a new volume of verse. .<br />
Miss F.F. Monterson has produced (Hutchinson<br />
and Co.) her new work, “Into the Highways and<br />
Hedges.” g<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 276 (#290) ############################################<br />
<br />
276<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
Mrs. Cliffe's translation of Longuardi's poems<br />
ls about to appear in a second edition.<br />
Byrne's story called “A Fragment,” together<br />
with his Parliamentary speeches, is published in<br />
the fifth volume of the Tauchnitz edition of his<br />
complete works.<br />
In recognition of his numerous historical<br />
articles that have appeared in the magazines and<br />
reviews, but perhaps more especially for his<br />
important contribution to fourteenth and fifteenth<br />
century history, the volume entitled “A Forgotten<br />
Great Englishman,” Mr. James Baker, the author,<br />
has just been elected a Fellow of the Royal<br />
Historical Society. He is at present travelling in<br />
Egypt, from whence he is writing a series of<br />
articles on that country.<br />
Miss Margaret Cross has completed a new<br />
novel, which Messrs. Hurst and Blackett will<br />
publish next month. It is called “Newly<br />
Fashioned,” and it will have on its title-page<br />
the suggestive motto,<br />
Such is the power of that sweet passion,<br />
That it all sordid baseness doth expel,<br />
And the refined mind doth newly fashion<br />
Into a fairer form.<br />
Mr. William Tirebuck's new story, “Miss<br />
Grace of All Souls,” will be published by<br />
Beinemann and Co. in the spring. It is dedicated<br />
to the author's brother, the Rev. Thomas<br />
Tirebuck, of Birmingham. The arrangements<br />
were concluded by the Authors' Syndicate.<br />
Mr. Basil Thomson’s “Diversions of a Prime<br />
Minister” (Blackwood and Sons). The Prime<br />
Minister is Mr. Thomson himself, and the realm<br />
which he administered was the island of Tonga.<br />
Messrs. A. and C. Black will publish this month<br />
a novel in one volume called “The Grasshopper.”<br />
It is by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick, who under the<br />
name of Mrs. Andrew Dean has contributed<br />
several stories to the Pseudonym Library.<br />
“His Egyptian Wife,” a novel by Hilton Hill,<br />
will be issued in March by Digby, Long and Co.<br />
The book will be published simultaneously in New<br />
York and London.<br />
“Conscience makes the Martyr,” by S. M.<br />
Crawley Boevey is published by Mr. Arrowsmith,<br />
and has been kindly criticised by the Literary<br />
Płorld, The Academy, and other papers.<br />
The Authors' Syndicate has arranged for the<br />
publication of Mr. John Lloyd Warden Page's<br />
new book, “The Coasts of Devon and Lundy<br />
Island,” through Mr. Horace Cox. The volume<br />
will be profusely illustrated.<br />
M. Dim. Vikelas, the eminent novelist, is the<br />
president of the International Committee of the<br />
Olympic games to be held at Athens from<br />
April 5th to 15th, 1896. The official programme<br />
of the games is now in type.<br />
Mr. Gladstone, the inexhaustible, is ready with<br />
another volume—his edition of the Psalter, to be<br />
published in Europe and America immediately.<br />
IIe contributes a concordance and a condensed<br />
commentary.<br />
Mr. Balfour's book on “ The Foundations of<br />
Belief.” has undoubtedly been the book of the<br />
past month. As usual, someone has turned up<br />
to accuse the writer of having stolen his ideas.<br />
This time it is Dr. Beattie Crozier, who publishes<br />
his plaint in the Chronicle.<br />
Sir Benjamin Richardson has confided to a con-<br />
temporary not only that he possesses a number of<br />
sketches and jottings made by Cruikshank for his<br />
own biography, but that he also hopes some day<br />
to write this hitherto neglected book, and embody<br />
his valuable material.<br />
It is hard reading for authors whose manu-<br />
scripts are returned to read that there are quite<br />
a number in the habit of declining publisher's<br />
invitations. A contemporary says that Mrs. J.<br />
R. Green, for instance, is unable to do any literary<br />
work for at least four years; while Dr. Jessop is<br />
said to have mortgaged the next six years. Mr.<br />
Stanley Weyman, we believe, has gone for a<br />
year's holiday, during which he refuses to work;<br />
while Mr. S. R. Crockett has contracts signed,<br />
sealed, and delivered for all the work that he can<br />
possibly produce during the present century.<br />
The Westminster Gazette wishes to know what<br />
has become of the Life of Adam Smith, by Mr.<br />
Leonard Courtney, and that of Bishop Berkeley,<br />
by professor Huxley. To these might be added<br />
a number of bookly promises not performed. For<br />
instance, first and foremost, where is Mr. John<br />
Morley's Life of John Stuart Mill? Second,<br />
where is the long expected and greatly desired<br />
Life of John Delane of the Times 2 Third,<br />
where is Lord Rowton’s Life of the Earl of<br />
Beaconsfield P<br />
Professor Rhys Davids, upon whose pension<br />
from the Civil List such a bitter attack was<br />
made in Parliament, has been delivering a course<br />
of lectures called “The Literature and Religion<br />
of India,” at Harvard and John Hopkins Univer-<br />
sities, in the United States, and Messrs. Putnam<br />
will shortly publish them simultaneously on both<br />
sides of the Atlantic under the above title.<br />
Messrs. Osgood will begin the publication of<br />
the collected works of Mr. Thomas Hardy in a<br />
few weeks with “Tess.” The volumes will be<br />
monthly, and the second will be “Far from the<br />
Madding Crowd.”<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 277 (#291) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
277<br />
The following interesting series of impromptu<br />
dedications written by Stevenson in a set of his<br />
works given to his American physician, Dr.<br />
Trudeau have appeared in the New York Book-<br />
Öuyer.<br />
“A CHILD’s GARDEN OF VERSEs.”<br />
——To win your lady (if, alas ! it may be)<br />
Let's couple this one with the name of<br />
Baby |<br />
“TREASURE ISLAND.”<br />
I could not choose a patron for each one :<br />
But this perhaps is chiefly for your son.<br />
“KIDNAPPED.”<br />
——Here is the one sound page of all my writing,<br />
The one I’m proud of, and that I delight in.<br />
“DR. JEKYLL AND MR. HYDE.”<br />
Trudeau was all the winter at my side :<br />
I never spied the nose of Mr. Hyde.<br />
“ UNDERWOODs.”<br />
Some day or other ('tis a general curse)<br />
The wisest author stumbles into verse.<br />
“THE DYNAMITER.”<br />
As both my wife and I composed the thing,<br />
Let's place it under Mrs. Trudeau's wing.<br />
“MEMORIES AND PORTRAITs.”<br />
Greeting to all your household, small and big,<br />
In this one instance, not forgetting—Nig<br />
“THE MERRY MEN.”<br />
If just to read the tale you should be able,<br />
I would not bother to make out the fable.<br />
“TRAVELs witH A DONKEY.”<br />
It blew, it rained, it thawed, it snowed, it thundered—<br />
Which was the Donkey P I have often wondered<br />
“PRINCE OTTO.”<br />
This is my only love tale, this Prince Otto,<br />
Which some folks like to read, and others not to.<br />
“MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN.”<br />
The preface mighty happy to get back<br />
To its inclement birthplace, Saranac<br />
“FAMILIAR STUDIES OF MEN AND Books.”<br />
My other works are of a slighter kind;<br />
Here is the party to improve your MIND !<br />
VIRGINIBUs PUERISQUE.”<br />
I have no art to please a lady’s mind.<br />
Here's the least acid spot,<br />
Miss Trudeau, of the lot.<br />
If you’d just try this volume, 'twould be kind<br />
Mr. Le Gallienne's name is prominent among<br />
the announcements of new books. His “Book-<br />
Bills of Narcissus,” the first and, perhaps, the<br />
most charming book he has written, has just been<br />
published in an enlarged edition, and a new edition<br />
of his “English Poems” is to be issued imme-<br />
diately. Besides these a new volume of verses<br />
called “Robert Louis Stevenson : an Elegy; and<br />
Other Poems, Mainly Personal,” and a collection<br />
of odds and ends of literary criticism entitled<br />
“Retrospective Reviews: a Literary Log,” are<br />
announced. Mr. Lane is, of course, the pub-<br />
lisher.<br />
The next volume in Arrowsmith's Bristol<br />
Library will be “The Adventures of Arthur<br />
Roberts: by Railroad and River,” told by him-<br />
self and chronicled by Mr. Richard Morton. It<br />
is to be an anecdotal biography of the famous<br />
burlesque actor.<br />
The forthcoming season promises to be specially<br />
rich in biographies. For instance, Mr. John Rae’s<br />
“Life of Adam Smith;” a “Biography of Sir<br />
John Drummond Hay, for forty years our Repre-<br />
sentative in Morocco,” by his daughters; a “Life<br />
of George Borrow,” by Professor Knapp, of<br />
Chicago; a “Biography of Dr. Holmes,” by Mr.<br />
John T. Morse, jun. ; “Reminiscences of Richard<br />
Cobden,” by Mrs. Schwabe, with a preface by<br />
Lord Farrer; the “Life of Sir Samuel Baker;”<br />
and Mr. Leslie Stephen's Memoirs of his brother,<br />
Sir James Fitzjames Stephen. -<br />
Mudie's Library is said to have refused Mr.<br />
Arthur Machen’s book, “The Great God<br />
Pan.” -<br />
Mr. Fisher Unwin, who publishes already half-<br />
a-dozen “libraries '' or series of books, announces<br />
yet another, with the comparatively commonplace<br />
title of “The Half-Crown Series.” Mr. Robert<br />
Buchanan’s “Diana's Hunting ” will be the first,<br />
and Mrs. Rita L. Humphreys—who is best known<br />
by her Christian name—the second, called “A<br />
Gender in Satin.” -<br />
It seems strange that Mr. Stanley should have<br />
waited so long before giving the world an account<br />
of “My Early Travels and Adventures.” Much<br />
of this book has never been reprinted from the<br />
newspapers to which it was originally contributed,<br />
and part of it is entirely new. It will be con-<br />
cerned with Indian warfare in America and the<br />
tragic end of General Custer, who was out-<br />
manoeuvred and killed by Sitting Bull; the early<br />
history of the Suez Canal; and the exploration of<br />
Palestine, Persia, the Caucasus, and Armenia.<br />
Messrs. Sampson Low and Co. will issue the book<br />
about Easter.<br />
Messrs. Cassell and Co. have hit upon an idea<br />
for an important series of books, to be entitled the<br />
“Century Science ’’ series, of which Sir Henry<br />
Roscoe is the editor. The first, to be published<br />
immediately, will be by the editor himself, and<br />
called “John Dalton and the Rise of Modern<br />
Chemistry.” It will be followed by “The Rise<br />
of English Geography,” by Mr. Clements R.<br />
Markham, the distinguished President of the<br />
Royal Geographical Society.<br />
Two new reprints of standard authors are just<br />
making their appearance. The first is Messrs.<br />
J. M. Dent's complete edition of Defoe, in sixteen<br />
volumes, with editorial notes and illustrations,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 278 (#292) ############################################<br />
<br />
278<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
produced in the delightful style to which this<br />
firm has accustomed us. The series costs 28. 6d.<br />
a volume, net, and will be completed by October.<br />
The second reprint is the new edition of George<br />
Eliot’s works, which Messrs. Blackwood will issue.<br />
It is to be known as the “Standard” edition, and<br />
to consist of twenty-one volumes, also at 2s. 6d.<br />
“Adam Bede’’ is to appear at once in two<br />
volumes, and “The Mill on the Floss '' will<br />
follow.<br />
The star of Ouida does not shine so brightly as<br />
it once did. Perhaps her forthcoming book,<br />
which Messrs. Methuen announce, will win her<br />
back something of the public approval which<br />
seems rather unjustly to have left her. The titles<br />
of some of its articles—such as “The Failure of<br />
Christianity,” “The Sims of Society,” “Some<br />
Fallacies of Science,” “The State as an Immoral<br />
Factor,” and “The Penalties of a Well-known<br />
Name "—promise, however, more polemics than<br />
entertainment. *<br />
Mr. Henry Arthur Jones has been a devoted<br />
contributor to the magazines, and lecturer before<br />
playgoing societies, on theatrical topics. No<br />
doubt his forthcoming book, “The Renascence of<br />
the English Drama,” to be published immediately<br />
by Messrs. Macmillan and Co., is a reprint<br />
of these. Mr. Jones's plays are of varying<br />
interest, but his opinions, whether expressed on<br />
the stage, the page, or the platform, are always<br />
original and interesting — as Matthew Arnold<br />
found when he was captivated by “Saints and<br />
Sinners.”<br />
Three new monthly magazines have to be<br />
chronicled as the month's contribution to the<br />
flowing tide of periodical literature. First,<br />
London Home, an obvious competitor to the<br />
Strand Magazine, at half the price, edited by<br />
Mr. Ralph Caine, and published by Horace Cox.<br />
Second, On Watch, edited by Mr. Herbert<br />
Russell, the son of Mr. Clark Russell, and pub-<br />
lished by Sampson Low at 6d., is to be entirely<br />
given up to naval subjects and news. Third,<br />
Messrs. Chapman and Hall are about to join the<br />
ranks of publishers who have magazines of their<br />
own, and announce, for publication in May,<br />
Chapman's Magazine, a 6d. monthly, to be<br />
edited by Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, the chairman of<br />
Chapman and Hall Limited. Besides these, the<br />
indefatigable Mr. Shorter has issued during the<br />
past month the Album, a 6d. weekly collection of<br />
photographs; and he is about to launch still<br />
another illustrated weekly, devoted entirely to<br />
sport.<br />
. A new series called “The Northern Library” is<br />
announced by Mr. Nutt. Among the early<br />
volumes to appear will be “The Saga of King<br />
Olaf Tryggwason,” translated by the Rev. John<br />
Sephton ; “The Ambales Saga,” edited and<br />
translated by Mr. Israel Gollancz; and “The<br />
Faereyinga Saga,” translated by Mr. F. York<br />
Powell, Regius Professor of Modern History at<br />
Oxford.<br />
Two books by Colonel Reginald Hart, Director<br />
of Military Education in India, entitled “Reflec-<br />
tions on the Art of War,” and “Sanitation and<br />
Health,” have just been published by Messrs.<br />
W. Clowes and Sons Limited. They have both<br />
been very well reviewed.<br />
Messrs. Dent and Co. will shortly issue a<br />
revised and illustrated edition of Mrs. Alford<br />
Baldwin’s “Story of a Marriage.”<br />
“A Year of Sport and Natural History,” edited<br />
by Mr. Oswald Crawfurd, C.M.G., has just been<br />
published by Messrs. Chapman and Hall. It is<br />
composed of a series of natural history articles<br />
that were issued in Black and White. The work<br />
is beautifully illustrated, and is in every way<br />
first class.<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—“EDITIONs.”<br />
HE announcement in the last number of the<br />
Author that Pierre Loti’s new book bears on<br />
the title page the legend of its being the<br />
“twenty-eighth edition,” though, in fact, the work<br />
is not yet issued to the public, raises the old ques-<br />
tion of what is an “edition;” whether it is worth<br />
the publisher's while to continue such literary<br />
fictions as “second edition, “third edition ”—or<br />
even “twenty-eighth edition ?” An “edition ”<br />
may mean any number of copies from 50 to<br />
50,000. At one time it meant that the volume<br />
had been reprinted a specified number of times,<br />
and was therefore some guarantee that the book<br />
was not only in good demand, but had received<br />
the author's latest corrections; in fact, what is<br />
now termed a “new edition.” In a day of<br />
universal printing from stereos, this is no longer<br />
the case, even with technical treatises. In short,<br />
this numbering of “ edition,” is little better than<br />
a transparent fraud on the less sophisticated part<br />
of the publishers “public.” By a sort of vague<br />
understanding, never reduced to any protocol,<br />
and therefore never acted upon, an “edition ”<br />
was supposed to be IOOO copies, though why sales<br />
need have been counted in this rather cumbersome<br />
fashion it is rather difficult to understand. If it<br />
is allowable to estimate the merits of a book by its<br />
sale, would it not be more in accordance with reason,<br />
not to say common honesty, to intimate that the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 279 (#293) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
279<br />
booksellers have taken 500, 800, 15OO, to 5000, or<br />
whatever may be the numerical expression of their<br />
confidence in the selling value of the author's<br />
name P But even then this does not quite meet<br />
the merits ºf the case. There are, as poor authors<br />
sometimes learn on settling up accounts with the<br />
modern Sosii, such things as “ sale or return,”<br />
which enable them to discount the inflated an-<br />
nouncements about the number of copies ordered<br />
“by the trade,” or which have been subscribed<br />
for in the after-enthusiasm of Mr. So and So's<br />
annual dinner. Pierre Loti’s twenty-eighth-<br />
edition-in-anticipation is no doubt perfectly<br />
justified by experience. But what is to be said of<br />
the minor novelist who prints at least three<br />
“editions” at the same time, though actually the<br />
total number of copies may be counted by<br />
hundreds P. On the other hand, it would not be<br />
difficult to point to popular books which sell by<br />
the thousand, without the publishers thinking it<br />
necessary to stimulate the flagging zeal of the<br />
public by announcements which, at best, are<br />
meaningless, and at worst might be characterised<br />
by a word not to be whispered where the dealings<br />
•of such honourable men as the purveyors of<br />
literature are concerned. R. B.<br />
II.-A DEFENCE OF RUSTIC READING.<br />
I think your contributor who speaks of village<br />
reading is dealing with what was the case thirty<br />
or forty years ago, rather than at the present<br />
time. I have had the means of knowing a good<br />
deal of what is the course of literature in an<br />
average south country parish, in great part<br />
agricultural, but not far from a large railway<br />
station.<br />
A man who acts as agent for a local weekly<br />
'paper, and is also clerk to the parish council, and<br />
secretary to the village club and reading room,<br />
tells me that there are not above a dozen houses<br />
where a newspaper of some sort is not taken in,<br />
either Lloyd's or a local one ; and I have certainly<br />
found even the elder children at the schools<br />
aware of public events.<br />
There is a centre in the county which lends out<br />
books to village reading rooms, and for the last<br />
six or eight years this has kept up a constant<br />
exchange of biography, travels, good novels, and<br />
tales of adventure. Marryatt, Kingston, Mayne<br />
Reid, Harrison Ainsworth are favourites with the<br />
younger men and lads, and they read eagerly any<br />
tale of seafaring life. -<br />
There are besides, two lending libraries, chiefly<br />
for the women and children, but that the men<br />
also read the books is shown by the inquiries for<br />
print large enough for father. I know from the<br />
reports of a society for which I am the literary<br />
associate, that most parishes have likewise<br />
good libraries, generally well resorted to. The<br />
women also are apt to obtain books of the<br />
penny dreadful order, of course on their own<br />
account.<br />
“Fox's Book of Martyrs’’ is often to be met<br />
with, generally an inheritance ; and the two books<br />
that all have heard of and wish to read are the<br />
“Pilgrim’s Progress" and “Robinson Crusoe,”<br />
but I cannot think that the writer of “Rustic<br />
Reading ” can really know John Bunyan's great<br />
classic if he thinks it likely to terrify children into<br />
the way of virtue. It generally contains only one<br />
illustration at all alarming, e<br />
I doubt, too, whether he can be familiar with<br />
parish magazines. The two most popular ones,<br />
The Banner of Faith and the Church Monthly,<br />
certainly contain tales and papers that do not<br />
deserve the term mawkish. Perhaps I may also<br />
observe that the nickname Hodge is one that<br />
greatly displeases both the peasant and all that<br />
are interested in him. C. M. Y.<br />
III.-LITERATURE IN RUSSIA.<br />
The new young Tsar, Nicholas II., apparently<br />
holds men of letters in high esteem, and is capable<br />
of estimating the true worth of their efforts for<br />
the dissemination of knowledge among the classes<br />
through the medium of the press and other<br />
channels, he having granted a sum of £50,000<br />
(500,000 roubles) to be paid out of the exchequer<br />
for the formation of a special fund to relieve<br />
journalists, authors, and others engaged in<br />
literature, in distress, and to permanently pro-<br />
vide for their widows and orphans at death. A<br />
grand and general burst of joy and jubilation<br />
went forth from the united Russian Press at the<br />
reception of the glad news, as every indigent<br />
pressman is now sure that, when the breadwinner<br />
is removed, his wife and family will not be left to<br />
starve. The Russian Emperor has truly set a<br />
noble example, which might with advantage be<br />
emulated by our Government.<br />
Count Leo Tolstoi has completed a new work<br />
entitled “Master and Servant.” It will make its<br />
appearance in the columns of the Northern<br />
Gazette in the course of a month or so. A few<br />
details of the everyday life of this veteran writer<br />
may be of interest to the readers of the Author.<br />
When I visited him at Yasuaja Poliana, on his<br />
own estate, I was very hospitably entertained by<br />
him and his family, and shall never forget the<br />
kindness shown me. Count Tolstoi is a staunch<br />
teetotaler, a strict vegetarian, and a non-smoker.<br />
He invariably rises at 8 a.m., and, after partaking<br />
of a cup of coffee, adjourns to his study, a sparely<br />
furnished room, which he tidies up and dusts<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 280 (#294) ############################################<br />
<br />
28O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
himself, as no abigail is allowed to enter its<br />
sacred precincts, where he writes until ten. He<br />
then takes his constitutional, returning for lunch<br />
about twelve. The bill of fare during my stay<br />
was boiled millet, cabbage sprouts, cauliflower,<br />
and stewed apples and plums. Lunch ended,<br />
he enjoys a snooze. An hour later he is hard at<br />
work again in his sanctum. At six he dines of<br />
much the same fare as at lunch. His family are<br />
not all vegetarians and teetotalers; in fact, the<br />
countess, his wife, strongly disapproves of his<br />
ascetic habits, and takes no trouble to conceal her<br />
dislike of them. The count sometimes mows<br />
the grass, but he has given up tilling the ground,<br />
as his medical advisers have forbidden over<br />
exertion as dangerous in the weak state and poor<br />
action of his heart. Coffee has also been pro-<br />
scribed, and he is gradually weaning himself<br />
from its use. The count is still hale and hearty,<br />
and when he can take “Shank’s pony” to<br />
Moscow and back without feeling any evil<br />
effects from his pedestrian feat, one is inclined<br />
to prophesy a good lease of life yet for the<br />
great novelist. He has crossed the span of life<br />
alloted to man by the Psalmist, and now stands<br />
on the threshold of the outside limit, which can<br />
only be attained by reason of strength.<br />
Odessa, 27 Feb. 8. W. ADDIson.<br />
IV.-A World of ENCOURAGEMENT.<br />
then resigned their membership. An instance is<br />
also cited in the Author for the current month of<br />
a writer, who, under such circumstances, became<br />
a member, his obligation to the Society being<br />
£15 at the time of his resignation against a set-<br />
off of one guinea entrance fee. I, for one, most<br />
strongly protest against such an abuse being<br />
permissible a second time, and consider that in<br />
justice to the Society we should protect our-<br />
selves against such vampires, who would only<br />
cripple its interests and usefulness. Cannot a<br />
resolution be passed rendering any member<br />
abusing an advantage of the Society ineligible<br />
for re-election ? ANNIE BRADSHAw.<br />
Feb. 16.<br />
W.—How LONG TO WAIT P<br />
I think “S. B.'s.” suggestions in your last issue<br />
are well worthy the attention of the Society of<br />
Authors, especially that of a limit of time as to<br />
payment after publication.<br />
The great uncertainty as to the date of pay-<br />
ment is the cause of much difficulty and distress<br />
amongst women writers especially, who do not<br />
like to press for payment, and yet often need the<br />
money sadly.<br />
I write for several periodicals, the publisher of<br />
one of which sends a cheque regularly at the end<br />
of the following month after publication; another,<br />
once in three months; one, only once in the year,<br />
i.e., in January.<br />
I do not object to any of these arrangements,<br />
for, although I consider the first-named the best,<br />
I know when to expect the money due, and can<br />
arrange accordingly. But in the case of other<br />
periodicals, which profess to settle accounts every<br />
three months, the money is usually, after the first<br />
quarter of the year, withheld until the following<br />
January (this year until Feb. 1), and therefore<br />
the sum due to me in June, 1893, does not reach<br />
my hands for seven months, while that due in<br />
September is four months late in payment. In<br />
my own case this does not press so hardly as it<br />
might in many others, as I happen to have an<br />
income independent of my writings; but I<br />
tremble to think to what depths of despair my<br />
poorer sisters must be reduced by this long drawn-<br />
out “hope deferred.”<br />
Moreover, it is a species of dishonesty, for the<br />
money thus withheld for seven months should<br />
bear interest, and this is a clear gain to the<br />
publisher, and a similar loss to the writer.<br />
I notice in the report of the Committee of<br />
Management for the year ending in January, a<br />
statement to the effect that writers have joined<br />
the Society when in difficulty, and upon being<br />
released from their difficulty, at possibly both<br />
trouble and expense to the Society, they have<br />
Surely this might be remedied by a “certain set of<br />
rules” being drawn up (as suggested by “S. B.”),<br />
by which all the , members of the Society of<br />
Authors should abide, forwarding with the MS.<br />
a printed copy of these rules, and thus avoiding<br />
the unpleasant necessity of either “dunning” the<br />
editor (with the probable result of dismissal, or<br />
rejection of future MSS.) or living on expecta-<br />
tions, instead of cash down, for an unlimited<br />
number of months. R. L. I.<br />
VI.-AUTHORS AND PUBLISHERs.<br />
I have read with interest the letter from the<br />
Secretary of the Incorporated Society of Authors<br />
in the issue of the Athenaeum of 23rd Feb. It is<br />
evident from the statement of facts that it would<br />
have been impossible for the Society to support<br />
such a case. I have no doubt its decision will<br />
strengthen the Society’s hands. The judicial<br />
manner in which you have acted throughout will,<br />
I am sure, very much strengthen the feeling of<br />
confidence which members of the Society have in<br />
your judgment and discretion. I think that you<br />
have been largely instrumental in preventing the<br />
Society from drifting into aimless and inutile<br />
litigation. A WELL-WISHER. | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/274/1895-03-01-The-Author-5-10.pdf | publications, The Author |
275 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/275 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 11 (April 1895) | <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.+05+Issue+11+%28April+1895%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 11 (April 1895)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1895-04-01-The-Author-5-11 | | | | | 281–304 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1895-04-01">1895-04-01</a> | | | | | | | 11 | | | 18950401 | C be El u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
Monthly.)<br />
CONDUCTED BY WALTER BESANT.<br />
VoI. V.-No. 11.]<br />
APRIL 1, 1895.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
For the Opinions earpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as earpressing the<br />
collective opinions of the committee unless<br />
they are officially signed by G. Herbert<br />
Thring, Sec.<br />
-<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
important communications within two days will write to him<br />
without delay. All remittances should be crossed Union<br />
Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered<br />
letter only.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on<br />
all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub-<br />
jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
*-<br />
WARNINGS AND ADWICE,<br />
agent.<br />
4. AscERTAIN WEAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVEs To<br />
BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself.<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTs.-Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom you appoint as your<br />
Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone,<br />
6. CoST OF PRODUCTION.——Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures.<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.–Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society.<br />
8. FUTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice.<br />
Io. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a M.S. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work.<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration.<br />
12. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
13. ADVERTISEMENTs. -- Keep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<br />
I4. 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 />
Society’s Offices :—<br />
4, PoETUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
-- - *-- - --"<br />
- - -<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY.<br />
I. RAWING THE AGREEMENT.-It is not generally<br />
understood that the author, as the vendor, has the<br />
absolute right of drafting the agreement upon<br />
whatever terms the transaction is to be carried out.<br />
Authors are strongly advised to exercise that right. In<br />
every form of business, this among others, the right of<br />
drawing the agreement rests with him who sells, leases, or<br />
has the control of the property.<br />
2. SERIAL RIGHTS.—In selling Serial Rights remember<br />
that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that<br />
is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you<br />
object to this, insert a clause to that effect.<br />
3. STAMP You R AGREEMENTS. – Readers are most<br />
URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements<br />
immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected<br />
for two weeks, a fine of £IO must be paid before the agree-<br />
ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every<br />
case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter<br />
which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at mo ea'pense to themselves<br />
eacept the cost of the stamp.<br />
WOL. V.<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub.<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
C C 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 282 (#296) ############################################<br />
<br />
282<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society’s solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel's opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Awthor notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
9. The committee have now arranged for the reception of<br />
members’ agreements and their preservation in a fireproof<br />
safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as con-<br />
fidential documents to be read only by the Secretary, who<br />
will keep the key of the safe. The Society now offers:—(1)<br />
To read and advise upon agreements and publishers. (2) To<br />
stamp agreements in readiness for a possible action upon<br />
them. (3) To keep agreements. (4) To enforce payments<br />
due according to agreements.<br />
*-- ~ *-*<br />
•- ~~~<br />
THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE,<br />
EMBERS are informed :<br />
I. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. That it<br />
submits MSS. to publishers and editors, concludes agree-<br />
ments, examines, passes, and collects accounts, and, gene-<br />
rally, relieves members of the trouble of managing business<br />
details. w<br />
2. That the terms upon which its services can be secured<br />
will be forwarded upon detailed application.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works only for those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiations<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed ea clusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least two days'<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. That every attempt is made to deal with all communi-<br />
cations promptly. That stamps should, in all cases, be sent<br />
to defray postage.<br />
7. That the Authors' Syndicate does not invite MSS.<br />
without previous correspondence ; does not hold itself<br />
responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice; and that<br />
in all cases MSS. must be accompanied by stamps to defray<br />
postage.<br />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department * for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted '' is open. Members are invited to<br />
communicate their requirements to the Manager.<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 />
NOTICES,<br />
HE Editor of the Awthor 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 />
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 Awthor 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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P. 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 />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
<br />
<br />
## p. 283 (#297) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
283<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<br />
at £9 4s. The figures in our book are as near the exact<br />
truth as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder’s,<br />
bill is so elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be<br />
arrived at. -<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 call it.<br />
*-*. --><br />
THE COMMITTEE,<br />
R. HENRY NORMAN, the author of<br />
“Real Japan,” “The Peoples and Politics<br />
of the Far East” (just published by Mr.<br />
Fisher Unwin), and other books, and the literary<br />
editor of the Daily Chronicle, has been appointed<br />
to the committee and council of the Society. By<br />
Mr. Norman's election the last vacancy on the<br />
committee for the current year is filled.<br />
*-- - -—º<br />
r- - -,<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY,<br />
I.—CANADIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
H.E Dominion Government have ceased the<br />
collection through the Customs of the<br />
12% per cent. royalty on reprints of British<br />
copyright works brought into Canada, which has<br />
been collected hitherto for the benefit of the<br />
authors. The Tariff Act passed last season<br />
provided for the discontinuance of the collection<br />
of the royalty from March 27 of this year, in<br />
order to emphasise Canada's claim to exclusive<br />
jurisdiction in the Dominion regarding copy-<br />
right.—Standard, April 2.<br />
To the Editor of the Times.<br />
SIR,--Your issue of Feb. 26, containing the<br />
letter of Mr. W. M. Conway on Canadian copy-<br />
right, has just been received here, and I must<br />
ask the favour of a reply thereto.<br />
Mr. Conway overlooks several important points<br />
which entirely destroys the force of his arguments.<br />
First, the geographical position of Canada, side<br />
by side as it is with the United States.<br />
Second, that, should the English author fail to<br />
publish in the United States before or simul-<br />
taneously with publication elsewhere, he loses<br />
copyright there, and any United States publisher<br />
can reprint the book without payment of any<br />
royalty whatever, and send the book into Canada<br />
unless it is copyrighted here. Under the Canadian<br />
Act, on the other hand, the author has thirty<br />
days after publication elsewhere in which to<br />
publish in Canada, and thereby secure exclusive<br />
copyright.<br />
Third, to secure copyright in the United States<br />
the author must actually have the type set up<br />
within the United States, The Canadian law, on<br />
the other hand, specially permits the importation<br />
of plates into Canada free of duty.<br />
If the English author refuses or neglects to<br />
secure copyright in the United States, he loses<br />
all rights there. But not so in Canada, for the<br />
Canadian Act provides that any publisher here<br />
wishing to reprint any such book must first give<br />
security for the payment of a royalty of Io per<br />
cent, for the benefit of the author.<br />
It will be seen, then, that the Canadian Act<br />
grants valuable concessions to the English author<br />
which concessions are denied him in the United<br />
States.<br />
Mr. Conway repeats the statement that if the<br />
Canadian Bill becomes law Canadian reprints will<br />
inevitably flood the United States market. I<br />
think I can show Mr. Conway, and those who<br />
think as he does, that this statement has no<br />
foundation in fact. Section 4956 of the United<br />
States Copyright Act reads:—“During the<br />
existence of such copyright (in the United States)<br />
the importation into the United States of any book,<br />
chromo, or photograph, so copyrighted, or any<br />
edition or editions thereof shall be and<br />
it is hereby prohibited.” Section 4965 of the<br />
same Act provides the penalty for the infringe-<br />
ment of the foregoing provision. The United<br />
States copyright owners are therefore fully<br />
protected, and in the face of these provisions<br />
of the United States Act it will be worse<br />
than folly to continue to assert that Canadian<br />
reprints would or could flood the United States<br />
market.<br />
Mr. Walter Besant's new book, “Beyond the<br />
Dreams of Avarice,” furnishes an apt illustration<br />
in point. Mr. Besant’s book is issued in London<br />
at 6s. It is copyrighted in the United States, and<br />
is issued there at I dol. 50 cents. The British<br />
copyright owners have, however, issued a special<br />
cheap edition for the Canadian market, and Mr.<br />
Besant may rest assured that this special Canadian<br />
edition (which was printed in London and is now<br />
selling in Canada for 75 cents a copy) will not<br />
flood the United States market, for the very excel-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 284 (#298) ############################################<br />
<br />
284<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
lent reason that the United States copyright<br />
owner is fully protected, as the United States<br />
copyright law prohibits the importation and sale<br />
of unauthorised editions in the United States. So<br />
with “The Ralstons,” Mr. Marion. Crawford’s<br />
recent novel, which is published in London at<br />
12s. It is copyrighted in the United States, and<br />
sells there for 2 dols.<br />
owner has printed in London a special cheap<br />
edition, which is sold in Canada, for 75 cents a<br />
copy; yet the United States market is not being<br />
flooded with this cheap edition, although it is<br />
published at less than one-half the price of the<br />
United States edition, as the United States law<br />
prevents any such action. Did space permit,<br />
scores of similar cases could be given, and it can<br />
readily be seen that the fear that Canadian edi-<br />
tions will flood the United States market is<br />
utterly unfounded.<br />
In conclusion, I suggest that our English<br />
friends be perfectly fair in statements they make<br />
through the Press. Thus, when Mr. Conway<br />
says, as he does in his letter, that “Canadian<br />
reprints will flood, as they are intended to flood,<br />
the United States market,” and calls for signa-<br />
tures to a petition asking for disallowance of the<br />
Canadian Act on this account as one of the chief<br />
grievances, it is an open question whether every<br />
signature so secured has not been secured under<br />
false pretences, as Canadian reprints cannot<br />
flood, nor, above all, was it ever intended that<br />
they should flood, the United States market.<br />
Canadians resent and protest at such a misleading<br />
statement, as it places their case in a false light<br />
before the British public.<br />
RICHARD T. LANCEFIELD, Hon. Secretary<br />
Canadian Copyright Association.<br />
Public Library, Hamilton, March 9.<br />
Times, March 22, 1895.<br />
To the Editor of the Times.<br />
... SIR,--The letter of Mr. R. T. Lancefield, hon.<br />
secretary of the Canadian Copyright Association,<br />
does not call for a lengthy reply. He contends<br />
that I overlook “ the geographical position of<br />
Canada, side by side as it is with the United<br />
States.” The fact is that the situation of Canada.<br />
is the chief cause of our anxiety. If Canada were<br />
a country isolated in the midst of others not<br />
English speaking, we should regret her action,<br />
but it would not be powerfully injurious, for the<br />
Canadian market for books is small, and the loss of<br />
it, though regrettable, would be no great matter.<br />
But if Canada obtains the right to issue cheap<br />
unauthorised reprints of the works of English<br />
writers, these reprints will be imported into the<br />
United States, all laws and customs houses not-<br />
The British copyright .<br />
withstanding, for Canada's long land frontier<br />
cannot be blocked. Tauchnitz reprints find their<br />
way through English customs houses in great<br />
numbers; how much more must Canadian reprints<br />
invade the United States if ever the threatened<br />
system were inaugurated.<br />
Mr. Lancefield’s further contention that the<br />
Canadian proposals would put an English author<br />
in a better position in Canada than he is now<br />
placed in the United States is specious; but the<br />
fact is not material, for the magnitude of the<br />
United States market is a compensation which<br />
Canada cannot offer. The question is one of cost.<br />
It pays to undergo considerable expense to secure<br />
the United States market ; it would not pay to<br />
undergo a much smaller expense to secure the<br />
Canadian market. Few books will ever be taken<br />
for Canada under the conditions of the new Act.<br />
The rest will be robbed of anything worth the<br />
name of copyright.<br />
From an author's point of view the situation<br />
threatens to become intolerable. Having written<br />
his book and secured an English publisher, he<br />
already has to hunt up an American publisher<br />
also. This takes time. It is proposed that he<br />
shall further have to find a Canadian publisher.<br />
If all the other parts of the British Empire follow<br />
suit, obviously an author's work in arranging<br />
with publishers all over the earth and seeing his<br />
book through the press in a dozen simultaneous<br />
editions will be much greater than his work in<br />
writing it.<br />
The only just and sound arrangement is for<br />
universal copyright to follow single publication<br />
anywhere, and this greatly desired consummation<br />
seemed till recently to be coming within the<br />
bounds of possibility. Canada’s proposed retro-<br />
grade and particularist action threatens to post-<br />
pone it indefinitely. Even Mr. Lancefield does<br />
not pretend that the Canadian Act is fashioned<br />
in the interests of literature, still less in the<br />
interests of the authors who make literature, or<br />
of the readers that profit by it. The injury is to<br />
be wrought solely for the sake of a small body of<br />
printers whose profits will be infinitesimal com-<br />
pared with the far-reaching damage they will<br />
effect.—I am, Sir, your obedient servant,<br />
W. M. ConwAY, Chairman of Committee of<br />
the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
4, Portugal-street, Lincoln’s-inn-fields.<br />
Times, March 24, 1895.<br />
One or two points may be added to those in<br />
Mr. Conway's letter.<br />
I. As to the Canadian proposal to retire from<br />
the position of civilised states in order to practise<br />
piracy openly, he says nothing.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 285 (#299) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
285<br />
2. As to the flooding of the United States with<br />
cheap reprints, he quotes the Act, but neglects to<br />
point out how with the enormous undefended<br />
frontier it is to be enforced. He then mentions<br />
one or two books lately republished in Canada<br />
which have not been largely exported to the States.<br />
Why P Simply because they are published at<br />
75 cents, or 3s. a copy. There is not likely to be<br />
any successful piracy at that price.<br />
3. He is still bold enough to parade the old<br />
pretence of a royalty. First, it is to be a<br />
Io per cent. royalty—a miserable, iniquitous, and<br />
sweating royalty, long since exploded in this<br />
country and the States. But, even if it were a<br />
fair royalty, what security is there for its collec-<br />
tion ? None. The Canadian “royalty” has been<br />
with us for many years. Once Charles Reade got<br />
eighteenpence by it. Mr. W. H. Lecky, the other<br />
day, said that he had once obtained over a pound<br />
by it. I have never received a farthing from it.<br />
In the face of the absence of any machinery<br />
for enforcing the payment of the royalty, and for<br />
auditing the accounts; and in face of the miserable<br />
nature of the royalty offered; to talk of “con-<br />
cessions” to the British author demands, indeed,<br />
a brazen front. EDITOR.<br />
Also from the Times of the same date :-<br />
Mr. Lancefield’s argument appears to be that<br />
because the United States, a foreign power,<br />
chooses to impose conditions as to remanufacture<br />
of books in America before granting copyright<br />
protection to British authors, Canada, which is .<br />
a part of the British Empire, is justified in<br />
attempting to do likewise. He does not pretend<br />
that any necessity for this arises from the difficulty<br />
of procuring English books in Canada at<br />
moderate prices, for he carefully explains that<br />
under the present law the works of English<br />
authors are offered for sale in the Dominion at<br />
lower prices than in Great Britain or the United<br />
States. The only apparent reason for seeking to<br />
secure the Royal assent to this precious Bill is<br />
that it may possibly put a little money into the<br />
pockets of a few needy Canadian printers, while<br />
it would certainly injure English authors and<br />
would probably not benefit Canadian buyers. The<br />
logical outcome of such a concession to Canada<br />
would be similar legislation in each of the self-<br />
governing colonies, with the result that, although<br />
fully protected in nearly all foreign countries by<br />
the Treaty of Berne, an English author would,<br />
if he wished to remain proprietor of his own<br />
book, be obliged to provide for the printing of ten<br />
or a dozen separate editions. The economic<br />
waste of such a monstrous system is positively<br />
appalling. F.<br />
March 24.<br />
*-<br />
The petition against the Canadian Copyright<br />
Act, which has been lying for the last three<br />
weeks for signature at the offices of the Society,<br />
has now been forwarded to the Marquis of Ripon.<br />
There are more than 1500 signatures to the<br />
petition, and amongst them are the names of all<br />
the best known writers in science, fiction, &c., in<br />
the United Kingdom. In addition, the most im-<br />
portant known publishing firms have added their<br />
signatures. It is hard in such a long list to<br />
discriminate, but a few of the names are appended.<br />
Perhaps it is worth while to repeat again the<br />
points which make the question one of such great<br />
importance. After a long and difficult struggle<br />
it was recognised by most of the civilised nations,<br />
at the Berne Convention, that copyright was the<br />
exclusive property of the author, and was not<br />
therefore to be trammeled with trade restrictions.<br />
After a still further struggle the Americans were<br />
brought to recognise the fact that property<br />
existed in copyright, but unfortunately they<br />
attached to that property a trade limitation.<br />
The step was retrogressive, and opposed to the<br />
liberal view of all the nations that signed the<br />
Berne Convention. But to obtain any concession<br />
across the water was of considerable advantage<br />
to the holders and originators of valuable<br />
property. The Canadians are now desirous of<br />
placing a somewhat similar trade restriction on<br />
the property of British and other authors. It is<br />
not worth while to go into the Act in detail, but<br />
there appears to be no doubt that should it<br />
obtain the Royal assent, not only will the American<br />
copyright be imperilled, but it is quite possible<br />
that the signatories to the Berne Convention may<br />
have something to say on the matter. The<br />
question is not one concerning the freedom of a<br />
colony to legislate on its affairs—as the Canadians<br />
so frequently and so vainly assert—but touches the<br />
question of piracy, which, when on the high seas,<br />
has been long ago suppressed by the unanimous<br />
voice and power of the civilised world.<br />
L. Alma-Tadema, R.A. George Gissing<br />
Edward Arnold Frederick Goodall<br />
Sir Robert Ball, F.R.S. Sydney Grundy<br />
Robert Bateman Richard Garnett, LL.D.<br />
Geo. Bell and Sons Thomas Hardy<br />
Walter Besant Anthony Hope Hawkins<br />
Augustine Birrell, M.P. William Heinemann<br />
A. and C. Black Holman Hunt<br />
William Black Prof. Huxley, F.R.S.<br />
Hall Caine A. D. Innes and Co.<br />
Chappell and Co. Henry Irving<br />
Hon. John Collier Jerome K. Jerome<br />
W. M. Conway Henry Arthur Jones<br />
F. H. Cowen Mrs. E. Kennard<br />
A. Constable and Co. Prof. E. Ray Lankester<br />
Earl of Desart W. E. H. Lecky<br />
Frank Dicksee, R.A. Lady W. Lennox<br />
B. L. Farjeon Longmans, Green, and Co.<br />
Archdeacon Farrar, D.D. Mrs. Lynn Linton<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 286 (#300) ############################################<br />
<br />
286<br />
A UTHOR.<br />
THE<br />
Edna Lyall<br />
Rev. W. J. Loftie, F.S.A.<br />
Sir A.C. Mackenzie, Mus.Doc.<br />
Macmillan and Co.<br />
James Martineau<br />
Helen Mathers<br />
S. H. Mendlessohn<br />
George du Maurier<br />
Phil May<br />
Methuen and Co.<br />
Justin McCarthy, M.P.<br />
John Murray<br />
Prof. Max Müller<br />
J. C. Nimmo<br />
Henry Norman<br />
David Nutt<br />
Novello and Co.<br />
W. H. Pollock<br />
Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart.,<br />
LL.D<br />
A. W. Pinero<br />
W. H. Russell.<br />
George Routledge and Co.,<br />
Ltd.<br />
Sir B. W. Richardson<br />
T. Scrutton<br />
C.Williers Stanford, Mus.Doc.<br />
M. H. Spiellman<br />
Herbert Spencer<br />
Sir John Stainer<br />
Sir Arthur Sullivan<br />
Lord Tennyson<br />
Sir H. Thompson, Bart.<br />
Brandon Thomas<br />
Baron H. de Worms<br />
John Strange Winter<br />
J. McNeil Whistler<br />
Stanley J. Weyman<br />
Earl of Wharncliffe<br />
Florence Warden<br />
James Payn I. Zangwill. G. H. Titerse.<br />
II.-AN AGREEMENT ON THE CovKRT COPYRIGHT<br />
|BILL.<br />
(Sent to Congress, Feb. 27.)<br />
At a conference comprising representatives of<br />
the American Newspaper Publishers’ Association,<br />
the American Publishers’ Copyright League, and<br />
the American (Authors') Copyright League, held<br />
in New York, Feb. 21, 1895, the following sub-<br />
stitute for the proviso of the Covert Bill was<br />
unanimously agreed upon :<br />
“Provided, however, that in case of any such<br />
infringement of the copyright of a photograph<br />
made from any object not a work of the fine arts,<br />
the sum to be recovered in any action brought<br />
under the provisions of this section shall be not<br />
less than IOO dollars, nor more than 5000 dollars;<br />
and provided, further, that in case of any such<br />
nfringement of the copyright of a painting,<br />
drawing, statue, engraving, etching, print, or<br />
model or design for a work of the fine arts, or in<br />
case of any such infringement of the copyright of<br />
a work of the fine arts, the sum to be recovered<br />
in any such action shall be not less than 250<br />
dollars,and not more than IO,OOO dollars.”<br />
This substitute is acceptable also to leading art<br />
publishers and photographers. It will relieve<br />
the newspapers of excessive penalties without<br />
endangering the security of copyright property.<br />
In behalf of the three above-mentioned national<br />
organisations, we respectfully request your sup-<br />
port to the effort to pass the Bill, as thus<br />
amended, at the present session by unanimous<br />
COnsent.<br />
W. C. BRYANT,<br />
Secretary, A.N.P.A.<br />
GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAN,<br />
Secretary, A.P.C.L.<br />
RoberT UNDER wood JoHNSON,<br />
Secretary, A.C.L.<br />
III.-ON SELLING A Book OUTRIGHT.<br />
A “Publisher,” writing to the Athenæum, calls<br />
upon the writer of the article with the above title<br />
to “state publicly ” in the Athenæum “what sort<br />
of book’’ he refers to as a 6s. book which can be<br />
produced at Is. a copy, or a 3s. 6d. book which<br />
can be produced at 8%d. I would point out to<br />
this “Publisher ” that it is not customary to call<br />
upon the writer of an article in one paper to<br />
explain himself in another, and that a state-<br />
ment made in the Author is as “publicly ”<br />
made as in the Athenæum. As he reads the<br />
Author, however, I will answer him here. If<br />
he will refer to the “Cost of Production,” a copy<br />
of which he doubtless possesses, he will find<br />
estimates showing exactly the kind of book meant.<br />
It is so clearly described as to leave no doubt<br />
possible. (Note that on p. 28 and on p. 34 there<br />
is a misprint of 5s. for 6s.) Since this pamphlet was<br />
printed, binding has gone up about 15 per cent.,<br />
and composition has slightly advanced, but paper<br />
has gone down. From these estimates it is<br />
evident that a 6s. book printed in quantities may<br />
cost a good deal less than Is. a copy. As regards<br />
a 3s. 6d. book, the average book of that price was<br />
in the writer's mind, viz., such a story book for<br />
boys and girls, as printed in large editions,<br />
certainly does not cost more than 8; d. a volume.<br />
But in the “Cost of Production,” p. 34, it is<br />
shown that actually a long novel issued in a large<br />
edition would cost no more than four-fifths of a<br />
shilling per copy.<br />
The “Publisher ” wants to include advertising<br />
in the “cost of production.” Certainly not; for<br />
the simple reason that by including it the cost<br />
may be made anything. By charging whatever<br />
the publisher pleases for advertising as often<br />
as he pleases in his own organ, which costs<br />
him nothing ; for advertising by exchange,<br />
which costs him nothing; by suppressing large<br />
discounts received from certain papers; he can<br />
load the actual cost of the book indefinitely.<br />
Let us not forget the case quoted some time<br />
since in the Author, where a demand was made<br />
for £30 odd for advertisements; and where the<br />
author's adviser offered to pay only whatever<br />
money had been actually expended. The amount<br />
proved to be under £4 A very little book was<br />
thus alleged to have cost £26 more than it actually<br />
did by thus swelling the advertisements The<br />
amount actually spent for advertising—not, of<br />
course, counting a successful novel—is in general<br />
very little, except in the rare case of a book which<br />
will “bear” it. An ordinary book, calculated to<br />
obtain at the best a circulation sufficient to pay its<br />
expenses, and a modest something over, cannot<br />
possibly, as the smallest knowledge of the<br />
figures will show, have a very large sum<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 287 (#301) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
287<br />
spent upon announcing it. The reason may<br />
well be understood when it is known that<br />
the expenditure of £20—which seems little—in<br />
advertising an edition of IOOO copies actually<br />
means the addition of nearly 5al. a copy on the<br />
cost of production. We will add the advertising<br />
to the cost of production as soon as we know<br />
that the actual money homestly spent, and no<br />
more, is to be charged. To these considerations<br />
may be added the fact that publishing firms differ<br />
from each other in no respect more than in the<br />
money they spend on advertising and in the<br />
organs in which they spend it.<br />
THE WRITER OF THE ARTICLE.<br />
*- A --"<br />
- - -<br />
ROYAL LITERARY FUND,<br />
HE annual meeting of the Royal Literary<br />
Fund was held yesterday afternoon at 7,<br />
Adelphi-terrace. The chair was taken by<br />
Mr. W. E. H. Lecky, one of the vice-presidents, and<br />
there were present Mr. F. W. Gibbs, C.B., Q.C.,<br />
Mr. C. Knight Watson, Mr. Lewis Morris, Mr.<br />
W. J. Courthope; Mr. Fraser Rae, Mr. William<br />
Stebbing, Mr. Edward Dicey, C.B., Mr. F. D.<br />
Mocatta, Mr. George Dalziel, Mr. J. H. Grain, Dr.<br />
Macaulay, Mr. Thornton Sharp, Mr. Sidney Lee,<br />
Mr. Richard Bentley, Mr. F. C. Danvers, Sir<br />
William Farrer, Sir B. W. Richardson, and others.<br />
The minutes of the last annual meeting, held<br />
last April, having been read and confirmed, Mr.<br />
W. J. Courthope read the registrars' report, which<br />
classified the grants awarded in 1894 as follows:<br />
—Class I., history and biography, nine grants,<br />
£455; class II., science and art, two grants, 34O;<br />
class III., classical literature and education, seven<br />
grants, 3485; class IV., archaeology, topography,<br />
and travels, six grants, 3415 ; class W., novels<br />
and tales, ten grants, 3400 ; class VI., periodical<br />
literature, three grants, 312O ; class VII., miscel-<br />
laneous, eight grants, £190. The grants varied<br />
in amount from £150 to £10. Of the forty-five<br />
persons relieved twenty-seven were men to the<br />
extent of £1,130, and eighteen women, 38975.<br />
The total sum invested as appearing in the<br />
treasurer's report amounted to £49,212 16s. 8d.,<br />
producing an income of £1667 8s. The annual<br />
amounts of the grants had varied from ten guineas<br />
in 1790, the date of the foundation of the fund,<br />
to £3335 in 1883, which was the highest reached.<br />
32Oo had been invested in Consols, and on Dec. 3 I<br />
there was a balance in hand of £199,-Times,<br />
March 14, 1895.<br />
><br />
º:<br />
WOI. W.<br />
THE AMERICAN GUILD OF AUTHORS,<br />
HERE lies before us a copy of the tract<br />
T issued by the American Guild of Authors.<br />
It is called “Methods of Publishing.”<br />
Four methods are enumerated:<br />
1. The royalty system.<br />
2. That in which the author assumes a share<br />
of the cost and receives in return a larger<br />
royalty.<br />
3. That in which the author bears the expense<br />
and pays the publisher a commission.<br />
4. That in which the publisher buys out the<br />
author.<br />
On the first it is simply remarked that it is the<br />
fairest plan provided the publisher makes an<br />
honest return of the books sold. But nothing is<br />
said as to the amount of royalty. What is it to<br />
be P Why is it adopted as fair? What does it<br />
give the publisher and what the author? We<br />
recommend these questions very earnestly to our<br />
American friends.<br />
It is afterwards stated that popular authors<br />
are now asking for a “graded” royalty—10 per<br />
cent. for the first 3OOO, 15 per cent. up to 15,000<br />
or 20,000, and after that 20 per cent.<br />
Let us see how this kind of “graded ” royalty<br />
would suit authors on this side. We may take<br />
our old friend the six shilling volume, 20 sheets,<br />
small pica type, about 258 words to a page. The<br />
cost of the first edition of 3OOO copies is about a<br />
shilling each — call it a shilling, that of the<br />
following copies is about IOd, a copy. The trade<br />
price may be taken as generally 3s. 7#d. The<br />
following result would be pretty close to the<br />
truth :—<br />
First 3Ooo. 3OOO–2O,OOO.<br />
Royalty Royalty<br />
IO per cent. I5 per cent.<br />
Author receives ... 3890 £765<br />
Publisher makes ... 3303 ...... 39.1608<br />
The publisher has to pay for the advertising,<br />
say £80. -<br />
We are willing to believe that the risk of pro-<br />
duction is perhaps greater in the States than<br />
here, but we are unwilling to believe that the<br />
American Guild of Authors desires the publisher<br />
to have three times the share of the author.<br />
On the second plan it is customary, it is said,<br />
for the author to pay the cost of composition and<br />
plates, and for the publisher to pay for printing,<br />
binding, and advertising, giving the author a<br />
20 per cent. royalty. But it is complained that<br />
the publisher charges more than the real cost.<br />
Then follow two pages devoted to “tricks.”<br />
We are unfortunately familiar with them.<br />
The following figures are given as fair prices<br />
for printing, &c. :<br />
I) D<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 288 (#302) ############################################<br />
<br />
288<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
I. Composition and electro-plate, 12mo, small<br />
pica, about 420 words to a page; per page, I dol.<br />
2. Paper and presswork, per IOOO copies,<br />
257-56 dols.<br />
3. Binding, at 22; cents, per volume, 225 dols.<br />
Total cost, 882.56 dols.<br />
The cost per volume would be ‘882 dols., or<br />
3s. 6d. each. This is enormous compared with the<br />
English cost of production. One cannot under-<br />
stand how the business of publishing can be<br />
carried on at all against such high figures as<br />
these.<br />
A form of agreement, said to be customary, is<br />
included in the tract. We refrain from comment<br />
upon it in order to avoid a charge of interfering<br />
in what is not our business.<br />
The tract contains at the end a list of<br />
“Reputable Publishers.” We are happy to<br />
observe that there are a great many in various<br />
parts of America. Suppose, however, that it were<br />
discovered that one of them was not quite so<br />
reputable as had been believed; a new edition<br />
of the tract would have to be struck off with the<br />
offender's name removed. Would it not be better<br />
that the Society should vouch for no one, leaving,<br />
as we do, every house to make its own reputation ?<br />
*- --><br />
* * *-*.<br />
LETTER FROM PARIS.<br />
ONSIEUR MARCEL PREVOST has<br />
written an indignant letter to the Paris<br />
edition of the New York Herald. He<br />
begins by saying: “This is what I read in the<br />
New York Recorder of Feb. 2 I. ‘Marcel Pre-<br />
vost’s much - discussed novel, “The Demi-<br />
Virgins,” which will be produced shortly as a<br />
play at one of the Paris theatres, has been trans-<br />
lated into English by Arthur Hornblow, and will<br />
be issued this week by the Holland Publishing<br />
Company. I am told that there is plenty of<br />
dramatic material in the book for a good play.<br />
Here is a golden opportunity for an aspiring<br />
dramatist.” Thus in the first place my “Les<br />
Demi-Vierges’ is translated without my autho-<br />
risation, without any compensation to me for the<br />
harm which the translated edition is likely to<br />
have on the sale of the original edition ; and<br />
secondly, young dramatic authors are cynically<br />
invited to make their fortunes by dramatising my<br />
story. I am sure, dear sir, that you consider such<br />
conduct unworthy of a great nation such as the<br />
one to which Mr. Hornblow belongs, and that<br />
you will assist me in defending my rights, or at<br />
least in protesting against this pillage of my<br />
work.” M. Prevost concludes by saying that<br />
he is aware that there is no literary convention<br />
between France and America, but neither is<br />
there one between France and Russia, or between<br />
France and Denmark, yet the publishers both in<br />
Denmark and Russia paid him fees for the autho-<br />
risation to publish translations of “Les Demi-<br />
Vierges.” r<br />
The Herald devotes a leader to the subject of<br />
M. Prevost’s letter, but I am afraid the indig-<br />
mant author will derive but small comfort from<br />
its remarks, which are summed up in the words<br />
concluding the article: “Unfortunately, however,<br />
there exists no treaty to protect author's rights<br />
of this nature, and so long as this defect in our<br />
international treaties remains there is no legal<br />
remedy. The appeal to public opinion, which M.<br />
Marcel Prevost to-day makes through the<br />
Herald's columns, is the only step that can be<br />
made towards obtaining an adequate redress.”<br />
I think this is the first time that a French<br />
author has protested in public against the<br />
American pirate, and it is to be regretted that<br />
the occasion of this first protest should be a book<br />
such as Marcel Prevost’s “Les Demi-Vierges”—<br />
a vile book if ever one was written ; and the only<br />
interest, to speak frankly, that I take in M.<br />
Prevost’s case, is in the information it affords as<br />
to the best way of creating for oneself with one's<br />
pen a success not only national but universal. It<br />
is a great pity that these things should be so,<br />
but so they are, and the writer of such books<br />
can reap rewards which are refused to men of<br />
letters who have a respect for their calling and<br />
the feeling of the dignity of their pen. “Les<br />
Demi-Vierges” went into over IOO editions in<br />
France, and has been translated into every<br />
European language. It now, according to<br />
Monsieur Prevost, is appearing in America,<br />
though I do not think that any publisher will care<br />
to undertake its publication in England. The<br />
moral seems to be that this is the stuff in which<br />
the reading public is most widely interested, and<br />
Du Maurier's clever cartoon in this week's Punch,<br />
depicting a conversation between a lady porno-<br />
grapher and a pornographic publisher is as true<br />
to life as are all the scenes depicted by this admir-<br />
able artist. It is a great pity that these things<br />
should be so, for it seems to show that civilisation<br />
is not advancing, and it shows further that the<br />
sense of human dignity is fading away through-<br />
out the world. I may be called a prude, but I<br />
declare very frankly that I have no manner of<br />
consideration for the writer who speculates on<br />
the hoggishness of the majority of readers, and<br />
that he is never, in my estimation, a brother<br />
author.<br />
I was speaking the other night with a Spanish<br />
journalist who has literary ambitions, and I asked<br />
him why he never wrote books, for I knew him as<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 289 (#303) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
289<br />
a very clever man, with a wide knowledge of life<br />
and a great experience. He said that he could<br />
not afford to work for nothing, and went<br />
on to explain that a Spanish author gets no<br />
money from a publisher, that consequently there<br />
are no Spanish authors, as you and I can well<br />
understand. I said, “What, not a peseta ?” and<br />
he said “Not a peseta.” This is worse than in<br />
Russia or Poland, where, I believe, a successful<br />
author may look for ten roubles, or even twenty,<br />
per sheet of printed matter, that is to say, about<br />
£2 for sixteen pages of printed text. We English<br />
authors and you French authors are very fortunate<br />
II.16I1.<br />
Alphonse Daudet has somewhat changed his<br />
mind about his intentions in England. He told<br />
me that he would accept certain invitations which<br />
had been made to him. “But,” he added, “they<br />
will have to be content with a bust. A bust is<br />
all that I can offer them.” He meant that he<br />
cannot appear otherwise than sitting down. It<br />
was sitting that our dear master made his<br />
memorable speech on the occasion of the<br />
De Goncourt banquet.<br />
Monsieur José de Herédia was to have been<br />
received into the company of the French Academy<br />
next month. This, however, has now been put<br />
off, and Monsieur Herédia’s reception will not<br />
take place for some months. The reason of this<br />
is that Monsieur François Coppée has been<br />
seriously ill, and will be unable to speak at<br />
Herédia’s reception, as had been arranged.<br />
The reference above to Polish and Russian<br />
authors makes me think, and not without a<br />
heaviness at heart, of a very sad experience of<br />
mine of a few days ago. Some years past I knew<br />
in Paris a Russian author. He had been in the<br />
Russian army, and was an exile under sentence<br />
of death. A very clever man, very well read, and<br />
always reading. He starved at ten roubles the<br />
sheet, but though he did not often have a dinner,<br />
he always could buy books, and the garret in<br />
which he lived—the identical garret occupied by<br />
Racine in the rue Wisconti—was full of them.<br />
He used to come and see me, and I loved his<br />
conversation. But he had strange habits of in-<br />
temperance, and in the end I was forced to ask<br />
him not to come to see me any more, for riotous-<br />
ness at that time appalled me. A year ago I<br />
received, when down in the South, a letter from<br />
him. He said that he wanted to see me again,<br />
that he could not bear the thought of a definite<br />
separation. I answered him, I am glad to<br />
remember this, in a friendly way, and told him<br />
that I would come and see him when I returned<br />
to Paris. Last week I found his letter amongst<br />
my papers, and at once wrote to invite him to<br />
my house. On Thursday morning I received a<br />
letter from a sister of charity to say that my<br />
old friend was ill and very tired, and could not<br />
come to see me, but that my visit would “give<br />
him immense pleasure.” I could not go to see<br />
him on Thursday, but I went on Friday. The<br />
street in which he lived was in a very remote<br />
quarter of Paris, and it took an hour in a cab<br />
to get there. The door was opened by a beautiful<br />
sister of charity in blue. I said, “You have a<br />
Monsieur here P” She said, “Yes,” and<br />
then added, quite simply, “he died one hour<br />
ago.” Then she pressed me to come and see<br />
him. “He looks quite nice,” she said, and she<br />
spoke of death, as it should be spoken of, as the<br />
great desideratum of life. I allowed myself to<br />
be persuaded, and followed her to the poor little<br />
room in this Polish house of refuge, and there I<br />
saw my old friend, with a table by the bedside,<br />
and on the table a crucifix and two burning<br />
candles. He had been a big, riotous man in the<br />
old days, and there he was, so pinched and peaked<br />
that his form hardly raised the covers of the<br />
bed. It was a terrible meeting, and though the<br />
sister wanted me to stay and kneel down Iran<br />
from the room. I have thought of nothing<br />
since, and I do not think that anything I have<br />
ever seen in life more deeply affected me. His<br />
poor fingers were stained with ink, and there was<br />
an unfinished manuscript on the chest of drawers.<br />
No doubt, the sister of charity was right. No<br />
doubt, Death was a comforter here. But why<br />
had I not arrived two hours earlier 2 “He was<br />
looking forward to your visit,” said sister Angéle.<br />
“Your letter made him quite joyous.” Death,<br />
whether it come as a comforter or no, is the one<br />
terrible thing.<br />
I met M. Aurélien Scholl, President of the<br />
Société des Gens de Lettres, a night or two<br />
ago, and he spoke to me for some time about the<br />
affairs of the society. Amongst other things<br />
which he told me was that certain friends and<br />
admirers of Paul de Kock had decided to erect a<br />
little statue or memorial to him in the garden of<br />
the house in which he lived for many years before<br />
his death. “I intend to interest the Society in<br />
this matter,” said the President, and he went on<br />
to speak of his high admiration for Paul de Kock.<br />
I think there never was an author more unfairly<br />
treated by fame. One knows what the average<br />
reader expects when with twinkling eyes he picks<br />
up a de Kock. It is quite unfair. Paul de Kock<br />
had wit and verve, and an admirable power of<br />
story-telling. He had no desire to attract<br />
readers by what has been alluded to above.<br />
People think that his speciality. I do not know<br />
if his Memoirs have ever been translated into<br />
English. They ought to be. I picked up a copy<br />
of them at a bookseller's some days ago. It was<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 290 (#304) ############################################<br />
<br />
29O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
a most interesting book, full of anecdotes about<br />
people of notoriety under the Revolution and the<br />
Empire. He knew Fouquier-Tinville as a bland<br />
young man. He had a famous interview with<br />
Emperor Napoleon. The book shows the man as<br />
he was, and it is strange that it should be out of<br />
print in France.<br />
Mr. Grant Allen is in Paris at the time of writ-<br />
ing, and, I am sorry to say, is ill. At least when I<br />
last heard news of him he was lying in bed with<br />
porous plasters wrapped about him. Mr. F. C.<br />
Philips is in Paris also, busy as usual, and full of<br />
work and schemes for future work. He is one of<br />
the English authors who are best known and most<br />
appreciated in France, where everybody seems to<br />
have read “As in a Looking-glass.” I under-<br />
stand that he is at work on a long novel sans pre-<br />
judice of any number of short stories and plays.<br />
This is a man of very wonderful activity.<br />
In reading over “Moll Flanders” in Marcel<br />
Schwob's masterly translation, I came across a<br />
passage which makes me think less of “Jane<br />
Eyre'” as a work of art than I have thought till<br />
now. You may remember that just after Jane<br />
Eyre has been pressed by the frigid St. John to<br />
marry him, she rushes out into the garden and<br />
there suddenly hears a cry of “Jane, Jane, Jane,”<br />
from the distant Rochester. When Charlotte<br />
Bronté was asked how she came to think of so<br />
striking a scene—those were the days when tele-<br />
pathy was unknown—she used to drape herself in<br />
some mystery—I have this from a person who so<br />
interrogated her —and reply: “I wrote it because<br />
it is true,” leaving one to imagine that this was a<br />
thing of her own experience. It was an effec-<br />
tive scene, but Defoe had imagined it some years<br />
previously, and so we have a sorrowful scholia to<br />
enter into our copies of “Jane Eyre.” . . .<br />
I have no English Defoe by me, but the scene to<br />
which I refer is where Moll Flanders calls for<br />
the departed Jemmy, in the inn at Chester, and<br />
Jemmy hears her very voice, though then fifteen<br />
leagues distant, and so returns to her.<br />
And alas and alack into our copies of “The<br />
Cenci” a similar sorrowful scholia must be<br />
entered, and indeed against those particularly<br />
beautiful lines which conclude the play:<br />
. . . . Here, mother tie<br />
My girdle for me, and bind up this hair<br />
In any simple knot; aye, that does well.<br />
And yours, I see, is coming down.<br />
You know the lines and, like us all, you have<br />
admired, with enthusiastic admiration, this con-<br />
ception which shows us a woman on the very<br />
brink of the precipice thinking about pretty,<br />
trivial womanly things. Well, I happened on<br />
Webster the other day, and, in turning over the<br />
leaves of “La Duchesse d’Amalfi.” in Ernest<br />
Lafond's translation, I read a passage where the<br />
Duchess just about to be strangled by the execu-<br />
tioner gives trivial womanly orders. Her little<br />
boy is to have the syrup for his cough, nor is her<br />
little girl to be allowed to go to bed until she has<br />
said her prayers. It is the finer conception of<br />
the two, and, such as it is, it deprives Shelley of<br />
all the glory of his lines. I am very sorry, for I<br />
think that there was nothing in Shelley that I<br />
liked better than this—this picture of femininity<br />
under the very shadow of death. But so our idols<br />
one after the other get broken and cast down.<br />
How true it is—as further exemplified by the<br />
preceding remarks—that “ les beaua esprits se<br />
rencontrent.” Let me point out that Tennyson's<br />
line in “Locksley Hall ”— it is line 38–<br />
And our spirits rushed together at the touching of the<br />
lips—<br />
reads like an almost literal translation of Schiller's<br />
lines in “Amalia’’:<br />
Seine Küsse—paradiesisch Fühlen<br />
Wie zwo Flammen sich ergreifen, wie<br />
Harfentóne in einander spielen<br />
Zu der himmelwollen Harmonie—<br />
Stürzten, flogen, schmolzen Geist und Geist zusammen<br />
Lippen, Wangen, brannten, zitterten<br />
Seele ranſm in Seele.<br />
And, again, as to that beautiful line about the<br />
“burden of an honour to which she was not<br />
born,” is not memory carried back to line 99 of<br />
the sixth Satire of the First Book by Horace:<br />
Nollem Onus haud unquam solitus portare molestum.<br />
The bitterest thing that was ever said about<br />
our poor friend Boulanger was Jules Ferry's<br />
remark that he was a “Saint-Arnaud de Café-<br />
Concert.” Boulanger called Ferry out for this<br />
epigram, and Ferry would not go. I have no<br />
comment to make on Ferry's conduct, for he is<br />
dead and Boulanger is with him, and those are<br />
things not to be talked of now. But I was<br />
reminded of this to-day on receiving from Tresse<br />
and Stock a copy of Dr. Cabrol’s interesting<br />
Memoirs, edited and prefaced by Paul de Régla,<br />
which deals exclusively—as the title of the<br />
volume indicates—with Marshal Saint-Arnaud in<br />
the Crimea. This is a very interesting book,<br />
giving a full account, almost day by day, of<br />
the last six months of the life of the Marshal,<br />
down to the hour when—well, I hardly like to<br />
repeat the Doctor's version of how the gallant<br />
Marshal met his death, for I have many friends<br />
in the Bonapartist camp. In the same packet I<br />
received from these publishers a book entitled<br />
“Le Roman d’une Fée,” by M. Henri Belliot,<br />
an ardent littérateur, who writes to me to say<br />
that, as an Englishman, I shall appreciate a<br />
fairy-story better than his compatriots. I hope<br />
to be able to do so when I have found time to<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 291 (#305) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR,<br />
291<br />
read the book. In the meanwhile I mention its<br />
existence and wish it very well.<br />
A curious offer was made to me the other day.<br />
It came by telegraph from the proprietor of a<br />
New York daily paper. This person, it appears,<br />
has written a historical work—or, rather, has<br />
had a historical work written for him by some<br />
literary hack—in French. He desired to publish<br />
a translation of the work in English, and asked<br />
me to do the translation for him. A condition<br />
was that my name should not appear in connec-<br />
tion with the book. He was to figure on the<br />
title-page as the writer. He proposed a remunera-<br />
tion of 6s. a thousand words. What amusing<br />
people there are in this world to be sure!<br />
ROBERT H. SHERARD.<br />
123, Boulevard Magenta, Paris.<br />
*— a 2-2<br />
-sº<br />
NOTES FROM NEW YORK,<br />
New York, March 16.<br />
HE most important literary news of the<br />
month is the announcement that New<br />
York is at last to have a public library<br />
worthy of the chief city of a great nation. At<br />
the present time this immense town of ours, with<br />
a population of perhaps four millions contained<br />
within a radius of twenty-five miles from the city<br />
hall, is less well provided with books accessible<br />
to all citizens than Boston is or Chicago, to make<br />
no comparison with London, or Paris, or Berlin.<br />
Hitherto the chief public library of New York<br />
has been that founded fifty years ago by John<br />
Jacob Astor, a German immigrant who had made<br />
a fortune in New York, and wished to do some-<br />
thing for the city of his choice. He began by<br />
giving about £IOO,OOO, and his son and grandson<br />
in turn gave similar sums.<br />
The Astor Library was very fortunate in its<br />
first librarian, Coggswell, and its earlier books<br />
were admirably selected. But its endowment<br />
was inadequate, and it has grown but little of<br />
late years. It has not quite 3OO,OOO volumes,<br />
and its buildings, books, and funds are valued at<br />
perhaps 340O.OOO.<br />
A quarter of a century ago Mr. James Lenox—<br />
an interesting account of whose book collecting<br />
was written by the late Henry Stevens, of Wer-<br />
mont—established by will the Lenox Library,<br />
endowing it handsomely, and bequeathing to it<br />
all his own rare books, including the finest col-<br />
lection of Bibles in the world. This library is<br />
housed in a sumptuous building overlooking<br />
Central Park, and it has adjacent land, allowing<br />
for great expansion. Its assets are said to<br />
amount to more than £500,000.<br />
VOL. W.<br />
A third library was made possible by the will<br />
of Samuel J. Tilden, once a candidate for the<br />
presidency of the United States; but there was<br />
a long litigation over the will, and, after a final<br />
compromise, the trustees have now about<br />
2400,000—a wholly insufficient sum with which<br />
to buy the land, erect a building, stock it with<br />
books, and meet the future expenses of a public<br />
library. A proposal was made by Columbia<br />
College to grant a site on the new grounds where<br />
the college is about to build, but this was not<br />
favourably received by the Tilden trustees.<br />
Now, however a union has been brought about,<br />
and all these institutions are to be merged in one,<br />
starting with perhaps 4OO,OOO volumes, and<br />
having assets of at least a million and a half<br />
sterling. The details of the consolidation are<br />
not yet determined upon, but the union itself is<br />
an assured fact. The site has not been selected;<br />
but probably the buildings of the Astor will be<br />
sold, and the new edifice will be erected on the<br />
ample grounds belonging to the Lenox. The<br />
style and title of the new corporation will be “The<br />
Public Library of the City of New York, Astor,<br />
Lenox, and Tilden Foundations.” This name will<br />
invite further benefactors, who might have<br />
thought it an impertinence to contribute to the<br />
library of the Astor family or to that bearing the<br />
names of the late Mr. Lenox or the later Mr.<br />
Tilden. The suggestion has been made that the<br />
new corporation should also take over the<br />
excellent and useful Free Circulating Library,<br />
which has half a dozen branches in the most<br />
thickly populated portions of the city. The<br />
announcement has been made that the new<br />
library will be managed in the most progressive<br />
manner; it will be open on Sundays, and in the<br />
evening ; it will allow books to be withdrawn for<br />
home reading; it will provide special privileges<br />
for students; it will endeavour to meet every<br />
reasonable public demand. Upon the new board<br />
of trustees are some of the ablest and most<br />
public spirited men in New York. Of course, it<br />
will be several years before the full benefit of the<br />
consolidation will be apparent; but the news has<br />
been received with the greatest satisfaction.<br />
The giving of prizes for stories, and plays, and<br />
poems has never greatly benefited literature,<br />
although it has always been an excellent adver-<br />
tisement for the giver. It is sixty years since<br />
Poe won a prize of £20 offered by a Baltimore<br />
weekly paper for the best short story, but he did<br />
not write the tale especially for the contest; he<br />
withdrew the “MS. found in a Bottle" from the<br />
paper to which he had sold it for £6, and offered<br />
it for the prize, and thus made an extra profit of<br />
3I4. Three diffierent sets of prizes are now<br />
offered for competition among the American<br />
E. E.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 292 (#306) ############################################<br />
<br />
** ** . . *s.<br />
292<br />
Writers of fiction to-day. The most important o<br />
those is that which the New York Herald i<br />
prepared to give. Perhaps the conditions of the<br />
contest cannot be better set forth than in the<br />
actual words of the advertisement:<br />
THE HERALD’S PRIZE OFFER.<br />
SIXTEEN THOUSAND DoILARs To BE AwarDED TO<br />
AMERICAN NovKLISTS AND POETs.<br />
The New York Herald will award a prize of Io,000 dollars<br />
for the best serial story of between 50,000 and 75,000 words<br />
by an American writer, whether professional or amateur.<br />
The conditions of this contest are as follows :<br />
The manuscripts must be submitted anonymously, and<br />
must bear only the initials of their authors or other private<br />
identification marks, so that the identity of the writer will<br />
not be known to the committee of three examiners, who will<br />
be appointed by the Herald, and who will select three stories<br />
of the greatest merit.<br />
The stories, so selected, will be printed in the Herald,<br />
daily and Sunday, as occasion requires, beginning early in<br />
October, 1895.<br />
The readers of the Herald will be asked to decide by<br />
ballot which story they like best, and the prize of Io,000<br />
dollars will be awarded accordingly.<br />
The manuscripts, other than the three selected by the<br />
examiners, will be returned to the writers, upon their identi-<br />
fication by means of their initials or private marks. The<br />
writers will be at liberty to publish these returned manu-<br />
scripts elsewhere, and no reference will be made by the<br />
Herald that they have been rejected.<br />
All manuscripts for this competition must be submitted<br />
before July 1, 1895.<br />
THREE OTHER PRIZES.<br />
The Herald also offers three other prizes—the first of<br />
3000 dollars for the best novelette of between 15,000 and<br />
25,000 words; the second, a prize of 2000 dollars for the<br />
best short story of between 6ooo and Io, Ooo words; and the<br />
third, a prize of IOOO dollars for the best epic poem, based<br />
on some event of American history that has occurred since<br />
the beginning of the War of the Revolution.<br />
The conditions that will govern the competition for the<br />
prize of Io,ooo will also govern those for the prizes of<br />
3ooo dollars, 2000 dollars, and IOoo dollars. The chosen<br />
manuscripts will be published in the Herald, in turn, upon<br />
the conclusion of the serials.<br />
All manuscripts for these latter competitions must be<br />
submitted to the Herald before Sept. 1, 1895.<br />
The obvious comment to be made upon this is<br />
that the actual winner of any one of these prizes<br />
will be well paid, but that the unfortunate<br />
writers of the second best and third best novels,<br />
short stories, and epics will receive no payment at<br />
all. Far more equitable is the arrangement pro-<br />
posed by a syndicate of important papers headed<br />
by the Hartford Courant (of which Mr. Charles<br />
Dudley Warner is the editor in chief). Their<br />
advertisement reads as follow :<br />
A TWO THOUSAND DOLLAR PRIZE.<br />
A NUMBER OF WELL-KNOWN NEWSPAPERS ANNOUNCE<br />
THE LARGEST CAPITAL PRIZE, EVER OFFERED.<br />
We will pay a first prize of Two Thousand Dollars for<br />
the best detective story from 6ooo to 12,000 words in<br />
length, for publication in our daily issues in instalments of<br />
about 2000 words per day.<br />
be submitted to Prize Editor,<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
We will pay a second prize of Five Hundred Dollars for<br />
the second best detective story submitted. *<br />
. All manuscripts intended for this competition must<br />
Bacheller, Johnson, and<br />
Bacheller, Nos. 112 to 117, Tribune-buildings, New York<br />
City, on or before May 1, 1895, Every manuscript must be<br />
typewritten and accompanied by a sealed envelope con-<br />
taining the name of its author. It will not be opened until<br />
a decision is reached. For identification said envelope<br />
should bear some phrase which also appears above the title<br />
of the story submitted. All good stories will be published<br />
at a satisfactory price. Other details of the contest and<br />
arrangements for an equitable decision will be in charge of<br />
Mr. Irving Bacheller, to whom all inquiries should be<br />
addressed. -<br />
The third set of prizes is offered by the<br />
Pouth's Companion, of Boston, one of the most<br />
widely circulated weekly papers in the country,<br />
and one which has always exhibited remarkable<br />
enterprise in securing contributions from writers<br />
of prominence. In a former competition of the<br />
Youth's Companion a prize of £IOO was carried<br />
off by Mr. Frank R. Stockton's tale “An<br />
Unhistoric Page.” The stories now to be<br />
rewarded must not contain less than 22OO Words,<br />
or more than 3ooo; they must be original; they<br />
must not be love stories or fairy tales, nor can<br />
they deal with religion or politics; their moral<br />
tone must be unexceptionable, and the list of<br />
prizes is as follows:— Dollars.<br />
For the best original story sent us . . . . , 500<br />
For the next in literary and general merit ... , 500<br />
For the third in merit e e º e s a 250<br />
For the fourth in merit ... 250<br />
For the fifth in merit 25O<br />
For the sixth in merit 25O<br />
For the seventh in merit I OO<br />
For the eighth in merit ... IOO<br />
For the ninth in merit - . . . . . . . . IOO<br />
For the tenth in merit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I OO<br />
For the eleventh in merit ... . . . . . . . . . IOO<br />
Total ... 25OO<br />
To two recent issues of the New York Tribune,<br />
Professor T. R. Lounsbury, the author of the<br />
masterly “Studies in Chaucer,” contributes an<br />
eight column review of Professor Skeat's new<br />
edition of the author of the “Canterbury Tales.”<br />
The review is written, with all the learning and<br />
with all the humour which unite to make Professor<br />
Lounsbury a very dangerous opponent. It will<br />
probably be reprinted as a pamphlet, in which<br />
case it will reach the Chaucer students of Germany<br />
and England. Professor Lounsbury declares<br />
that Professor Skeat's new edition “will be abso-<br />
lutely essential to all who devote themselves to the<br />
special study of Chaucer,” and “as such it ought<br />
to be welcomed cordially by every lover of litera-<br />
ture.” But he accuses Professor Skeat of having<br />
made frequent and abundant use of his (Pro-<br />
fessor Lounsbury's) labours, without giving him<br />
any credit in the first three volumes.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 293 (#307) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
293<br />
The Authors’ Club of New York, now in its<br />
thirteenth year, is at last permanently settled<br />
in quarters of its own, of which it has a long<br />
lease. Its new apartments are a handsome and<br />
commodious suite of four rooms on one of the<br />
upper floors of the extension of the magnificent<br />
music hall erected by Mr. Andrew Carnegie.<br />
As a member of the club, Mr. Carnegie saw that<br />
these rooms were specially reserved, and the<br />
terms upon which they were secured were ex-<br />
ceptionally favourable. “Liber Scriptorum,” the<br />
book of the Authors’ Club (of which an account<br />
has already been printed in your pages), has been<br />
so profitable that it was possible to vote a sum<br />
of £600 for the decoration and furnishing of the<br />
new apartments; and, in gratitude to Mr.<br />
Carnegie for his services in securing them, the<br />
original MSS. of the “Liber Scriptorum,” sump-<br />
tuously bound in two immense folio volumes,<br />
were presented to him. The fortnightly Thurs-<br />
day evening meetings of the Authors' Club<br />
continue to be among the pleasantest affairs of<br />
the kind. The prosperity of the club endures,<br />
and its membership increases steadily.<br />
Chicago, which has now three richly endowed<br />
public libraries, is getting to be a literary centre.<br />
Its Twentieth Century Club is a worthy rival of<br />
the Nineteenth Century Club of New York, in<br />
emulation of which it was founded. Its young<br />
and lusty university has not succeeded in attract-<br />
ing the best instructors from the older institutions<br />
of the East, but it has a tower of strength in<br />
Professor Von Holst, who has recently published<br />
a learned and acute study of the French<br />
Revolution. It has in the Dial one of the most<br />
scholarly critical journals in America—a critical<br />
journal so excell-nt indeed that its two faults<br />
may well be forgiven it. These faults are an<br />
undue jealousy of New York (but this is a<br />
common failing in Chicago) and an undue<br />
deference to the opinion of London, even on<br />
American authors (but this is a common feeling<br />
even elsewhere than in Chicago). Chicago is<br />
also the home of one of the most vigorous of<br />
American novelists, Mr. Henry B. Fuller, the<br />
author of that curiously dilletante book, “The<br />
Chevalier of Pensieri Wani,” and also of that<br />
robust specimen of realism, “The Cliff Dwellers.”<br />
He is now about to publish a second study of<br />
Chicago society, bearing the very up-to-date title,<br />
“With the Procession.” This will be published<br />
in New York by Harper and Brothers, but three<br />
other works of fiction by Chicago authors are<br />
announced by the new and enterprising Chicago<br />
house of Stone and Kimball. These are, “A<br />
Little Sister to the Wilderness,” by Miss Lillian<br />
Bell; “A Sawdust Doll,” by Mrs. Reginald<br />
De Koven (the wife of the composer of “Maid<br />
Marian’’); and “Two Women and a Fool,” by<br />
Mr. H. C. Chatfield-Taylor.<br />
The sale of “Trilby’’ is said to be slackening<br />
a little now, but it has already reached 150,000<br />
copies, at seven shillings, and it is likely to be<br />
stimulated again by the success of the ingenious<br />
dramatisation just brought out at a Boston<br />
theatre by Mr. A. M. Palmer, and to be<br />
performed in New York next season.<br />
HALLETT ROBINSON.<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
AM very glad to see in “Hallett Robinson’s ”<br />
New York Letter a tribute to the literary<br />
position of Chicago and its aspirations. A<br />
year and a half ago I incurred the kind of ridicule<br />
which attaches to a new and unexpected state-<br />
ment by saying something to the same effect.<br />
When one finds a city richly endowed with public<br />
libraries; the natural centre of a vast geo-<br />
graphical area; possessed of a wealthy university,<br />
in which English literature is well represented<br />
and adequately taught; where literature is held<br />
by the cultivated class in the highest respect;<br />
possessing a critical paper equal in ability to<br />
anything we have in this country ; and containing<br />
a company of men and women, mostly young,<br />
eagerly cultivating literature, and aspiring to<br />
the production of good and, if it may be.<br />
great work, one is justified in prophesying that<br />
out of this company there will presently emerge<br />
some one who will make himself known over the<br />
English-speaking world. I spoke to this effect<br />
in 1893, and now our New York correspondent<br />
speaks to the same effect.<br />
The following extract is from a new American<br />
volume of essays, called “Meditations in Motley,”<br />
by Walter Blackburn Harte (Arena Publishing<br />
Company, Boston, Mass.). -<br />
It is a most lamentable thing that, in spite of all the<br />
literary activity and the intellectual restlessness of our time,<br />
there are not probably more than half a dozen writers in the<br />
United States who follow literature, pure and simple, as a<br />
profession; and it is noteworthy that among these there are<br />
neither poets nor essayists.<br />
The tractate of the American Guild of Authors,<br />
noted in another column, may partly explain the<br />
reason why so few Americans are able to adopt<br />
literature frankly as a profession. Of course, it is<br />
greatly to be desired that writers of the better kind<br />
—one would say men and women of genius, but<br />
that the word is now almost forbidden—should be<br />
able to devote themselves altogether to the literary<br />
craft. In order to do this, however, they must be<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 294 (#308) ############################################<br />
<br />
294<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
able to live. In this country there are thousands<br />
who do live by literature, not popular novelists<br />
alone, but writers in every branch, not leaders only,<br />
but writers of the rank and file. There never was a<br />
betterrank and file—better drilled, betterequipped,<br />
braver, and more full of zeal—than our own. Let<br />
us see how these our people live. First of all,<br />
many of them are students in the history of litera-<br />
ture; many of them are good scholars; many have<br />
studied some foreign literature, and are authori-<br />
ties in French, German, Italian, Spanish, or<br />
some other literature; many are students in<br />
history, ancient and modern, English or foreign;<br />
many are students in science; some have mastered<br />
out of the way branches; some have made a<br />
special study of sport, games, art, music, the<br />
drama, &c. Most, in fact, have some special<br />
knowledge which may at any time be wanted. In<br />
the next place, there are, in this country, a dozen<br />
magazines open to a scholar—perhaps a well-<br />
known writer may contribute six or seven articles<br />
in the year to these magazines; there is<br />
next the better class of weekly—the Saturday<br />
Review, the Spectator, the Athenæum, the Speaker,<br />
the National Observer, the Realm, and others—<br />
a good writer ought to find no difficulty in<br />
getting on one of these papers; there are the<br />
two Quarterly Reviews, but they can find room<br />
for very few writers; there are the weekly maga-<br />
zines, such as Chambers’, Cassells’, &c., to which<br />
few writers would disdain to contribute. Again,<br />
there is the literary department of the great<br />
daily papers; that of the evening papers; there<br />
is dramatic criticism ; art criticism; musical<br />
criticism. Or, again, there are the leading<br />
articles of the dailies. It will thus be understood<br />
that to the man who knows something, and can<br />
write pleasantly, there are abundant opportunities<br />
of work. Then a man’s special knowledge, sooner<br />
or later, whatever it is, naturally and inevitably<br />
assumes book form.<br />
Another branch of literary work is that of<br />
editing and preparing books for publishers. We<br />
are apt to forget, in our concern about modern<br />
literature, that publishers have the whole of the<br />
past to deal with as they please. They are con-<br />
stantly bringing out new editions of past authors.<br />
These must have an introduction, notes, appen-<br />
dices, and index, all to be done by some man of<br />
letters. Again, which one would fain ignore but<br />
cannot, there is the reading for publishers. It is<br />
not work that many like to do, but it must be<br />
done by somebody.<br />
These are some of the conditions of the<br />
literary life in this country. It would seem,<br />
however, as if in America things were different.<br />
The American magazines, with one or two<br />
exceptions, are not in the least like our scholarly<br />
Nineteenth Century, Contemporary, and Fort-<br />
nightly. Such weekly reviews as the Spectator<br />
or the Saturday simply do not exist in America;<br />
they have no Quarterly Reviews; they have no<br />
papers corresponding to Chambers’ and the<br />
Cassells' productions; their newspapers do not<br />
seem to include a considerable literary element—<br />
one may be wrong, but this is how it seems<br />
to us. Then the American publisher is not,<br />
apparently, always bringing out new editions of<br />
dead writers; and, in short, one would like some<br />
of our American friends to tell us how an<br />
American man of letters (not being a popular<br />
novelist) does manage to live at all.<br />
In the narrow churchyard south of St. Mary<br />
Overies (now called St. Saviour's), Southwark<br />
—somewhere, it is not known where—there lie<br />
in one grave the remains of Philip Massinger<br />
and of Fletcher his friend. The name of the<br />
latter is always associated with that of Beau-<br />
mont, but Massinger undoubtedly did a good<br />
deal of work with and for him. The name<br />
of Massinger is entered in the burial register as a<br />
“stranger,” which means, of course, nothing more<br />
than a person belonging by birth to some other<br />
parish. It is now proposed to put up a stained<br />
glass window in the new nave of the church, in<br />
memory of Massinger. I do not think that this<br />
is a cause which needs pleading with the readers<br />
of this paper and the members of this Society.<br />
Will those who love to see honour paid to litera-<br />
ture send their offerings to this object to the<br />
Rev. W. Thompson, D.D., St. Saviour's Church,<br />
Southwark? The church now rebuilt still retains<br />
its Reformation name. Perhaps it may be per-<br />
mitted to hope that it may soon return to its<br />
historic name of St. Mary Overies.<br />
The following letter has reached me:<br />
In Halifax, last week, I happened to pick up a book of<br />
yours, “The Revolt of Man,” issued by the Halifax Corpo-<br />
ration Library. I thought it might be an interesting fact to<br />
you to know that this august body does you the honour of<br />
circulating your work in its Tauchnitz Edition :<br />
Some time since a remonstrance was published<br />
in the Author against the importation and circu-<br />
lation of Tauchnitz books. An attempt was made<br />
to minimise the importance of the damage done<br />
to authors by the free circulation of their books.<br />
Here we have an illustration of what may happen.<br />
The number of libraries in the country is rapidly<br />
increasing ; many of these have several branches.<br />
Of popular books they take many copies. Suppose<br />
they ali take Tauchnitz copies! Why not ? No<br />
attempt is made to stop them. Library com-<br />
mittees will speedily forget that to buy these<br />
editions is against the law ; they will only<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 295 (#309) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
295<br />
remember that the Tauchnitz Edition is cheaper.<br />
Thus will be lost to author and publisher many<br />
thousands of every popular book.<br />
What is the law on the subject P<br />
It has thus been given to me by a lawyer:<br />
“I do not think there is any offence in owning<br />
or in circulating a copy of a Tauchnitz edition of<br />
an English book. The offender must not sell it<br />
or hire it, in which case it would be an infringe-<br />
ment of copyright, and he would be liable to be<br />
proceeded against under the 17th section of 1842<br />
Act, and 42nd and 152nd section of the Customs<br />
Act, 1876,<br />
“The joint effect of these sections appears to<br />
be that anyone importing, selling, or hiring any<br />
foreign printed copy of a copyright book know-<br />
ingly, or having in his possession any copy for<br />
sale or hire, shall, on conviction before two<br />
justices of the peace, forfeit 310 and double the<br />
value of every copy: £5 to go to the officer of<br />
Excise, and the remainder to the proprietor of<br />
the copyright; such book to be seized and<br />
destroyed.<br />
“Does the Halifax Free Library hold the<br />
copy for sale or hire P Under the Customs Act<br />
of 1876 the Customs can seize and destroy any<br />
books on the copyright list; but notice of copy-<br />
right in writing to the Commissioners of Customs<br />
is a condition precedent.”<br />
A complete translation of Balzac's novels,<br />
published at a low price, edited by a well-known<br />
scholar, is a literary experiment of very con-<br />
siderable interest. All who read French at all<br />
read the Comédie Humaine; but will those who<br />
cannot read French buy the translation ? The<br />
writer, to begin with, is Parisian through and<br />
through, with that note of the past inseparable<br />
from work fifty years old. Again, does Balzac<br />
possess the sensational qualities which now seem<br />
necessary to success? And, when we have agreed<br />
to let our own past masters stand forgotten on<br />
the shelves, shall we be eager to take up the<br />
French masters? For instance, Dickens seems<br />
fast losing his hold—only for a time, but still—<br />
for the present. Thackeray is only read by “the<br />
better sort’”; as for Charles Lever and Anthony<br />
Trollope, apparently they are gone; and as for<br />
Wilkie Collins and Charles Reade, they are read<br />
only in two or three books. Each generation, in<br />
fact, will have its own novelists belonging to<br />
itself; it grudges not classics belonging to the<br />
dead, but they must be few, one to this old<br />
novelist, one to that ; it will refuse to read the<br />
whole of the dead man’s work. Will the present<br />
generation so far depart from established custom<br />
as to admit en bloc the whole of the Comédie<br />
Humaine P. We shall see, and, as I said above,<br />
it is a literary experiment of very considerable<br />
interest. With Messrs. Dent and Co., who<br />
understand dainty books, for publishers; with Mr.<br />
George Saintsbury, who understands his Balzac,<br />
for an editor, and with Messrs. Constable to print<br />
the work, the series should have every chance.<br />
Some three or four years ago—perhaps more—<br />
there appeared a new translation of “Don<br />
Quixote,” by Mr. H. E. Watts. It was not<br />
reviewed by many papers, and by still fewer was<br />
it adequately reviewed. One or two critics, how-<br />
ever, had the intelligence to perceive that this<br />
was the finest translation as yet offered to the<br />
public, and the work of a fine Spanish scholar<br />
who possesssed other qualities for the translation<br />
of Cervantes besides scholarship—notably, know-<br />
ledge of the time and the social conditions of<br />
the time; humour and the quick perception<br />
of the humorous ; and, among other things,<br />
the common sense which keeps a translator<br />
and an annotator from being carried away by<br />
his subject, and the various theories, fads,<br />
and crotchets which gather round such a subject<br />
as the Knight. The book was published in three<br />
big quarto volumes at a price prohibitory. The<br />
purse of the ordinary book buyer—marrow but<br />
well meaning — could not attain to that price.<br />
So the matter rested, and it seemed as if, but<br />
for a few libraries, the work was closed to the<br />
public. Well: a new edition has now been<br />
undertaken (Messrs. A. and C. Black) at a reason-<br />
able and possible price; and we shall be able to<br />
possess at last the immortal work of Cervantes<br />
in a translation worthy and adequate.<br />
Is there room for another novel on the gentle-<br />
man highwayman P. The field one would think<br />
was entirely occupied by Ainsworth and Lytton.<br />
Nevertheless, Mr. C. T. C. James—no novice in<br />
the art of story telling—boldly pushes in with a<br />
new story on the old theme. The fact is that no<br />
field in fiction is occupied. He would be a bold<br />
man who would treat of Tunbridge Wells in 1750,<br />
with Thackeray as a rival; but the rivalry is not<br />
an impossible thing. Again, he would be a bold<br />
man who would face Scott in the 1745 business,<br />
but such audacity is not impossible. Mr. James,<br />
however, does not in reality present himself as a<br />
rival of the two elder novelists. He confines him-<br />
self to a single tavern in a London suburb and to<br />
its adventures with a single highwayman. He<br />
presents a vivid and interesting picture of life a<br />
hundred and fifty years ago. The book carries<br />
one along breathless from beginning to end.<br />
There is only one fault to find with it—a fault<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 296 (#310) ############################################<br />
<br />
296<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
that is not discovered till the book is done with<br />
and cold criticism begins. The highwayman is<br />
pardoned. Why? Because his mistress once<br />
gave a cup of purl to the king P. Not sufficient<br />
reason. The man is a thief and a robber. There<br />
is no escape from that ; and, as such, he would<br />
assuredly have been hanged, purl or no purl.<br />
In January last, a communication entitled<br />
“Editorial Amenities,” signed “C. H.,” ap-<br />
peared in the Author. There were three cases of<br />
complaint. As regards the last, the editor of the<br />
magazine in question has sent copies of the corre-<br />
spondence to this paper. It appears from the<br />
letters (1) that the article was accepted and paid<br />
for; (2) that the editor, on revising his accepted<br />
articles, found errors which, in his judgment,<br />
made the paper useless to him; (3) that he<br />
accordingly declined to print the paper, still<br />
exercising his judgment as editor; (4) that, as<br />
the paper was anonymous, the refusal did no<br />
harm to the author's reputation; (5) that the<br />
author, although he had been paid for the paper,<br />
was quite free to send it elsewhere ; (6) that it<br />
is impossible for an editor to carry on a<br />
controversy with any contributor as to the<br />
reasons of his decision; (7) that the editor has<br />
found no reason to change his opinion as to<br />
certain inaccuracies in the contribution ; and (8)<br />
that the author is quite free to retain his<br />
own opinion, and to believe that the paper is<br />
accurate.<br />
It is always a mortifying thing to have a MS.<br />
returned. But an editor is absolute ; he must,<br />
in the nature of the case, be absolute; and an<br />
editor cannot possibly be expected to carry on ex-<br />
planations and reasons for his decisions.<br />
Two months ago, in a notice on the death of<br />
Sir John Robert Seeley, I mentioned that he had<br />
been a member of the council of the Society. A<br />
good many correspondents pointed out that his<br />
name was not on the list. In short, I was wrong,<br />
because Seeley never was upon our council at all.<br />
His connection with the Society was that of Vice-<br />
President, an office which still exists, but has been<br />
allowed to drop out of prominence, most of the<br />
W.P.'s having long since joined the council. In<br />
the first year of the Society's existence, when it<br />
was absolutely necessary that it should receive<br />
the nominal support and approval of as many<br />
leaders as possible, with this view, the committee<br />
invited certain writers and scholars to signify<br />
their approval of the objects of the Society by<br />
becoming Vice-Presidents. In the month of<br />
April, 1885, I find in the minute-book of the<br />
committee the following acceptances of this invita-<br />
tion. It was a goodly list.<br />
Matthew Arnold<br />
Philip James Bailey<br />
Lord Brabourne<br />
Frank Cowley Burnand<br />
J. Anthony Froude<br />
Bishop of Chichester<br />
Prof. Huxley, F.R.S.<br />
The Librarian of Windsor<br />
Castle .<br />
Sir Henry Maine, K.C.S.I.<br />
Sir Theodore Martin<br />
James Payn<br />
John Ruskin, D.C.L.<br />
Prof. Seeley<br />
Prof. Skeat'<br />
Sir Richard Temple<br />
Prof. Tyndall, LL.D.<br />
Dean Waughan<br />
W. G. Wills.<br />
Some of the Vice-Presidents afterwards, as<br />
stated above, became members of the council;<br />
others remained, and are still, vice-presidents,<br />
though their names are no longer advertised.<br />
It is pleasing to record that Seeley did more<br />
than remain simply an honorary vice-president.<br />
In the year 1888, when the Society gave a dinner<br />
to American men and women of letters, Seeley<br />
lent the weight of his name as a steward. He<br />
regularly received, and, there is reason to believe,<br />
read the documents of the Society and spoke.<br />
The Royal Literary Fund last year relieved the<br />
necessities of forty-five applicants—twenty-seven<br />
being men and eighteen women. By the rules of<br />
the Fund, applicants must prove that they are<br />
authors by putting in their published works.<br />
How many men and women are there in this<br />
country who could thus prove themselves to be<br />
authors P. There are about 1350 members of the<br />
Society, all of whom have produced books. Now<br />
this number includes very few writers of educa-<br />
tional books, very few writers of technical books,<br />
and not many writers of theological books. Let<br />
us suppose that there are twice that number out-<br />
side the Society: this gives us a total of, say,<br />
4000 authors. The total applicants for relief<br />
during the last year was forty-five—that is to<br />
say, I 125 per cent. This is a very satisfactory<br />
percentage. Authorship is certainly improving<br />
on its material side. The grants to the men<br />
average about £42 apiece; those to the women<br />
£54 apiece.<br />
If “Weary" will send me her name and<br />
address, I will endeavour to answer her letter.<br />
The subject is hardly suitable for these columns.<br />
At the moment of going to press we learn that<br />
Canada has ceased to collect the royalties accord-<br />
ing to the old agreement. It would be interesting<br />
to learn how much was collected last year, and<br />
who has received any share of it.<br />
WALTER BESANT,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 297 (#311) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
297<br />
DECADENCE OF LITERATURE,<br />
Dº 'S theory is eminently true of<br />
literature. It is a case of the survival of<br />
the fittest. The weak may flourish for a<br />
time and choke the environs like the lianes in a<br />
tropical forest, but they perish with their season,<br />
and the stalwart trees survive and make them-<br />
selves evident in later generations.<br />
For the present there is an enormous growth of<br />
these ephemeral productions, and may I be for-<br />
given for suggesting that editors and publishers<br />
of magazines are a good deal to blame, not only<br />
for their growth but for the deterioration of what<br />
might have been a forest tree, or at best a worthy<br />
shrub P No sooner has a writer made “a hit ’’<br />
than he or she is besieged with solicitations to<br />
contribute to this or that periodical, and it<br />
requires considerable self-control, maybe, or in-<br />
dolence, or superiority to pelf to resist and refuse<br />
till the production is ripe, or not to try to gratify<br />
more than one at the same time. To take an<br />
illustration from art, pot-boilers, instead of pic-<br />
tures, are the consequence.<br />
Nothing is more true than what Mr. Cresswell<br />
says in the last number, though rapid work is<br />
good, hurried work is never good, and the pub-<br />
lisher who displays an attractive catalogue of<br />
authors announced at the beginning of the<br />
year, almost compels some at least to hurried<br />
work. Also the distinctive characteristics of the<br />
periodicals are lost by thus obtaining the ser-<br />
vices of the authors who are willing to write for<br />
all and each. I believe some of the American<br />
magazines bind a writer to write for nothing else;<br />
and it is really a wise arrangement, since the old<br />
sense that it was honourable to work for one firm<br />
alone has died away. Another modern fashion<br />
ruinous to good literature is the laying contribu-<br />
tions on the bed of Procrustes. Readers are sup-<br />
posed to object to a tale passing the limits of<br />
a volume. They like to have it finished<br />
off, and be free to begin a fresh serial,<br />
and thus the story always shows symptoms of<br />
winding up in November, and we are sure the<br />
hero and heroine will be married or defunct in<br />
December. Well if they are allowed to finish<br />
their career with proper honours! How many<br />
stories have I read where the beginning was full<br />
of pleasant details, but the latter end was<br />
evidently squeezed together and cut down, so as<br />
to lose all proportion and become a spoilt per-<br />
formance.<br />
This is a new fashion. Take up an old Black-<br />
wood, see “Ten Thousand a Year” runs on<br />
number after number ; or an old Cornhill, where<br />
“Phineas Finn,” “The Knight of Gwynne,” and<br />
the admirable “Lettice Lisle,” have a never<br />
wearied audience; or, again, Household Words<br />
knew and prized Mrs. Gaskell too well to part<br />
with her till death cut off the end of “Wives and<br />
Daughters.”<br />
Totus, teres atque rotundus is a good rule, but<br />
if Milton could not carve a statue out of a cherry<br />
stone it is hard for lesser geniuses, after carving<br />
the head in one proportion, to have to get the<br />
limbs into the remainder of the stone. If a<br />
fiction is to be good for anything, it must have<br />
its needful development, and not be sacrificed to a<br />
December number.<br />
Some people have a real genius for the short<br />
story, Brett Hart’s “Luck of Roaring Camp’’ or<br />
“Mademoiselle Ixe” seem to me perfect speci-<br />
mens of the style. Americans excel in them, but<br />
then they have the advantage of an immense field<br />
of country and every variety of manners and of<br />
civilisation, whereas in our old country the<br />
changes are continually rung on ghosts and<br />
detectives, and the demand creates a very<br />
mediocre style of supply. A tale of character<br />
requires space (at least if it be not a mere sketch),<br />
and it would be well to follow Anthony<br />
Trollope's habit of either publishing the whole<br />
at once, or not letting a chapter appear till the<br />
whole was complete in his portfolio. Another<br />
mischievous habit is that of hasty reviewing.<br />
When I began the world, to solicit a favourable<br />
notice would have been thought unworthy. I may<br />
truly say that I never have done so, except<br />
when a book was for some special purpose<br />
needed to be put forward. Reviews used then<br />
to be often good criticisms, really useful. Some-<br />
times they stung hard, but generally they were<br />
really improving by the faults they found. They<br />
embodied and brought home the judgment of<br />
the public of cultivated minds, and never should I<br />
have thought of trying to enlist them in my<br />
favour, or ask for their verdict. When an editor<br />
myself, I was always prejudiced (fairly or<br />
unfairly) by being asked for a friendly notice,<br />
or by having a whole bundle of cuttings from<br />
papers sent me with a MS. ; and, worse than all,<br />
it has happened to me to receive with a new<br />
book a packet of extracts from it in type, for the<br />
convenience of the reviewer P To see a whole<br />
page of opinions of the press, mostly provincial,<br />
never gives me a good impression, though this<br />
may be due more to the publisher than the<br />
author, and it is treating the subject like tea,<br />
cocoa, or soap. The multitude of publications<br />
which are all poured forth at one time, and the<br />
insistence of publishers and authors for an early<br />
notice, absolutely prevents efficient treatment in<br />
criticism. Time and space alike fail, and whether<br />
a book be bad or good, or “ower gude for<br />
banning ower good for blessing,” it has to be<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 298 (#312) ############################################<br />
<br />
298<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
skimmed over and despatched in a few lines.<br />
This is not criticism. It is mere advertisement.<br />
No guide to the author hardly, except in the<br />
higher stamp of literary journals—a guide to the<br />
reader in the selection from the circulating<br />
library. Are these simply the murmurs of an<br />
old author, laudator temporis acti, or is there<br />
any means of raising the tone and aspirations of<br />
writers P C. M. YONGE.<br />
*-- ~ 2–º<br />
s= **s-s<br />
A SHEAF OF POETS,<br />
HEY have accumulated during two months<br />
until now there is quite a little pile. Is it<br />
not a sign or proof of a reviving taste in<br />
poetry that there should be so many “bids” for<br />
poetic fame? We may take it, without meaning<br />
to give any offence, that the poets all pay for the<br />
production of their work. Would they tell us<br />
how many copies they sell? For instance, thirty<br />
years ago a certain friend of mine published at<br />
his own expense a thin volume of verse. Exactly<br />
three copies were sold. How many have been<br />
sold of the volumes before me?<br />
The best course for the Author to adopt is to<br />
let each scribe speak for himself without favour.<br />
The order in which they speak means nothing:<br />
I. The “In Memoriam ” of Italy. A Century<br />
of Sonnets from the Poems of Victoria Colonna,<br />
Marchesa de Pescara. Translator anonymous.<br />
(London: Henry Gray, Leicester-square.)<br />
AMOR, TU SAI.<br />
Thou knowest, Love I never turned my feet<br />
From thy dear prison; that I ne'er untied<br />
Thy light yoke from my neck, nor ne'er denied<br />
Thy service which at first my soul found meet ;<br />
Time shall ne'er change my faith, of old complete;<br />
Thy bond, as once I bound it, still shall bide ;<br />
Nor, for the bitter fruit thy tree doth hide,<br />
Doth my heart find the seed less pure or sweet.<br />
Now hast thou seen how in a faithful heart<br />
Thy sharpest arrow hath no skill to wound,<br />
That Death against it hath no force or power;<br />
O let at last the tie which bound it part,<br />
(Tho' sweeter aye it was than freedom found)<br />
Yet lags and lingers yet my joyful hour.<br />
II. “Sita,” and other Poems. By Mrs.<br />
Aylmer Gowing. (London: Elliot Stock.)<br />
TENNYSON.<br />
oCTOBER 6, 1892.<br />
All glorious with the mystery sublime<br />
Thy eyes shall fathom soon,<br />
Night's bosom pillows thee, O son of Time !<br />
In splendours of the moon.<br />
Cometh thy daybreak—there shall be no night<br />
In that far heaven, Luntrod<br />
By course of quenching suns or stars, whose light<br />
Shall be the face of God.<br />
True seer, from thy heart the lamp of faith<br />
Glowed clear through storm and shine,<br />
And clothed the fearful majesty of Death<br />
In robes of grace divine.<br />
And thine the hand of might, the tender touch<br />
That makes our pulse thine own<br />
By love's enchantments, for thou hast loved much,<br />
And grief’s excess hast known.<br />
Sweet singer, by thy voice of human love<br />
And sorrow, pure and strong,<br />
Teach us to find our God, while thou, above,<br />
Art singing a new song.<br />
III. “Thoughts in a Garden.”<br />
Stevenson. (London : Elliot Stock.)<br />
AUTUMN SONG.<br />
All day the fiercest winds have blown,<br />
The leaves upon the grass are strown,<br />
Save a few stragglers, sad and lone,<br />
That fringe the boughs;<br />
The fir-tree groans, as, on the height,<br />
He feels the tempest's frenzied flight,<br />
Yet from the earth his grasp of might<br />
No wrench allows.<br />
By A. C.<br />
The flowerets, erst so bright and brave,<br />
Now in the dust have found a grave;<br />
No loving hand their life could save<br />
From ruin drear;<br />
Only the blossoms named of gold,<br />
Defiant of the rain and cold,<br />
Still form a funeral-wreath to fold<br />
O'er Nature’s bier.<br />
There is an end to Summer’s pride,<br />
To autumn with his garners wide;<br />
Now winter comes, with rapid stride,<br />
His throne to take ;<br />
Long will his fetters bind the earth,<br />
He robs the year of half its worth,<br />
While scent of flowers and woodland mirth,<br />
Our lives forsake.<br />
IV. “Wignettes.” By Aubrey St. John Mild-<br />
may. (London : Elliot Stock.)<br />
TWELFTH-NIGHT.<br />
(Reprinted by permission from the “Spectator,” January 13th, 1894.)<br />
I should like to have your dimples,<br />
Your wonderment, your nonsense,<br />
Your grave hands, and your tripping feet,<br />
Your carelessness, your conscience;<br />
I should like to know the secrets<br />
You are talking with your brother<br />
Between the mazes of the dance,<br />
As your eyes meet one another.<br />
Little maid, all eyes, and such eyes<br />
Half-lightning and half-laughter,<br />
Sugar-things I should like to eat,<br />
Aud never hunger, after :<br />
Tell me, little maid, do you believe<br />
That if you looked and looked,<br />
And turned into a tipsy-cake,<br />
The best that could be cooked,<br />
Do you think that if I swallowed you<br />
And incontinently died,<br />
That the judge would call it murder<br />
Or only suicide P<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 299 (#313) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR. 299<br />
Because I’ve drunk your beauty in ;-<br />
But you don’t know what that means<br />
Any more than beams, which pony loves,<br />
Can know that they are beans.<br />
Good-night, dear, dainty tipsy-cake,<br />
I’m but a selfish jade,<br />
Just whinnying to himself about<br />
The dinner he has made.<br />
And I may not, may not keep you<br />
For my sweet-meat to enjoy,<br />
God has planned you for a help-meet<br />
For some happy, happy boy.<br />
W. “Pipings.” By John Arthur Coupland.<br />
(London: John Ferries.)<br />
DREAMS.<br />
A ghost-like vapour wraps the wood,<br />
And frozen is the stream,<br />
The birds upon bare branches brood,<br />
And nothing breaks their dream.<br />
They dream of Spring, of Summer sweet,<br />
Of green and leafy bowers.<br />
I also dream : in winding-sheet<br />
Behold the murdered hours.<br />
WI. “In Leisure Time.” By William S.<br />
Mavor. (London: Elliot Stock.)<br />
TO TERPSICHORE.<br />
If Choryphaeus leading the dancing choir<br />
With steps of stately ceremonial;<br />
Or leaping Faun and Bacchanal<br />
Around thine altar cannot tire<br />
Their nimble feet;<br />
If Pyrrhic dances yield<br />
Their martial music as the crashing shield<br />
And falchion meet ;<br />
Or, if we pleasure us<br />
As eye beholds<br />
Nymphs, robed in draperies diaphanous,<br />
Whose fleecy veils their sensuous limbs surround<br />
In serpent folds,<br />
Whose lissom feet but kiss the ground ;<br />
If such affect Thee, gladly we<br />
Thus pay our festal vows, Terpsichore<br />
VII. “Scintillae Carminis.” By Percival<br />
W. H. Almy. (London: Elliot Stock.)<br />
RATE : A PASTORAL.<br />
And the bells, the bells, the tumbling bells<br />
Shall reel and peal through the livelong day;<br />
And they’ll deck the church with blooming birch,<br />
And the cherry bloom and the may, the may ;<br />
“So kiss me, Kate, and we’ll be married o' Sunday.”<br />
And you shall have rings and golden things,<br />
And satin shoes as white as milk,<br />
And coloured bows and high clock hose,<br />
And a glittering gown of silk, of silk;<br />
“So kiss me, Kate, and we’ll be married o' Sunday.”<br />
And servants shall wait on my Lady Kate,<br />
Like a maiden queen of a high degree ;<br />
And garlands rare shall bind your hair,<br />
Dragged from the mouth of the bee, the bee ;<br />
* So kiss me, Kate, and we’ll be married o' Sunday.”<br />
VIII. The “Mummer.” By Harry Gaelyn.<br />
(London : Elliott Stock.)<br />
IN A CITY.<br />
Dim grimy way<br />
In the dull drear City,<br />
Where never a ray<br />
Of God’s sun, through the livelong day<br />
Pierces the pall of the murky sky,<br />
To tell of pity<br />
And hope, to those who live and die<br />
T)ay by day,<br />
In that grimy way.<br />
Yet there,<br />
By yon crazy stair,<br />
Long years ago, Love stayed his flight.<br />
There,<br />
In the dusky light<br />
Love shook his wings and all was bright<br />
For two true souls—and they<br />
Until this day<br />
Have found that grimy way<br />
A pathway of delight.<br />
IX. “The Prophecy of Westminster.”<br />
Harriet E. H. King. (London: W. B. Whitting-<br />
ham.)<br />
This volume of verse is in honour of Cardinal<br />
Manning.<br />
THE COMFORTER, COMFORTED<br />
O Thou whose throne was set in Westminster,<br />
Among the many god-like names whereby<br />
We hold thee in our hearts, this one doth lie<br />
Nearest each thought of thee—the Comforter.<br />
What bitter pains, what manifold disgrace<br />
Hiding itself from every other face,<br />
What broken hearts, what wounds of penitents,<br />
What secret cruelties, what ghastly rents,<br />
Open have lain beneath thy pitying eye,<br />
Fled to thy bosom as to sanctuary,<br />
And felt thy holy tenderness outpoured<br />
Upon the quivering life, to hope restored<br />
X. “Religio Clerici and other Poems.” By<br />
Alfred Starkey. (London: Elliot Stock.)<br />
The principal poem in this collection is purely<br />
religious. It is difficult to quote any passage<br />
which, detached, would fully represent the powers<br />
of the poet. Here, however, are the opening<br />
lines:<br />
Last year, what time the bells of summer months<br />
Had rung their sweetest chimes, I took my way<br />
Up through the long sea-walleys, dark and stern<br />
In bouldered turf and reappearing rock<br />
Struck through the shallow soil, like hoary bones<br />
Of some vast buried age. In the slant light<br />
I saw the bramble dews gleam changeful sparks<br />
Of pearl and ruby ; and oft I stayed to watch<br />
The autumn spiders spin their floating threads,<br />
And launch their ačry voyages; or paused<br />
While on some red-leaved bough the robin, left<br />
Sole chorister of all the tuneful quire<br />
Which filled in spring, the chancel of the year<br />
With soft and grateful song, now piped a faint<br />
And faltering dirge o'er bright days dead or dying,<br />
Mingling its matin notes with vesper falls<br />
Of melancholy minors, like a sigh<br />
From Nature’s sabbath heart.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 300 (#314) ############################################<br />
<br />
3OO<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
XI. The “ Divine Surrender.” By William<br />
Wullan. (London: Elliot Stock.)<br />
This is a “Mystery Play” treating of the<br />
Crucifixion. It is impossible to quote anything<br />
unless one were to take several pages.<br />
*- a -º<br />
BOOK TALK,<br />
OME time ago Mr. John Hollingshead issued<br />
a booklet of an autobiographical nature, and<br />
now he announces a complete autobiography<br />
in two volumes for the coming publishing season.<br />
His acquaintance with literary and theatrical<br />
celebrities has been, of course, very large.<br />
A very curious and significant fact is announced<br />
from America, that the library of the late Oliver<br />
Wendell Holmes has been valued at only £160.<br />
A new connection between the Press and<br />
the publishers is to be inaugurated this<br />
spring by the appearance of the “ Pall Mall<br />
Magazine Library,” which Messrs. Sampson<br />
Low and Co. will issue. “The Decline and Fall<br />
of Napoleon,” by Lord Wolseley; and “The Rise<br />
of Wellington,” by Lord Roberts, will be the<br />
first two volumes. The editors of the Magazine<br />
will contribute an introduction. The price of the<br />
series is to be 3s. 6d.<br />
The work upon which the late Sir John Seeley<br />
was engaged when he died was “The Growth of<br />
British Policy,” and it is being edited by Pro-<br />
fessor Prothero for the Cambridge University<br />
Press, in two volumes. It seems a pity that this<br />
could not have been included in the uniform<br />
edition of Sir John Seeley's works, of which<br />
Messrs. Macmillan will issue “The Expansion of<br />
England” on May 3, and “Ecce Homo,”<br />
“Natural Religion,” and “Lectures and Essays”<br />
at monthly intervals.<br />
Mr. George Allen, who began as a publisher<br />
of Ruskin, is extending his list in many direc-<br />
tions, and “Ruskin House” is more of a com-<br />
pliment than a description. His edition of<br />
Spenser’s “Faerie Queen,” edited by Mr. Wise,<br />
and illustrated by Mr. Walter Crane, has reached<br />
its fifth part, and he announces “The Gurneys of<br />
Earlham,” in three volumes, by Mr. Augustus<br />
J. C. Hare, profusely illustrated. The work is<br />
the memoirs and correspondence of the eleven<br />
children of John and Catherine Gurney, 1775-<br />
1875.<br />
The most important work of travel in the<br />
autumn season will probably be Captain Young-<br />
husband's account of his famous journeys in<br />
India and the far East. The title has not yet<br />
been finally settled, as it is difficult to get one<br />
which describes the whole field, but it will pro-<br />
bably be “The Heart of a Continent; being the<br />
Narrative of Travel from 1886-1894 in Man-<br />
churia, Mongolia, Chinese Turkestan, the Pamirs,<br />
and the Hindu-Kush.” Mr. McCormick, who<br />
illustrated Mr. Conway’s “Himalayas,” will also<br />
be the illustrator of this work. Mr. Murray is<br />
the publisher.<br />
A short time before his death Professor Blackie<br />
collected together materials for his biography,<br />
and this will be published in the autumn by<br />
Messrs. Blackwood and Co. It is written by<br />
Miss Stoddart.<br />
In Messrs. Putnam’s Sons’ “ Heroes of the<br />
Nations” series, Mrs. Oliphant will write on<br />
“Joan of Arc; ” Mr. Oman, of All Souls, Oxford,<br />
on “Marlborough and England as a Military<br />
Power; ” and Professor Burr, of Cornell, on<br />
“Charlemagne as the Reorganiser of Europe.”<br />
Mr. Leslie Stephen’s “Ethical Discourses” will<br />
shortly be published by Messrs. Sonnenschein who<br />
also announce twelve interesting volumes of their<br />
new “Social England” series. Mr. Baldwin Brown<br />
will write on “The History of the Fine Arts in<br />
England; ” Mr. Cornish, Vice-Provost of Eton,<br />
on “Chivalry;” Professor Winogradoff on “The<br />
English Manor;” Mr. Henry Balfour on “The<br />
Evolution of Household Implements; ” Mr.<br />
Inderwick, Q.C., on “The King's Peace, a His-<br />
torical Sketch of the English Law Courts; ” Mr.<br />
S. O. Addy, on “The Evolution of the English<br />
House; ” Professor Cunningham on “The<br />
Influence of Alien Immigration on Social Life; ”<br />
Alice Law on “Guilds, and the Rise of the Mer-<br />
chant Class; ” and Mr. G. C. Chisholm, on “ The<br />
Influence of Geography and Travel on Social<br />
Life.”<br />
The Westminster Gazette has published, on the<br />
authority of Messrs. Chapman and Hall, the<br />
interesting fact that, since 1872, of the People's<br />
Edition of Carlyle’s “Sartor Resartus” 89,000<br />
copies have been sold, and of “ Heroes and Hero<br />
Worship,” IoS,000.<br />
All who have read and delighted in Mr. Nisbet<br />
Bain’s translations of “ Hans Andersen’s Fairy<br />
Stories”—and who has not both read them and<br />
delighted in them P-will look forward greatly to<br />
his Life of Andersen, which will be published by<br />
Messrs. Lawrence and Bullen in the spring.<br />
The Ealing Free Library has transferred “The<br />
Manxman " to the reference department, where<br />
only adults can procure it ; the chairman of the<br />
committee, the Rev. J. S. Hilliard, describing it as<br />
“a most indecent book.”<br />
No announcement has yet been made on the<br />
subject, but it may be taken for granted that in<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 301 (#315) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3O I<br />
the autumn we shall have a striking account<br />
from the pen of Slatin Pasha on his eleven years'<br />
captivity in the Mahdi's camp. It will be<br />
remembered that Father Ohrwalder, who was<br />
rescued in a similar manner through the instru-<br />
mentality of Major Wingate, R.A., in 1892,<br />
published in that year a very interesting book.<br />
Mr. Blackmore has written a series of tales in<br />
verse, to be published under the title of<br />
“Fringalla,” by Mr. Elkin Matthews in the<br />
spring. The same publisher announces Professor<br />
Corbin’s Harvard prize essay on “The Elizabethan<br />
Hamlet,” with a prefatory note by Professor York<br />
Powell. The idea of the essay is that nowadays<br />
we have lost sight of a comic element in “Hamlet”<br />
which was present to Elizabethan audiences.<br />
A book awaited with eagerness by soldiers and<br />
historians is General Sir Daniel Lyson’s “The<br />
Crimean War from First to Last.” It is said to<br />
be full of facts and stories that have never been<br />
published before, and the author is credited with<br />
being one of the few officers who never left the<br />
camp of the First Division for a single day from<br />
the outbreak of hostilities to their conclusion.<br />
Sir Daniel is now eighty-one.<br />
A book by Baron Rothschild on his trip to Cape<br />
Town and on South Africa generally is nearly<br />
ready. No doubt it will appear in an appropriately<br />
gorgeous form. The publishers are Messrs.<br />
Longmans. The tenth edition of Erichsen’s<br />
magnum opus “The Science and Art of Surgery,”<br />
in two volumes, with a thousand engravings, is<br />
also announced by the same publishers.<br />
The Figaro has published a series of very<br />
interesting extracts from M. Clemenceau’s book<br />
entitled “La Mélée Sociale.” This appears to be<br />
a very pessimistic view of human activities.<br />
No doubt an English translation will soon be<br />
announced. Perhaps the indefatigable Mr.<br />
Sherard already has it in hand.<br />
The preliminary announcements of Mr. Henry<br />
Dyer’s volume on “The Evolution of Industry,”<br />
promise a very opportune and needed work. He<br />
regards his subject from both social and political<br />
standpoints, and discusses such timely topics as<br />
the position of women, Municipal control, State<br />
control, and, of course, industrial training.<br />
Messrs. Macmillan are the publishers.<br />
The new editor of the Daily Chronicle, in<br />
succession to Mr. A. E. Fletcher resigned, is Mr.<br />
H. W. Massingham, who has for a considerable<br />
period acted as assistant-editor and political<br />
director, as well as writing the brilliant daily<br />
sketch of House and Lobby. The new editor of<br />
the Morning Post, in succession to Mr. A. K.<br />
Moore, deceased, is Mr. Locker, son of Mr.<br />
Arthur Locker, for many years editor of the<br />
Graphic, and nephew of Frederick Locker-<br />
Lampson, the poet.<br />
The first edition of IOOO copies of Mr. Henry<br />
Norman’s book on “The Peoples and Politics of<br />
the Far East ’’ was sold out, the publisher<br />
announces, within the first week of publication,<br />
and a second edition is now ready. During the<br />
month Mr. Norman has been appointed assistant-<br />
editor of the Daily Chronicle, of which paper he<br />
has for some time had charge of the literary<br />
department.<br />
“The Cyclopædia of Names,” published by the<br />
Century Magazine, and by Mr. Fisher Unwin in<br />
this country—certainly one of the most useful<br />
books of reference that has ever seen the light—<br />
is to be issued in monthly half-guinea parts.<br />
Journalists, and people who have occasion to<br />
make researches, have for several years past<br />
greatly valued the “Index to Periodicals,” which<br />
has been issued yearly from the Review of<br />
Rezniews office. Mr. Stead has now commenced<br />
the issue of his “Index to Periodicals" monthly,<br />
at Id. The index shows the contents of the<br />
magazines and of the Review of Reviews for the<br />
coming month, and all the books issued during<br />
the previous month, including Parliamentary<br />
publications.<br />
A week or two will see a most important and<br />
interesting work, in the shape of the biography<br />
of the late Professor Freeman, by Dr. Stephens,<br />
the Dean of Winchester. Messrs. Macmillan<br />
and Co. will publish it in two volumes. It is<br />
said that “the letters will be found to contain a<br />
more striking testimony to the range and variety<br />
of their author's studies than is afforded by any<br />
of his printed works.”<br />
Every month now brings at least one new<br />
magazine, that of March being a sixpenny<br />
monthly called The Englishwoman, edited by Miss<br />
Ella Hepworth Dixon, and published by F. W.<br />
White and Co,<br />
A new sixpenny illustrated weekly, The Hour,<br />
has also made its appearance under the editor-<br />
ship of Mr. A. N. Williamson.<br />
“The World's Own Book; or, the Treasury of<br />
à Kempis,” by Percy Fitzgerald, is announced for<br />
early publication by Mr. Elliot Stock. The work<br />
incidentally gives an account of the chief editions<br />
of the imitation, with an analysis of its methods,<br />
and is illustrated by several facsimiles of pages<br />
from MSS. and early printed editions.<br />
The publication of Miss Elizabeth Hodges's<br />
book, “Some Ancient English Homes and<br />
their Associations: Personal, Archæological, and<br />
Historic,” T. Fisher Unwin, which was arranged<br />
for the first of the month, is, owing to the<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 302 (#316) ############################################<br />
<br />
3O2<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
ravages of influenza among the printers, post-<br />
poned until after Easter. The book, which is<br />
well illustrated, gives descriptive histories of<br />
some interesting but little known Warwickshire<br />
and Gloucestershire “Homes” and their various<br />
inmates, from Saxon times onward.<br />
Mr. Egerton Castle's new novel, called “The<br />
Light of Scarthey,” will appear serially in the<br />
Times (weekly edition) before coming out in one<br />
vol. form. It will begin on the 19th of April, and<br />
will run about six months. It will then be pub-<br />
lished by Messrs. Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co.<br />
“To-Day's Christ : A Study in Re-Incarna-<br />
tion,” by Dr. Joseph Parker, of the City Temple,<br />
is now ready. The publishers are James Nisbet<br />
and Co., 2 I, Berners-street, W.<br />
Mr. Reynolds Ball has been appointed travel<br />
editor of the Road, and will take charge of the<br />
new “Travel and Tour Department,” which<br />
begins in this month’s number. One of the most<br />
interesting features will be an exhaustive review<br />
of a recent popular travel work under the heading<br />
“The Book of Travel of the Month.” Mr.<br />
Douglas Sladen’s “On the Cars and Off” will be<br />
the subject of the April review.<br />
We are sorry to record the death of the lady who<br />
wrote under the nom de plume of “E. Chilton.”<br />
She wrote, in truth, very little, and probably<br />
many of our readers never heard of her. But she<br />
possessed a singularly pure and clear style, and a<br />
certain amount of humour, which made her work<br />
attractive. Perhaps she would have done very<br />
much better had she been spared. There seems<br />
to be no harm in mentioning that her real name<br />
was Mrs. Chilton Brock.<br />
A scholarly and instructive little book, called<br />
“Books Fatal to their Authors” (Elliott Stock),<br />
has been sent to me. In style and in matter the<br />
book reminds one of Disraeli’s books about<br />
literature and authors. Book lovers will make a<br />
note about it. The author, in a second edition,<br />
will do well to correct a misstatement. The<br />
editor of this paper has nowhere said that<br />
publishers now “incur no financial risk.” He<br />
has never said anything so foolish. What he<br />
has said, over and over again, is a very different<br />
thing: That in these days few publishers take<br />
risk, in the old sense of the word. They have<br />
found out the safer plan, viz., where there is risk<br />
to make the author take that risk. The richer<br />
houses sometimes publish books where returns<br />
are doubtful—there are often special reasons why<br />
even a certain loss is advisable; they sometimes<br />
start magazines; they sometimes lock up money<br />
in costly ventures; but the great majority, the<br />
smaller houses, seldom, if they can help it, run<br />
any risk at all in the publication of books.<br />
“Meditations in Motley,” by Walter Black-<br />
burne Harte, is a collection of essays by an<br />
American writer, published by the “Arena Com-<br />
pany, Boston.” It is a handy little volume, and<br />
contains many good things. Among others there<br />
is a revelation of the conditions of criticism in<br />
in America, which ought to reconcile us to our<br />
own country.<br />
“The Friend of Sir Philip Sidney’’ (London:<br />
|Elliot Stock,) is a selection from the works in<br />
verse and prose of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke.<br />
The selection is made by Alexander B. Grosart.<br />
A mºst curious and interesting little volume.<br />
The “Divine Problem of Man,” by Mariquita,<br />
Wiscountess de Panama (London: The Roxburghe<br />
Press) is a religions book which may be com-<br />
mended to those who read works of religious<br />
speculation.<br />
“Silvia Craven” (London : Elliot Stock), by<br />
M. Gordon Holmes, is a six-shilling novel. It is<br />
rather long for these days of quick reading. The<br />
tone of the book is maintained throughout at a<br />
high level.<br />
“Some of our English Poets.” By the Rev.<br />
Canon Bell, D.D. (London : Elliot Stock.) The<br />
poets treated are Gray, Goldsmith, Cowper,<br />
Scott, Coleridge and Wordsworth. There is<br />
always something new to say about a great<br />
writer. Canon Bell has found enough to make<br />
a charming volume of pleasant criticism.<br />
“Cardinal Manning,” a character sketch, by<br />
Harriet Clemence Hamilton King. (Dondon:<br />
Whittingham and Co.) This little work is<br />
written in uncritical admiration of the late<br />
Cardinal. It consists largely of extracts from<br />
his sermons.<br />
Mr. Arthur Dillon, with Mr. William Page, is<br />
forming a syndicate in order to revive Shake-<br />
speare's comedy of “Twelfth Night, or What<br />
You Will,” to be played after the 16th, or early<br />
17th manner. Mr. Dillon says, “Our principle<br />
is that every playwright shows to fairest<br />
advantage in that form of stage for which. he<br />
designed his plays. This is especially true of<br />
Shakespeare, who wrote with such technical<br />
knowledge of the stage of his day.”<br />
“The Silent Room,” by Mrs. Harcourt Roe,<br />
has been published by Messrs. Skeffington and<br />
Co. in Is. form.<br />
Annabel Gray has transferred her works, “The<br />
Ghosts of the Guard-room" and “A Spanish<br />
Singer,” to Messrs. C. Turner and Co., 30 and 32,<br />
Ludgate-hill, who will continue the series.<br />
“Llanako: a Welsh Idyll,” is the title of a new<br />
novel just issued by Messrs. Gay and Bird. The<br />
author is Mrs. Fred Reynolds.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 303 (#317) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3O3<br />
Mr. Frank Barrett's new story, “A Set of<br />
Rogues,” will appear serially this summer in a<br />
number of provincial weeklies. The arrange-<br />
ments are in the hands of the Authors' Syndicate.<br />
Mr. Richard Pryce's new story, “The Burden<br />
of a Woman,” will be published almost imme-<br />
diately by Messrs. A. D. Innes and Co. The<br />
arrangements have been concluded by the Authors'<br />
Syndicate.<br />
Mrs. Paul King, author of “Cousin Cinderella,”<br />
is about to produce a novel in three volumes,<br />
called “Lord Goltho, an Apostle of Whiteness.”<br />
The publishers are Messrs. Hutchinson and Co.<br />
Many of our older members will be pleased to<br />
hear that Mr. James Stanley Little was on the<br />
23rd ult. married to Miss F. Maud Thérèse<br />
Lablache.<br />
There is always a certain diffidence in speaking<br />
of Pierre Plowman and other writings of that<br />
age. One ought to be able to read English of<br />
that period; it is English, only a little more<br />
archaic than Spenser. Yet, as a matter of fact,<br />
the reading is so troublesome, reference to notes<br />
or a glossary is so frequent, that, except in one's<br />
student days, Langland is practically never read at<br />
all. It is time to sweep away the convention that<br />
we all understand fourteenth-century English; and<br />
this, it is to be hoped, will be assisted by Miss<br />
Rate Warren’s “Translation<br />
Vision ” (Fisher Unwin, 1895). The Translation<br />
is close and literal, yet preserves the spirit of the<br />
original. A few notes are added; there is an<br />
appendix, and there is an introduction. Such a<br />
little book does more to make us understand<br />
the fourteenth century than half a dozen learned<br />
volumes with annotations and glossaries. We<br />
must have the learned volumes; but for them we<br />
could not become students in Old or Middle<br />
English. We hope that Miss Warren will con-<br />
tinue her task of making things plain and popular.<br />
* - - --"<br />
- w -<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—“RUSTIC READING '': A REPLY.<br />
ET me assure my critic “C. M. Y.” that my<br />
article on this subject did not deal “with<br />
what was the case thirty or forty years<br />
ago,” an epoch with which I had no personal<br />
acquaintance. Every word of it was the result of<br />
my own observation and experience as a country<br />
clergyman, nor have I any reason to suppose that<br />
the condition of this parish in matters literary is<br />
in any way exceptional. ;<br />
“The writer,” says his critic, cannot really<br />
know John Bunyan's great classic if he thinks it<br />
of Langland’s.<br />
likely to terrify children into the way of virtue.”<br />
But it was to the alarming illustrations of certain<br />
editions, and not to the text, that I took exception,<br />
John Bunyan is not to be held responsible for the<br />
vagaries of his illustrators -<br />
Then I am told that I am not familiar with<br />
parish magazines. Alas ! this is far from being<br />
the case, and I can only repeat that hardly any of<br />
them contain writing worthy the name of literature.<br />
The one exception that I know is Mr. J. G.,<br />
Adderley's Goodwill, but in this, unfortunately,<br />
there is a strong tinge of socialism.<br />
Lastly. “The nickname Hodge is one that<br />
greatly displeases both the peasant and all that<br />
are interested in him.” Dear me, what could I<br />
have been thinking of to use it in this gloriously<br />
democratic age I hope that Thomas Hodge,<br />
Esquire, Parish Councillor, will forgive my forget-<br />
fulness.<br />
THE WRITER OF THE PAPER.<br />
II.—EDITORs' RULEs.<br />
“R. L. T.” has mistaken my suggestion, and I<br />
fear if we authors combined to frame a set of<br />
rules, regulating the terms for the reception of<br />
our MSS., the only result would be a swift and<br />
speedy return of our productions by the indignant<br />
editors. My idea was that they should draw up<br />
a new act of uniformity, out of the kindness of<br />
their hearts, in order that the weary writers<br />
should know how long to wait for rejection or<br />
acceptance, and cheques. The vulgar tradesman<br />
does not give unlimited credit ; why then should<br />
the distinguished, or insignificant, author P<br />
S. B.<br />
III.--WoRD's For SoNGs.<br />
In Mr. R. H. Sherard's February “Letter from<br />
Paris,” he says: “Only the very best writers of<br />
words for songs in England can hope for as much<br />
as four, or at the outside five, guineas for their<br />
words, whilst the average price paid to the poet<br />
is, I believe, 5s.”<br />
Speaking from my own experience, the average<br />
price is two guineas for words worth setting, and<br />
I have never once been offered words at anything<br />
like as low as 5s., nor for the words of my songs<br />
have my publishers, who have uniformly and<br />
courteously given the price asked.<br />
The poet then, unlike composer and publisher,<br />
has no further risk. -<br />
Touching upon the half royalty system in<br />
France ; if a poet took half the royalties of a song<br />
in England, it would hardly be an equal divi-<br />
sion P<br />
The writer of the music has only that one form<br />
of publishing to profit by, whereas the poet only<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 304 (#318) ############################################<br />
<br />
3O4.<br />
THE AUTHO/?.<br />
sells the musical copyright of his poem, and can<br />
publish it in book form without restriction.<br />
In cases where musical copyright is not wished<br />
to be disposed of, the poet frequently grants his<br />
very kind permission to set the same words many<br />
times, thereby popularising his work, or he can<br />
request special terms.<br />
With all appreciation of Mr. Sherard’s sugges-<br />
tions and with every respect for the unspeakable<br />
help of poetry, the labours and risks of music are<br />
so great that the benefit of the minor poet seems<br />
to me best insured in the position he occupies at<br />
present. MARY AUGUSTA SALMOND.<br />
IV.-MUSICAL PUBLISHING.<br />
In reading the valuable remarks upon this<br />
subject in the Author for March, I so thoroughly<br />
agree that “the iniquity of seven copies as six’’<br />
should be challenged.<br />
Why should not thirteen copies count as<br />
twelve, as in the booksellers’ trade P If musical<br />
works are properly stored, this should amply<br />
allow for loss to publishers in soiled or spoilt<br />
copies.<br />
Regarding charges for the performing rights<br />
of composers in oratorios, cantatas, and operas,<br />
the remarks are just, but I would refer the<br />
writer to 45 & 46 Vict. c. 40, ss. I and 2, which<br />
is quoted on page 62 of that admirable little<br />
handbook, “The Law of Musical and Dramatic<br />
Copyright,” by Ed. Cutler, T. E. Smith, and<br />
F. E. Weatherley.<br />
In the case of songs it would seem impolitic<br />
if not imposible to charge.<br />
It must always be remembered how small a<br />
public music has compared with that which<br />
literature and the drama possess.<br />
In some songs, such as “The Lost Chord”<br />
and “The Better Land,” it would appear im-<br />
portant to have mentioned in royalty agreement<br />
if the publisher “shall be entitled to arrange<br />
and use the melody in any separate musical<br />
composition ” with or without any further<br />
payment P -<br />
It is for the greatest composers to begin to<br />
insist upon more equitable terms.<br />
Lesser writers would only have their work<br />
refused for that of others. M. S.<br />
W.—THE GENERAL MEETING.<br />
I was unfortunately unable to attend the<br />
general meeting on the 25th, otherwise, though<br />
only a very humble member, I should have felt<br />
it my duty to protest against Mr. Stuart-<br />
Glennie's strictures.<br />
I have belonged to the Society for nearly ten<br />
years, and whenever I have had occasion to<br />
resort to its services, have been invariably im-<br />
pressed by the admirable manner in which the<br />
business has been conducted. In fact, so far as<br />
my experience is concerned, its attributes may<br />
be summed up in these three words, “Capability,<br />
Celerity, Courtesy,” and there are, I am sure,<br />
very few members who would not render a<br />
similar testimony. WILLIAM TOYNBEE.<br />
WI.—PARALLELISM.<br />
On Nov. 16, 1892, I awoke from sleep with the<br />
idea of the following sonnet, and with the final<br />
line shaped almost exactly as it stands, present in<br />
my mind—whether as carried out of a dream or<br />
as forged in some mental process exactly<br />
synchronous with the recovery of consciousness I<br />
am quite unable to determine. The idea took<br />
possession of me, though at first I recoiled from<br />
the grotesquerie of the gnat, feeling that in the<br />
retention, at all events, of the word, the solemnity<br />
of the whole conception would be risked. That<br />
same morning I composed the sonnet (the first I<br />
ever wrote) in one draft, altering the last line to<br />
“The cry of a hurt bird doth reach me here ";<br />
but in a third copy restoring the ant, in the<br />
deliberate conviction that the grotesquerie was<br />
only skin-deep, and that the thoughtful reader<br />
would justify my decision. Besides, I felt a sort<br />
of scrupulousness in tampering with the gift of a<br />
dream.<br />
Two or three days ago I saw an advertisement<br />
of a new book or pamphlet by my friend Mr.<br />
Coulson Kernahan. The title is as follows:<br />
“God and the Ant: A Dream of the Last Day.”<br />
On the face of it, the motif of that, one would<br />
say, is almost identical with the motif of my<br />
Plagiarism, conscious or unconscious, is out of<br />
the question. -<br />
I fancy that the parallelism is remarkable<br />
enough to deserve record. Besides having<br />
seemingly been first in ink, I should like to be<br />
first in print.<br />
'Atrokatóorraorus IIdivrov.<br />
Lo, the great day that sees God's purpose wrought !<br />
Time in His lap doth lie, a woven skin,<br />
Sin is His awful aureole, and pain<br />
On His forefinger shines, a pearl sum-caught.<br />
Yea, the great day, the end of all God’s thought:<br />
The stars roll anthems, all the airy main<br />
Washes bright rapture, mingled with the strain<br />
Of human cycles to the vintage brought.<br />
Creation praises. Lo, God lifts His hand,<br />
Spreading mild lightning on from sphere to sphere :<br />
The tide of triumphs stops; the planets stand ;<br />
Yea, the worlds hearken, as high God speaks clear:<br />
“Broken is all the harmony I plann’d :—<br />
There is a gnat whose voice I do not hear.”<br />
FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE. | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/275/1895-04-01-The-Author-5-11.pdf | publications, The Author |
276 | https://historysoa.com/items/show/276 | The Author, Vol. 05 Issue 12 (May 1895) | <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.+05+Issue+12+%28May+1895%29"><em>The Author</em>, Vol. 05 Issue 12 (May 1895)</a> | | | <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015013732253</a> | | | | | | | | <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> | 1895-05-01-The-Author-5-12 | | | | | 305–332 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=89&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=5">5</a> | | | | | | | | | | | <a href="/items/browse?advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=76&advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=1895-05-01">1895-05-01</a> | | | | | | | 12 | | | 18950501 | C be El u t b or,<br />
(The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors.<br />
Monthly.)<br />
CON DUCTIED BY WALTER BES ANT.<br />
VoI. W.-No. 12.]<br />
MAY 1, 1895.<br />
[PRICE SIXPENCE.<br />
For the Opinions earpressed in papers that are<br />
signed or initialled the Authors alone are<br />
responsible. None of the papers or para-<br />
graphs must be taken as eaſpressing the<br />
collective opinions of the committee unless<br />
they are officially signed by G. Herbert<br />
Thring, Sec.<br />
*-*. --><br />
* = -<br />
HE Secretary of the Society begs to give notice that all<br />
remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and<br />
requests that all members not receiving an answer to<br />
important communications within two days will write to him<br />
without delay. All remittances show.ld be crossed Union<br />
Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered<br />
letter only.<br />
Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on<br />
all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub-<br />
jects whatever. Articles which cannot be accepted are<br />
returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS.<br />
*-* -º<br />
a- - -<br />
WARNINGS AND ADWICE.<br />
I. RAWING THE AGREEMENT.-It is not generally<br />
understood that the author, as the vendor, has the<br />
absolute right of drafting the agreement upon<br />
whatever terms the transaction is to be carried out.<br />
Authors are strongly advised to exercise that right. In<br />
every form of business, this among others, the right of<br />
drawing the agreement rests with him who sells, leases, or<br />
has the control of the property.<br />
2. SERIAL RIGHTS.—In selling Serial Rights remember<br />
that you may be selling the Serial Right for all time; that<br />
is, the Right to continue the production in papers. If you<br />
object to this, insert a clause to that effect.<br />
3. STAMP You R AGREEMENTs. – Readers are most<br />
URGENTLY warned not to neglect stamping their agreements<br />
immediately after signature. If this precaution is neglected<br />
for two weeks, a fine of £10 must be paid before the agree-<br />
ment can be used as a legal document. In almost every<br />
case brought to the secretary the agreement, or the letter<br />
which serves for one, is forwarded without the stamp. The<br />
author may be assured that the other party to the agree-<br />
ment seldom neglects this simple precaution. The Society,<br />
to save trouble, undertakes to get all the agreements of<br />
members stamped for them at no ea'pense to themselves<br />
eacept the cost of the stamp.<br />
- WOL. W.<br />
4. ASCERTAIN WHAT A PROPOSED AGREEMENT GIVES To<br />
BOTH SIDES BEFORE SIGNING IT.-Remember that an<br />
arrangement as to a joint venture in any other kind of busi-<br />
ness whatever would be instantly refused should either party<br />
refuse to show the books or to let it be known what share he<br />
reserved for himself.<br />
5. LITERARY AGENTS.—Be very careful. You cannot be<br />
too careful as to the person whom yow appoint as your<br />
agent. Remember that you place your property almost un-<br />
reservedly in his hands. Your only safety is in consulting<br />
the Society, or some friend who has had personal experience<br />
of the agent. Do not trust advertisements alone.<br />
6. COST OF PRODUCTION.--Never sign any agreement of<br />
which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part,<br />
until you have proved the figures.<br />
7. CHOICE OF PUBLISHERS.–Never enter into any cor-<br />
respondence with publishers, especially with those who ad-<br />
vertise for MSS., who are not recommended by experienced<br />
friends or by this Society.<br />
8. FUTURE WORK.—Never, on any account whatever,<br />
bind yourself down for future work to anyone.<br />
9. PERSONAL RISK.—Never accept any pecuniary risk or<br />
responsibility whatever without advice.<br />
IO. REJECTED MSS.—Never, when a MS. has been re-<br />
fused by respectable houses, pay others, whatever promises<br />
they may put forward, for the production of the work.<br />
II. AMERICAN RIGHTS.—Never sign away American<br />
rights. Keep them by special clause. Refuse to sign any<br />
agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the<br />
publisher, unless for a substantial consideration.<br />
12. CESSION OF COPYRIGHT.-Never sign any paper,<br />
either agreement or receipt, which gives away copyright,<br />
without advice.<br />
I3. ADVERTISEMENTS. —- Keep some control over the<br />
advertisements, if they affect your returns, by a clause in<br />
the agreement.<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 />
Society's Offices :—<br />
4, PORTUGAL STREET, LINCOLN's INN FIELDs.<br />
* -- ~ *-*<br />
HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY,<br />
I. VERY member has a right to ask for and to receive<br />
advice upon his agreements, his choice of a pub.<br />
lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his<br />
business or the administration of his property. If the advice<br />
F F 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 306 (#320) ############################################<br />
<br />
306<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
sought is such as can be given best by a solicitor, the member<br />
has a right to an opinion from the Society's solicitors. If the<br />
case is such that Counsel’s opinion is desirable, the Com-<br />
mittee will obtain for him Counsel’s opinion. All this<br />
without any cost to the member.<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 />
3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past<br />
accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in<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 />
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 />
5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro-<br />
posed document to the Society for examination.<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.<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 />
8. Send to the Editor of the Author notes of everything<br />
important to literature that you may hear or meet with.<br />
9. The committee have now arranged for the reception of<br />
members’ agreements and their preservation in a fireproof<br />
safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as con-<br />
fidential documents to be read only by the Secretary, who<br />
will keep the key of the safe. The Society now offers:—(1)<br />
To read and advise upon agreements and publishers. (2) To<br />
stamp agreements in readiness for a possible action upon<br />
them. (3) To keep agreements. (4) To enforce payments<br />
due according to agreements.<br />
><br />
º:<br />
THE AUTHORS’ SYNDICATE,<br />
TEMBERS are informed:<br />
I. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of<br />
the business of members of the Society. That it<br />
submits MSS. to publishers and editors, concludes agree-<br />
ments, examines, passes, and collects accounts, and, gene-<br />
rally, relieves members of the trouble of managing business<br />
details. -<br />
2. That the terms upon which its services can be secured<br />
will be forwarded upon detailed application.<br />
3. That the Authors' Syndicate works only for those<br />
members of the Society whose work possesses a market<br />
value.<br />
4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiations<br />
whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia-<br />
tions are placed eaclusively in its hands, and that all<br />
communications relating thereto are referred to it.<br />
5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by<br />
appointment, and that, when possible, at least two days'<br />
notice should be given.<br />
6. That every attempt is made to deal with all communi-<br />
cations promptly. That stamps should, in all cases, be sent<br />
to defray postage.<br />
7. That the Authors' Syndicate does not invite. MSS.<br />
without previous correspondence ; does not hold itself<br />
responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice; and that<br />
in all cases MSS. must be accompanied by stamps to defray<br />
postage.<br />
8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for<br />
lectures by some of the leading members of the Society;<br />
that it has a “Transfer Department’’ for the sale and<br />
purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a “Register<br />
of Wants and Wanted '' is open. Members are invited to<br />
communicate their requirements to the Manager.<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 />
NOTICES.<br />
HE Editor of the Awthor 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 />
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 P<br />
Communications for the Author should reach the Editor<br />
not later than the 21st of each month.<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 />
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 />
The Authors’ Club is now open in its new premises, at<br />
3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary<br />
for information, rules of admission, &c.<br />
Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they<br />
have paid their subscriptions for the year P 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. º<br />
Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the<br />
warning numbered (8). It is a most foolish and may be a<br />
most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding<br />
for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they<br />
would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five<br />
years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest<br />
or dishonest? Of course they would not. Why then<br />
hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them-<br />
selves into literary bondage for three or five years P<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 />
<br />
<br />
## p. 307 (#321) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3O7<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<br />
at £948. The figures in our book are as near the exact<br />
truth as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's,<br />
bill is so elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be<br />
arrived at.<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 call it.<br />
*-*. --><br />
sº- ºr -ºss<br />
LITERARY PROPERTY.<br />
I.—CANADIAN COPYRIGHT.<br />
Ottawa, April 14.<br />
HE collection by Customs officials of the 12%<br />
per cent. author's royalty on reprints of<br />
British copyright works brought into<br />
Canada will not cease until the present Parlia-<br />
ment is dissolved. The view is now held by<br />
departmental experts that, until England consents<br />
to a Canadian copyright law, the royalty must be<br />
collected, as an Imperial statute cannot be over-<br />
ridden by a mere Canadian enactment.—Times,<br />
April 15, 1895.<br />
In the House of Commons at Ottawa yesterday,<br />
the Hon. G. E. Foster, Minister of Finance,<br />
announced that at the request of the Imperial<br />
Government a Canadian representative would be<br />
sent to England to discuss the copyright question<br />
personally with the Imperial authorities for the<br />
purpose of coming to an understanding. In the<br />
meantime the proclamation of the Canadian<br />
Copyright Act of 1889 would be withheld.—<br />
Times, April 23, 1895.<br />
II.—THE CANADIAN CASE.<br />
“Certain erroneous statements,” it is stated,<br />
“having been circulated with regard to the<br />
Canadian Copyright Act of 1889, it has been<br />
deemed advisable by the Copyright Association<br />
of Canada to issue the following statement:”<br />
The Canadian Copyright Act of 1889 was<br />
unanimously passed by the Parliament of<br />
Canada, and assented to by the Governor-<br />
General. -<br />
The Act was to come into operation on pro-<br />
clamation of the Governor-General.<br />
The Governor-General has not yet proclaimed<br />
the Act.<br />
The Canadian Government contend that they<br />
have the right to legislate fully on copyright, it<br />
being one of the classes of subjects intrusted to<br />
º Parliament of Canada by the B.N.A. Act of<br />
1867.<br />
The following are among the reasons why the<br />
Act should be proclaimed:<br />
A Copyright analogous to a Patent.<br />
A copyright is analogous to a patent.<br />
Canadian Copyright Act is analogous to<br />
the Canadian Patent Act. The Patent Act<br />
requires manufacture in Canada. The Imperial<br />
Government did not disallow the Patent Act.<br />
The Imperial Government would not propose that<br />
a United States patentee, on securing the British<br />
patent, should thereby secure the Canadian patent.<br />
Why should the Imperial Government assure the<br />
United States author, that on securing copyright<br />
in Great Britain, he thereby secures copyright in<br />
Canada? Canada exclusively legislates as to the<br />
terms on which patents may be secured in Canada.<br />
Canada should be permitted to exercise the same<br />
powers as to the terms on which copyrights may<br />
be secured in Canada.<br />
The<br />
Canadian Market must not be sold.<br />
The United States publisher when buying from<br />
a British author the copyright for the United<br />
States, stipulates that Canada shall be included.<br />
Canadians resent this sale of their market, and<br />
persist in their claim to adopt such legislation as<br />
will put a stop thereto.<br />
Canadian Reprints cannot flood other Markets.<br />
The fear that Canadian publishers would flood<br />
the British and United States markets with cheap<br />
editions, is utterly unfounded, as the Copyright<br />
Acts of those countries prohibit the importation<br />
and sale of unauthorised editions, and impose a<br />
heavy penalty for violation of the law. Canadian<br />
publishers, therefore, could not flood either<br />
market with cheap editions.<br />
It has happened that orders for books sent to<br />
London have been returned with “cannot supply.”<br />
marked thereon, thus forcing Canadians to buy<br />
those books from the United States publishers.<br />
On the other hand, the British publisher prints<br />
a cheap edition of a work by a United States<br />
author. This cheap edition is exported to Canada.<br />
An illustration on this point is furnished in the<br />
case of F. Marion Crawford's book, “The<br />
Ralstons.” This book was published in the<br />
United States at 2 dollars. It was published<br />
simultaneously in Great Britain at 12s. But the<br />
British publishers printed a cheap Colonial edition<br />
which sold in Canada for 75 cents. This cheap<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 308 (#322) ############################################<br />
<br />
308<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
edition was on sale in Canada within a day or<br />
two after the publication of the United States<br />
2 dollar edition. Here, then, is a British<br />
publisher issuing a cheap paper edition for sale<br />
in Canada—when one of the main objections of<br />
the opponents of the Canadian Act, which is<br />
made to do duty on every occasion, is that the<br />
Canadian publisher will issue cheap paper<br />
editions which will flood the United States<br />
market in competition with the more expensive<br />
United States editions ! . It must be distinctly<br />
understood, however, that this cheap paper edition,<br />
which is sold in Canada, does not flood the United<br />
States market, for the very excellent reason,<br />
already stated, that the United States Copyright<br />
Act prohibits its importation or sale in the United<br />
States.<br />
Imports allowed from Britain.<br />
The Canadian Act permits the importation of<br />
British editions of works, whether copyrighted<br />
here or published under the royalty clause of<br />
the Act; but excludes foreign editions.<br />
No Piracy in Canadian Act.<br />
Should the author (be he British or American)<br />
neglect to secure copyright in Great Britain, any<br />
publisher may reprint the work there without<br />
paying the author.<br />
Should the author neglect to secure copyright<br />
in the United States, any publisher may reprint<br />
the work there without paying the author.<br />
Should the author neglect to secure copyright<br />
in Canada, no Canadian publisher could reprint<br />
the work in Canada without paying the author<br />
Io per cent. royalty.<br />
It is therefore clearly seen that while the<br />
British and United States Acts permit the piracy<br />
of authors’ works, the Canadian Act does not.<br />
The Royalty Clause.<br />
The introduction of the royalty clause in the<br />
Canadian Act was not original with the promoters<br />
thereof. The idea was suggested by the Foreign<br />
Reprints Act, passed by the Imperial Parliament,<br />
which allows a United States publisher, or other<br />
foreign publisher, who has printed a copyright<br />
book without permission, to supply the Canadian<br />
market on payment of a royalty of I2; per cent.<br />
collected on the wholesale price of the book,<br />
which royalty goes to the British copyright owner.<br />
It was but natural for the Canadian to desire<br />
to be placed on an equal footing with the foreign<br />
publisher so far as his own market was concerned.<br />
Therefore a royalty of Io per cent. on the retail<br />
price of the book was suggested.<br />
Furthermore, many difficulties have been<br />
encountered in collecting the royalty on imports,<br />
it being almost impossible to keep a complete and<br />
accurate list at every Custom House, and to check<br />
every invoice therefrom. The collection of the<br />
royalty on reprints, on the other hand, is provided<br />
for by the Canadian Law in a perfectly safe<br />
manner, as the Inland Revenue Department is to<br />
stamp the title page of each copy of every book<br />
issued, and before this is done the royalty must<br />
be paid to the Government to the credit of the<br />
author. As a matter of fact, then, the author<br />
will exchange his royalty of I2; per cent. on<br />
imports, which is uncertain of collection, for a<br />
royalty on reprints of Io per cent. on the retail<br />
price, which is certain of collection.<br />
Geographical Position.<br />
In considering this question, the geographical<br />
position of Canada, side by side with the United<br />
States, ought not to be overlooked. This fact<br />
makes Canada's position very different indeed<br />
from that of any other British colony.<br />
Advantages given to Authors.<br />
Compare the United States Copyright Act, now<br />
in operation, with the Canadian Copyright Act,<br />
and it will be seen that many advantages are<br />
given to authors by the latter.<br />
To secure copyright in the United States, the<br />
British author must print his book there from type<br />
set within the limits of the United States, or from<br />
plates made from type set within the limits of<br />
the United States. The Canadian Act provides<br />
for no such restriction, but allows both British<br />
and United States authors to set the type in<br />
Canada, or print from plates, as they may think<br />
best. In anticipation of the Canadian Act<br />
coming into force, the Canadian Government<br />
passed a special enactment allowing plates for<br />
books to be imported into Canada free of duty.<br />
This concession was made, thinking that it would<br />
be appreciated, but those opposing the Act seem<br />
determined to ignore the concession. Yet the<br />
concession is there, and it proves that Canada.<br />
grants British authors copyright in Canada, on<br />
far more liberal terms than they can secure copy-<br />
right in the United States; and that Canada.<br />
grants United States authors copyright in<br />
Canada on far easier terms than Canadians are<br />
granted copyright in the United States.<br />
Injustice to important Canadian Interests.<br />
Canada has not only lost the printing of works<br />
by foreign authors, but is fast losing the printing<br />
of works by Canadian authors, not because the<br />
books can be printed cheaper or better abroad,<br />
but because they have to be manufactured in the<br />
|United States in order to secure copyright there.<br />
When that is done, there is no necessity for issu-<br />
ing a Canadian edition, as the Canadian market<br />
can be supplied by the United States edition.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 309 (#323) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3O9<br />
Reading Public inconvenienced.<br />
Under the present law, the Canadian readin<br />
public are ignored, and the works of both British<br />
and United States authors must be imported into<br />
Canada, and, moreover, these editions are, in many<br />
cases, published at such prices as to put them<br />
beyond the reach of the great majority of<br />
Canadian readers.<br />
British authors are now able to secure copy-<br />
right in the United States, and United States<br />
authors are now able to secure copyright in Great<br />
Britain (which covers Canada). Therefore the<br />
copyright owners now refuse to print in Canada.<br />
They supply this market with editions printed<br />
either in the United States or Great Britain.<br />
This is considered a great injury to the printing,<br />
paper, and allied industries in Canada. It is,<br />
moreover, a source of trouble and annoyance to<br />
the people of Canada, as the British market is<br />
so far away that, after the supply on hand of a<br />
book is exhausted, some weeks must elapse before<br />
a new supply can be procured.<br />
Objections refuted.<br />
A circular, containing objections to the<br />
Canadian Act, has been recently issued in<br />
England. These objections should not prevail.<br />
The circular states that Canada has asked the<br />
British Government to sanction arrangements to<br />
take copyright in Canada away from all British<br />
authors except such as are Canadians. Such is<br />
not the case. Canada does not propose to take<br />
away copyright in Canada from British authors.<br />
The British author and the United States author<br />
may, under the Canadian Act, secure copyright<br />
in Canada on exactly the same terms as the<br />
Canadian author.<br />
It is objected that the Canadian Act will injure<br />
the value of the British edition, because the<br />
Canadian edition could be imported into the<br />
United Kingdom and the other colonies, and<br />
compete with it. But from the report of Lord<br />
Knutsford’s Copyright Commission of 1892, it<br />
appears that, at the instance of the British copy-<br />
right owners, the law of Great Britain was framed<br />
so that the importation of Canadian reprints of<br />
British works into Great Britain is prohibited.<br />
It is objected that the Canadian Act is at<br />
variance with the Free Trade principles of the<br />
United Kingdom. That may be. The Canadian<br />
Tariff Act is also avowedly at variance with the<br />
Free Trade principles of the United Kingdom—<br />
yet the British Government would not propose<br />
to interfere with it.<br />
It is objected that the Canadian Act will<br />
destroy the British author's present means of<br />
securing copyright in the United States of<br />
America. That is only an opinion. Are not the<br />
British publishers themselves alone responsible<br />
for the agitation against allowing British authors<br />
to hold copyright in the United States ? The<br />
action of the British Music Publishers’ Associa-<br />
tion in contesting what is known as the “manu-<br />
facturing ” clause in the United States Act, has<br />
done British authors incalculable harm in the<br />
United States; and if the British music pub-<br />
lishers will not accept that manufacturing clause<br />
(as British book publishers have very wisely<br />
done), British authors may yet find themselves<br />
deprived of the benefit of copyright in the United<br />
States.<br />
As to the Berne Convention, it should be under-<br />
stood that the Canadian Parliament never adopted<br />
or agreed to the Berne Convention. On the con-<br />
trary, the Canadian Parliament has twice asked<br />
that notice be given of Canada's desire that the<br />
Convention be denounced.<br />
Most of the other objections are based on the<br />
supposition that the author loses control over his<br />
work under the Canadian Act. Nothing could be<br />
further from the fact, since, by complying with<br />
the terms of the Act, authors and copyright<br />
owners retain entire control of their works and<br />
may suppress old editions, or issue new ones as<br />
desired.<br />
Canadians stand by the Act of 1867.<br />
Canadians insist on the full right of the Parlia-<br />
ment of Canada to pass and enact legislation on<br />
copyright as desired from time to time; the same<br />
as they enjoy on the other subjects intrusted to<br />
that Parliament under the B.N.A. Act of 1867.<br />
The right of the Parliament of Canada to enact<br />
and enforce its own copyright legislation has<br />
been indorsed by the unanimous vote of the<br />
Parliament and Senate of Canada; by the News-<br />
paper Press of Canada; by the Board of Trade of<br />
the City of Toronto, and other cities; by the<br />
Employing Printers of Canada; by the Typo-<br />
graphical Unions and Printing Pressmen's<br />
Unions; by the Trades and Labour Councils<br />
(comprising representatives from the various<br />
trades), by the Booksellers’ and Paper Makers’<br />
Association, and by many others.<br />
The above reasons, amongst others, for the<br />
enforcement of the Copyright Act of 1889, were<br />
laid before Sir Mackenzie Bowell, the Premier of<br />
the Dominion of Canada, and Sir Charles Hibbert<br />
Tupper, the Minister of Justice, by an influential<br />
deputation of the Copyright Association of<br />
Canada, at Toronto, in February, 1895.<br />
Signed on behalf of the Copyright Association<br />
of Canada,<br />
J. Ross ROBERTSON, President.<br />
DAN. A. RosB, Vice-President.<br />
RICHARD T. LANCEFIELD, Hon. Secretary.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 310 (#324) ############################################<br />
<br />
3 IO<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
- III.--THE OTHER SIDE.<br />
Hitherto we have had only expressions of<br />
opinion from publishers, and politicians in the<br />
hunt for votes, and the vital point at issue has<br />
been completely ignored.<br />
It is not a question whether a wrong has been<br />
done to Canada by not allowing her to legislate as<br />
to copyright, nor whether United States publishers<br />
are to be allowed to flood the Canadian market<br />
with British authors’ works printed in the United<br />
States, but the crucial question is whether the<br />
authors, engravers, printers, sculptors, and photo-<br />
graphers of the country are to be deprived of the<br />
vast benefits of the Berne Convention at the<br />
bidding of a few clamorous publishers. When a<br />
cause is bad, false issues are always raised. It<br />
does not matter one iota to the public where the<br />
books are printed and bound, provided they are<br />
cheap and good, and it must be conceded that we<br />
can get a cheaper and better class of work from<br />
Europe and the United States.<br />
Last year I had the privilege of paying Canadian<br />
publishers about 1100 dollars for a limited issue<br />
of a work on the Patent law of Canada, some of<br />
which have been sold in European countries as<br />
well as in the United States, and my attention<br />
has been drawn to copyright matters, both as a<br />
lawyer and in my daily practice as a solicitor of<br />
patents, and my firm is even now procuring<br />
Canadian and European copyrights for a client<br />
for a work of universal interest ; so I claim to be<br />
better posted generally than the public, who are<br />
ignorant of the rights which are being thrown<br />
away to obtain this mongrel Act of 1889, by the<br />
passing of which our membership in the Berne<br />
Convention is severed, and our privileges<br />
destroyed. By simply obtaining a Canadian<br />
copyright, the protection of the courts, without<br />
further registration, is obtained throughout the<br />
United Kingdom and all its colonies and posses-<br />
sions, also in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy,<br />
Spain, Switzerland, Luxembourg, and other places.<br />
In the recent case of “ Harfstaengel v. Baines and<br />
Co. (1895), I. A. C., p. 20, “The Empire Theatre<br />
Living Picture Case,” the right of suit in British<br />
courts was conceded to a German copyrighter,<br />
although no registration had taken place under<br />
the British Copyright Act. The only condition<br />
precedent to obtaining copyright in the foregoing<br />
countries is that the formalities prescribed by law<br />
in the “country of origin” must be complied with.<br />
Ten years are allowed within which translation<br />
may be made, and authorised translations are<br />
protected the same as original works.<br />
By the British Act of 1842, copyright was<br />
obtainable covering all the colonies, &c., provided<br />
the work was first (or simultaneously) published<br />
in the United Kingdom, and it was immaterial<br />
whether it was printed in the United King-<br />
dom or whether it was written by a British<br />
subject or not. This has ever since been<br />
the policy of British statesmen, who aimed at<br />
the benefit of the masses and the encourage-<br />
ment of art and literature in the country; printers<br />
and publishers could not dictate the policy of the<br />
Government to suit themselves, as unfortunately<br />
has been the case both in the TInited States and<br />
Canada. Why should Canada at the bidding of<br />
publishers, printers, and a portion of a noisy press<br />
pursue a policy of isolation and make this country<br />
take a step backward of fifty years towards the<br />
Dark Ages to pander to a few who will never<br />
benefit much by the Act of 1889, if it ever should<br />
become law P. There have been International<br />
Copyright Acts in the United Kingdom—1844,<br />
1852, 1875—with the principal countries of<br />
Europe; the Berne Convention was merely an<br />
enlargement and consolidation of these Acts. No<br />
literary man or artist who understands the<br />
matter and the privileges which are being thrown<br />
away has asked to have the foolish Act of 1889<br />
become law; indeed it would be folly to suppose<br />
so. Canada and the United States are both far<br />
behind Europe in art, science, and literature;<br />
reputation and progress among the nations of the<br />
world do not count when the almighty dollar<br />
steps in. The United States, however, have<br />
separate international treaties with all the foreign<br />
countries named of the Berne Convention (except<br />
Spain and Luxembourg), and also with Denmark<br />
and Portugal, which are not members, while poor<br />
Canada with suicidal folly will by the passing of<br />
the Act of 1889 be completely isolated, and will<br />
not retain even the reciprocal advantages granted<br />
us by the Imperial Act of 1886.<br />
The Act of 1889 imposes impossible conditions<br />
on British authors, whose property is to be<br />
taken without their leave, and, besides that, is<br />
so badly drawn as to embody several glaring<br />
mistakes, so that lawyers will be able to drive<br />
the traditional coach and four through it in<br />
the usual manner. On a future occasion I may<br />
take this up.<br />
The official returns from the ad valorem duty<br />
of 12% per cent. on reprints of British works<br />
hitherto collected in the Camadian Customs since<br />
December, 1850, for British authors, and now<br />
happily ended, show what a farce the collection<br />
has been, and will arouse grave doubts whether<br />
much of the beggarly IO per cent, royalty<br />
provided for in the Agt of 1889 would find its<br />
way to the pockets of the British author.—<br />
Yours, &c., John G. RIDOUT.<br />
Toronto, April 4.<br />
Toronto Mail and Earpress, April 6.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 311 (#325) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3 II<br />
IV.--THE “IIVING PICTUREs '’ LITIGATION.<br />
The following summary of this case was pub-<br />
lished (Friday, April 26th) by the Westminster<br />
Gazette :<br />
“What happened was this : the Empire Theatre,<br />
starting what has since become a very popular<br />
form of “show,” produced some living groups on<br />
the stage. These groups were arranged after<br />
some pictures by foreign artists, the copyright of<br />
which belonged to the fine art publisher, Herr<br />
Hanfstaengl. In due course of business, the<br />
Daily Graphic and the Westminster Budget<br />
published outline sketches, more or less rough, of<br />
the performances at the Empire. Herr Hanf-<br />
staeng1 thereupon proceeded at law for infringe-<br />
ment of copyright:<br />
1. Against the Empire, in respect of the living<br />
groups;<br />
2. Against the Empire, in respect of the painted<br />
backgrounds to the groups;<br />
3. Against the Daily Graphic, in respect of<br />
its sketches of the performances at the Empire ;<br />
4. Against the Westminster Budget, on the<br />
same ground.<br />
The fate of these proceedings was as follows:<br />
1. Carried to the Court of Appeal, and dis-<br />
missed with costs;<br />
. Mr. Justice Stirling granted an injunction;<br />
the Court of Appeal overruled him, and were<br />
sustained by the House of Lords;<br />
4. Mr. Justice Stirling, basing himself on the<br />
decision of the House of Lords, dismissed the<br />
case with costs;<br />
2. This was the case decided on April 25th. Mr.<br />
Justice Stirling dismissed it so far as concerned<br />
most of the pictures, but decided that the back-<br />
grounds of two of them were an infringement of<br />
copyright.<br />
We need not trouble our readers with any more<br />
law than this—namely, that what the Copyright<br />
Acts forbid, as piracy, is “copies or colourable<br />
imitations of the painting [or photograph] or the<br />
design thereof.” What, therefore, the Courts<br />
have now decided in the group of cases in ques-<br />
tion is—(1) that living groups, posed after<br />
pictures, are not—apart from any question of<br />
painted backgrounds—infringements of copy-<br />
right; (2) nor are rough sketches of pictures<br />
such as are familiar to the public in the illus-<br />
trated papers.”<br />
W.—THE RETAIL PRICE.<br />
The following letter appeared in the Athenæum<br />
of April 8: Park-street, Bristol, April 1, 1895.<br />
It is, possibly, typical of the inertness of book retailers<br />
that the statement quoted in the Athenæum, March 23, as<br />
to 6s. novels “sold to the trade at 3s. 7#d.” is allowed to<br />
pass without comment. This is one of the misleading half-<br />
WOL. W.<br />
truths constantly appearing in the Awthor. Retailers would<br />
be glad to find someone who would supply them with the 6s.<br />
novels they want at 4s. There is evidently a good living<br />
going begging if the Author be correct.<br />
W. GEORGE’s SONS.<br />
As regards “misleading half-truths,” it is<br />
remarkable that those who speak about them<br />
never venture to correct them. The Author<br />
would like, above all things, to be correct. Why<br />
do not these booksellers state plainly what they<br />
have to pay ? How, then, was the sum of 38.7%d.<br />
arrived at as a fair average estimate of the<br />
general retail price of a 6s. book P. In this way.<br />
The general retail price of a 6s. book is nominally<br />
4s. 2d. But 5 per cent. discount is allowed “for<br />
the account,” and thirteen are allowed as twelve.<br />
That works out at 3s. 7+}d. The fraction was<br />
reduced in favour of publishers from +} to #.<br />
It was thus intended to make some allowance for<br />
bad debts. The Society, in issuing these figures,<br />
was not considering the relations of booksellers<br />
to publishers, but of authors to publishers. Its<br />
first care, therefore, was not to overstate their own<br />
case. With this object it assumed that all books<br />
were bought at thirteen as twelve, which is very<br />
far from being the case, though, it must be<br />
remembered, in order to get at an average price,<br />
with some publishers the thirteen ordered are<br />
allowed to be of various books. If all the books<br />
were bought simply as single copies our royalty<br />
tables would have to be altered throughout, and<br />
authors’ royalties very much increased. We<br />
have, so far, received no complaints from pub-<br />
lishers as to the alleged understatement of the<br />
retail price.<br />
rº- + -º<br />
THE DEFERRED ROYALTY.<br />
HE proportion of proceeds that the author<br />
T should assign to the publisher can never<br />
be decided, once for all, on equitable prin-<br />
ciples, because no connection can be established<br />
between the author’s work and the publisher's.<br />
The former conceives and executes the book, bring-<br />
ing to his work all his knowledge, learning, skill,<br />
and ability. This is one kind of work. The pub-<br />
lisher performs the mechanical part: he sends the<br />
MS. to the printer, and he gives it the help of<br />
his own machinery in introducing the book to<br />
the world. This is another kind of work. The<br />
two kinds are incommensurable. Therefore some<br />
kind of recognised principle, adopted and agreed<br />
upon by all, is the nearest approach that we<br />
can expect to the settlement of the question.<br />
Thus, it has always been supposed, till lately,<br />
that a half profit system, in the case of any<br />
ordinary book, was as fair a method as could be<br />
devised. In the rare case of a very successful<br />
G. G.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 312 (#326) ############################################<br />
<br />
3I 2<br />
THE AUTHOIR.<br />
work, in one certain to be in great and extra-<br />
ordinary demand, this plan would be manifestly<br />
unjust. But the half, profit system has been<br />
discredited by those publishers who falsify their<br />
accounts; for £IOO writing £I IO or £I2O :<br />
and charging for advertisements for which<br />
they have not paid. “I like the half profit<br />
system,” said Douglas Jerrold, “for there is<br />
certain to be no division with the publisher.”<br />
Discredited as it has been, it still remains in<br />
practice, especially with those persons who<br />
continue—there are not many left—to falsify<br />
their accounts. There remains, however, in<br />
the minds of authors a feeling that more than<br />
one-half of the profits ought not to be taken by<br />
the publisher; and they fondly believe that any<br />
offer made to them is based upon that principle.<br />
Nor does the publisher ever openly demand more<br />
than one-half; in certain cases he asks for no<br />
more than one-third.<br />
We have already seen in these columns what is<br />
meant by a royalty of Io, I 5, 20, or 25 per cent.<br />
Our calculations were based upon a trade price<br />
which we assumed to be general, though it was<br />
really placed somewhat too low. We shall perhaps<br />
be able to revise this table of royalties. Meantime<br />
it must be observed that it is extremely difficult<br />
for an author to get a royalty which actually<br />
corresponds to a half profit return, a fact which<br />
would by itself suggest that in many cases the<br />
accounts were falsified, and the “half profits”<br />
returned were only a fourth, or even less.<br />
We have now to consider a system which has<br />
come in of late years, and must be exposed. It is<br />
that of the deferred royalty. Under the old half<br />
profit system the publisher said, “I will stand in<br />
with you—my risk of money against your risk of<br />
time.” Under the royalty system the publisher<br />
says, “If there is any risk I take it”—of course,<br />
in most cases, there is none, or, as a man of<br />
business, he would not take it—“ and from the<br />
outset, which increases the risk, I load the book<br />
with so much royalty.”<br />
A deferred royalty at first sight seems perfectly<br />
fair. What could be fairer than that profits<br />
should be reckoned after the cost of production<br />
has been defrayed P As usual, however, the cost<br />
of production is very carefully withheld, and the<br />
mere mention of such a thing is violently resented.<br />
And, again, the publisher who flourishes his<br />
deferred royalty is extremely shy of stating<br />
what the proposal means to himself. When<br />
will authors have the courage to say: “Make<br />
me an offer showing in exact details what<br />
you propose for yourself out of my property, and<br />
what you will give me P’’ or, failing this, why do<br />
they not always bring their agreements to the<br />
Society for explanation before they sign them P<br />
Here, for instance, are a few cases of actual<br />
proposals of a deferred royalty :<br />
1. This was the case of a very distinguished<br />
man of letters. He was asked to write a book for<br />
a certain series. Terms: Royalty of so much per<br />
cent. — a very moderate percentage — to begin<br />
after two editions of a thousand copies each had<br />
been sold. In other words, the enterprising<br />
firm calmly proposed to take for themselves the<br />
whole proceeds of two editions before they gave<br />
the author anything !<br />
2. This was the case of an educational book.<br />
The author was offered a little cheque down<br />
with a royalty of so much—not much—to begin<br />
after many thousands (!!) of copies had been<br />
sold. Making a very rough calculation, it<br />
looked as if the generous and noble-hearted firm<br />
was proposing to make a profit of about six or<br />
seven times what it gave the author, before the<br />
moderate royalty began.<br />
This kind of business seems to be more common<br />
in educational books than in general literature.<br />
There is no reason why there should be any<br />
difference. Some educational books are costly to<br />
produce, but a book that is once established is a<br />
mine of gold. There is, doubtless, real risk<br />
attached to the publication of some educational<br />
books, though the name of the writers of books<br />
produced by reputable firms should be a guarantee<br />
of their value. In such cases, the old half profit<br />
system was designed to meet the difficulty. Let the<br />
author, when considering any proposed agreement,<br />
simply demand an estimate in writing of the cost<br />
of production and the comparative shares of profit.<br />
If he has any doubt about the document, let him<br />
refer it to the Society; of course, it must be a<br />
detailed estimate, showing the number of sheets,<br />
the size of the page, the character of the type, the<br />
style of binding, the price of stereos, and so<br />
forth. If the firm refuse that estimate let him go<br />
elsewhere<br />
The deferred royalty proposal has a much better<br />
chance of catching the ignorant and credulous<br />
author when a small cheque down is proposed<br />
than with nothing. The author thinks that he is<br />
certain to get something. This, with the fact<br />
that his book is going to appear, reconciles him.<br />
It was a publisher with a real knowledge of human<br />
nature who first invented the little cheque on<br />
account. The offer might be miserable and<br />
grasping, but there was at least something down,<br />
and the writer's vanity was flattered by the pro-<br />
duction of his book. -<br />
3. The next is the case of a three-volume<br />
novel. The author was to receive a royalty—<br />
quite a large and handsome royalty—after the<br />
sale of 350 copies. He was at first greatly<br />
uplifted with admiration of the princely firm<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 313 (#327) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3 I 3<br />
which had made him this magnificent offer—an<br />
admiration which suddenly vanished when he<br />
found out that no more than 350 copies had been<br />
printed and that the type had then been distri-<br />
buted. So that the generous publisher never<br />
meant him to have anything at all out of his<br />
book, and knew very well beforehand how many<br />
would be taken by the libraries.<br />
4. The last is a case quoted in “Methods of<br />
Publishing,” in which the royalty was to begin<br />
“after the expenses are defrayed.” Nothing at<br />
all was said about any audit of accounts, and so<br />
the author was expected to take the publisher's<br />
word as to what the expenses were.<br />
The royalty system, since the Society exposed<br />
its early iniquities, has been greatly improved.<br />
Royalties are given now which would have been<br />
indignantly refused a few years ago, when<br />
ignorance of the figures enabled grasping dealers<br />
to deal with royalties as they pleased. But the<br />
deferred royalty still offers grand opportunities<br />
for grasping and greed.<br />
Now, it cannot be said that any of the cases<br />
above quoted, or any cases similar to them, are,<br />
strictly speaking, fraudulent, unless in the last<br />
case, where an opening was left for falsifying the<br />
accounts.<br />
How, then, can these cases be described P. If a<br />
man places himself in the hands of another, whom<br />
he believes to be honourable and upright; if<br />
the former, further, believes that in the manage-<br />
ment of his property he will receive a fair<br />
proportion, say half the proceeds, and if that<br />
man so trusted gets the other to sign an agree-<br />
ment by which two-thirds, or three-fourths, or<br />
five-sixths of the profits go secretly into his<br />
own pocket; if he does this, knowing ſhe other<br />
to be ignorant of the figures, how shall we<br />
describe that man P. He is, at least, one who<br />
trades on the ignorance of others, one who<br />
systematically “bests” his partners.<br />
If the royalty is to begin after the expenses<br />
are defrayed, these expenses must be laid down<br />
at the outset, and an audit of the books granted<br />
as a matter of course. This would not absolutely<br />
stop cheating, if that were attempted; but it<br />
would make it more difficult, because it would<br />
involve the assistance of accomplices. Then, as<br />
soon as the actual expenses of a whole edition<br />
are defrayed, the royalty should be 50 per cent.<br />
on the actual trade price of the book until<br />
that edition is exhausted. To repeat, it has<br />
never been argued or held that a publisher should<br />
for his share in the work be entitled to ask for<br />
more than one-half. Yet see, by the cases given<br />
above, what a monstrous share he may secretly<br />
seize by such an agreement as any one of those<br />
quoted above.<br />
WOL. W.<br />
LETTER FROM PARIS.<br />
UR young friend George Hugo, the grand-<br />
son of the poet, will in future be known<br />
as Comte George Hugo. He succeeds to<br />
the family title by the death of Comte Leopold<br />
Hugo, who was the eldest son of Victor Hugo's<br />
elder brother, Abel Hugo, the eldest son of the<br />
gallant general, Joseph Hugo, of whom M. de<br />
Ménéval, Napoleon's private secretary, writes<br />
that he was a young officer full of fire and<br />
activity, who rendered yeoman’s service to the<br />
Emperor and King Joseph in Spain, and wrote<br />
Some most interesting memoirs on the war in<br />
Spain, which were published with a preface by<br />
his eldest son, Abel. Leopold Hugo cannot be<br />
described as a literary man. He was rather a<br />
savant, with a speciality for geography, and was<br />
in high repute at the Academy of Sciences.<br />
Just before he died he asked that his little cousin,<br />
Charles Daudet, the son of Leon Daudet and<br />
Jeanne Hugo, should be brought to him. He<br />
will be much regretted by all who knew him.<br />
George Hugo, or rather Comte George Hugo, and<br />
his little son Jean are now the only representa-<br />
tives of the male branch of this distinguished<br />
family. George Hugo, by the way, is coming to<br />
London on May 6, in the company of the<br />
Daudets. Apropos of this visit, I may mention<br />
that M. de Goncourt told me on Thursday<br />
last that he did not intend to accompany his<br />
º to London. “I don’t like ovations,” he<br />
Sal Ol.<br />
Speaking of de Goncourt, one is glad to hear<br />
that next month Charpentier will publish the<br />
eighth volume of the “Journal des Goncourt,” of<br />
the strong interest of which to all those who are<br />
interested in contemporary French life, literary,<br />
social, and artistic, I have already spoken. I<br />
hear that the author has submitted the proofs to<br />
various persons of whom he has spoken in this<br />
volume, so as to avoid any such complaints about<br />
indiscretion as were made in reference to previous<br />
volumes of the same diary.<br />
Apropos of the “Journal des Goncourt,” which<br />
I may perhaps explain may be translated either<br />
as the “Goncourt's Newspaper’ or as the “Gon-<br />
court's Diary,” a barrister told me that once when<br />
defending a prisoner down in the South of<br />
France he made copious quotations from these<br />
books, with visible effect on the jury. His client<br />
was acquitted, and after the trial the foreman of<br />
the jury came to see him and asked him in the<br />
name of various members of the jury to inform<br />
them where the “Goncourt's Newspaper " was<br />
published, whether it was a daily or a weekly<br />
paper, and what were the terms for subscription.<br />
The name of the barrister who told me this is<br />
G G 2<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 314 (#328) ############################################<br />
<br />
3I4<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
Raymond Daly, himself a writer of no mean<br />
order. A volume of his short stories, to be<br />
entitled “The Gold and the Grey,” are being<br />
translated by Mr. Stewart Merrill, the American<br />
poet, and will be published in London next<br />
autumn.<br />
Admirers of Gustave Flaubert have long<br />
desired to possess an adequate life of the greatest<br />
master of prose that France has seen in this "<br />
century. One is therefore pleased to read that in<br />
a few days from now we shall possess such a book,<br />
written by M. Albert Collignon, & man well<br />
suited for the task. M. Albert Collignon was<br />
for many years editor of La Vie Littéraire, and<br />
is the author of numerous works of fiction and<br />
biography. Almost simultaneously with the<br />
Flaubert book he will publish a work on Diderot.<br />
But the Flaubert book will interest you and me<br />
the more, I think.<br />
A new French slang dictionary is in prepara-<br />
tion and will be welcomed by those who love to<br />
stray on the by-paths of philology. It is being<br />
put together by M. Dellesalle. It will be in two<br />
parts, French-Slang and Slang-French, just like<br />
any other dictionary of two languages. It should<br />
be useful to writers of realistic novels, and will<br />
save them the trouble of studying French slang in<br />
the unpleasant regions where it flourishes.<br />
I have another little anecdote about William<br />
Wordsworth which may interest those who are<br />
interested in this poet. A lady tells me that<br />
when she was a little girl—it is the same little<br />
girl who sent the epic and the half-crown to the<br />
destitute poet—she used to stay at Rydal Mount,<br />
and that William Wordsworth used to make her<br />
read aloud to him, not for his diversion, indeed,<br />
but in order to train her voice. “He used to con-<br />
stantly interrupt me to correct my enunciation<br />
whenever I raised my voice unduly, either in read-<br />
ing or speaking, and would quote Shakespeare's<br />
“sweet low voice, an excellent thing in woman’<br />
till I conceived a strong dislike for Cordelia,<br />
which was only removed by Ellen Terry's splen-<br />
did acting of the part.” It was rather hard on a<br />
little girl, home for the holidays, to be exercised<br />
in this way—a way worthy rather of the Blimber<br />
establishment; but Wordsworth had particular<br />
views on many subjects. It is, however, quite<br />
certain that his views on hospitality were sadly<br />
traduced by Miss Martineau, who related that the<br />
poet had told her that he received so many<br />
visitors at Rydal Mount that he could not afford<br />
to entertain them all, and that he had instructed<br />
his wife to supply tea and bread and butter only<br />
to strangers, and to charge cost price for anything<br />
else in the way of refreshment. Why did Miss<br />
Martineau say this, I wonder P. It was, of<br />
course, an utter falsehood.<br />
According to M. Jules Huret, the victor in<br />
the Huret-Mendés duel, there is in preparation a<br />
“History of the Second French Empire,” with<br />
notes by the Empress Eugenie. This should be<br />
an interesting work. I often have regretted that<br />
Baron Haussmann never wrote a history of those<br />
Imperial days, and I remember suggesting to him.<br />
that he should do so. But he said that his<br />
memoirs ought to suffice, and that he would not<br />
betray the confidence which his master had put<br />
in him, even after his death, by betraying State<br />
secrets of which, by his position and owing to<br />
his friendship with Napoleon III., he had become<br />
cognisant. No man knew better what had gone<br />
on behind the scenes during that lurid period of<br />
French history than Baron Haussmann.<br />
ROBERT H. SHERARD.<br />
123, Boulevard Magenta, Paris.<br />
* - - -*<br />
*- - -s.<br />
NEW YORK LETTER,<br />
New York, April 13.<br />
ERHAPS the most important literary news<br />
P of the past few weeks is the announcement<br />
just made that certain of the leading<br />
professors of history in the chief American<br />
Universities, in conjunction with other historical<br />
students, have determined to establish an<br />
American Historical Review. At present there<br />
is no periodical in the pages of which the his-<br />
torical investigator really feels at home, for the<br />
little monthly Magazine of American History tries<br />
to be “popular,” and is given over largely to the<br />
amateur and to the notes and queries collector.<br />
A meeting was held in New York last Saturday,<br />
attended by representatives of most of the<br />
colleges where history receives special attention,<br />
and an editorial board was elected consisting of<br />
Professor Adams (of Yale), Professor W. M.<br />
Sloane (the writer of the serial biography of<br />
Napoleon now appearing in the Century), Mr.<br />
J. B. McMaster (the author of the “History of<br />
the American People,” the fourth volume of<br />
which the Appletons have just published), Pro-<br />
fessor H. Morse Stephens (of Cornell), and<br />
Professor A. B. Hart (of Harvard). It is con-<br />
sidered probable that Professor Hart will be the<br />
managing editor, and that Longmans, Green,<br />
and Co. will be the publishers of the new<br />
periodical. It will be a quarterly not unlike the<br />
English Historical Review, also published by<br />
Longmans, Green, and Co. The first number of<br />
this American Historical Review will not appear<br />
before the autumn, but thereafter its appearance<br />
is assured for at least three years, a substantial<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 315 (#329) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3 I5<br />
guarantee fund having been raised to make this<br />
a certainty.<br />
Probably few readers in England, except those<br />
who have had special occasion to consider the<br />
subject, have any conception of the very extra-<br />
ordinary work which the American Universities<br />
are now doing in history, and more particularly<br />
in the allied departments of political science,<br />
sociology, and economics. This is one of the<br />
points to which Mr. Bryce called attention in his<br />
speech introducing Lowell at the first dinner, the<br />
Society of Authors gave. At Columbia College<br />
alone in the School of Political Science there are<br />
three full professors of political economy, besides<br />
a professor of sociology, a professor of adminis-<br />
trative law, a professor of comparative juris-<br />
prudence, a professor of international law,<br />
a professor of constitutional law, and half a<br />
dozen professors and lecturers on history. At<br />
Harvard and at Yale, at Johns Hopkins, and<br />
at Chicago, there are faculties inferior only in<br />
numbers to that at Columbia. And nearly all<br />
these institutions issue periodicals, generally<br />
quarterlies. By a thoughtful arrangement the<br />
Harvard Quarterly Journal of Economics, the<br />
Columbia Political Science Quarterly, and<br />
the Yale Review are issued each a month<br />
later than the other, so that the three taken<br />
together appear every month in the year. All<br />
three of them give a certain amount of space<br />
to history, and will probably continue to<br />
do so.<br />
The Suwanee Review, edited by Professor Trents<br />
of the University of the South, is frankly devoted<br />
to literature and to history. Half a dozen years<br />
ago there was a New Princeton Review, edited<br />
by Professor Sloane, but dissensions arose among<br />
the owners, and it was finally absorbed by the<br />
Columbia Political Science Quarterly. In it. Pro-<br />
fessor Sloane tried to combine the solid merits of<br />
the old-fashioned quarterly reviews with the more<br />
alluring vivacity of the brisker monthly reviews.<br />
The venerable North American Review, to which<br />
Bryant contributed “Thanatopis,” and, which<br />
Lowell edited for years, was bought by a rich and<br />
foolish young man named Rice a dozen years ago.<br />
Under the advice of Mr. Laurence Olyphant, Rice<br />
made it a monthly, modelling it upon the Nine-<br />
teenth Century of Mr. Knowles, but going much<br />
farther in search of sensationalism—so far, indeed,<br />
that the present North American Review has<br />
been characterised as “a monthly edition of the<br />
New York Herald.” Its management is now in<br />
the hands of Mr. David Munro, a shrewd Scotch-<br />
man, and of Mr. William H. Rideing, an English-<br />
man with a very large acquaintance with the<br />
writers of England. Perhaps this is the reason<br />
why the North American Review gives up a large<br />
proportion of its space to articles by European<br />
writers on European topics.<br />
Its chief rival, the Forum, also a monthly, is<br />
edited by Mr. Walter H. Page; it is more digni-<br />
fied, less sensational, and far more American in<br />
its list of contributors and in its choice of subjects.<br />
A third monthly review called the Arena, is<br />
published in Boston; it is edited by Mr. B. O.<br />
Flower; it is rather the organ of the faddists of<br />
all sorts, the cranks and the freaks, than a vehicle<br />
for serious discussion of serious topics. The<br />
scholarly Atlantic Monthly, now edited by Mr.<br />
H. E. Scudder, is still the periodical that most<br />
steadily maintains a lofty standard. The<br />
Atlantic is half a magazine and half a review.<br />
It admits fiction and poetry, and it discusses<br />
politics now and again; but it devotes a very<br />
large proportion of its space to literature. Its<br />
book reviewing is generally done by experts, but<br />
it is mostly anonymous, and therefore lacks<br />
authority. Perhaps the best book reviewing in<br />
America is to be found in the pages of periodicals<br />
like the Political Science Quarterly and like the<br />
Educational Review of Professor Nicholas Murray<br />
Butler, in which every book worth consideration<br />
is sent to an expert, who vouches for his opinion<br />
with his name and address. In the United<br />
States, as in Great Britain, there is a tendency<br />
of the unsigned book review to be wanting in the<br />
weight—to be more careless, not to say more<br />
flippant, than the article can afford to be which<br />
the writer guarantees with his own name.<br />
The most exhilarating and stimulating criti-<br />
cism of belles lettres we have had here in America.<br />
for several years was that contributed monthly to<br />
Harper’s when Mr. Howells had charge of the<br />
“Editor's Study.” Whether one agreed with Mr.<br />
Howells's opinions or not—in fact, more especially<br />
when one did not agree with them—they were<br />
unfailing stimulants to thought. They tended<br />
to make every reader examine again the founda-<br />
tions of his own opinions. Mr. Howells has been<br />
missed from the Editor's Study of Harper's<br />
Monthly for several years now ; but he has just<br />
'begun to contribute almost every week to<br />
Harper's Weekly a signed article on a new book,<br />
a group of new plays, or an exhibition of new<br />
pictures. His article this week is on the absurd<br />
“Degeneracy” of Dr. Nordan, in the course of<br />
which he not only exposes the pretensions of the<br />
German author, but he declared again what seem<br />
to him to be the real and abiding merits of Tolstoi,<br />
Ibsen, and Zola. “Stops of Various Quills” is<br />
the title of the volume of poems by Mr. Howells<br />
which Harper and Brothers will publish shortly.<br />
A novelette of his, which has just been concluded<br />
in the Cosmopolitan, will also be published by<br />
the Harpers during the spring. And another<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 316 (#330) ############################################<br />
<br />
316<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
novel, “The Story of a Play,” will begin in<br />
Scribner's Magazine later in the year, to run<br />
through half a dozen numbers. Mr. Howells has<br />
also recently edited the recollections of his father,<br />
whose early wanderings through Ohio are fresh<br />
and characteristic and interesting.<br />
Mr. Stedman and Professor Woodberry con-<br />
tinue to work steadily on their complete edition<br />
of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Four volumes<br />
containing the prose tales are now published, the<br />
first of which opened with a brief, compact,<br />
authoritative biography by Professor Woodberry,<br />
and followed by a critical introduction to the<br />
stories by Mr. Stedman; while to the last of the<br />
four Professor Woodberry appended various<br />
bibliographical and explanatory notes. For the<br />
first time in any edition of Poe his text is here<br />
adequately revised, and his slovenly quotations<br />
are amended and traced to their sources. There<br />
are portraits of Poe in every volume, one of<br />
which has never before been engraved. There<br />
are illustrations by Mr. Albert E. Sterner. The<br />
making of the book, the taste of the typography,<br />
the harmony of the page and of the type and of<br />
the paper, reflect great credit on the publishers,<br />
a young and enterprising Chicago firm, Messrs.<br />
Stone and Kimball. The fifth volume, contain-<br />
ing “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym " and<br />
the “Journal of Julius Rodman,” will probably<br />
be ready next month. The other five volumes<br />
completing the edition are to be expected before<br />
the end of the year. Mr. Stedman has had an<br />
attack of the grippe which has delayed the<br />
appearance of his long-promised “Victorian<br />
Anthology,” intended to accompany his discussion<br />
of the “Victorian Poets.”<br />
Mr. Bryce, at that first dinner of the Society of<br />
Authors, said that the two things he had recently<br />
noticed in American literature were, first, the great<br />
variety of political and economic writing; and,<br />
second, the abundance of short stories having a<br />
strong local flavour, redolent of the soil. This<br />
local short story continues to be very popular in<br />
our magazines, until now there is hardly any part of<br />
the United States which someone has not taken<br />
as a field for fiction. Among the recent volumes<br />
of these tales are Mrs. Margaret C. Graham’s<br />
“Stories of the Foot Hills '’ of California and<br />
Miss Murfree’s “Phantoms of the Footbridge,” in<br />
which “Charles Egbert Craddock” sets up before<br />
us again the strange and uncouth mountaineers<br />
of Tennessee. Also to be noted are Mrs. S. M. H.<br />
Gardner’s “Quaker Idyls;” Mr. William Henry<br />
Shelton’s “Man with a Memory '' (chiefly war<br />
stories); Mrs. Mary Tappan Wright’s “A<br />
Truce’” (chiefly New England tales); while Mr.<br />
Louis Pendleton's story of “The Sons of Ham ”<br />
is a discussion of the duty of the nation toward<br />
the enfranchised negro clothed in the garb of<br />
fiction.<br />
At the Publishers' Night of the Authors’ Club<br />
—the first formal entertainment given by the<br />
club since it moved into its new and permanent<br />
home in Carnegie Hall—Mr. Charles J. Long-<br />
man was among the guests. Mr. Longman has<br />
been in America for a month or more, having had<br />
a fortnight of sunshine in Florida, and having<br />
spent two or three days in Washington among<br />
the relics of ancient man in the Smithsonian<br />
Institute. The importance of the American<br />
branch of Longmans, Green, and Co. is increasing<br />
year by year. The number of books by American<br />
authors published by this oldest of London houses<br />
is also steadily growing, Indeed, as the Long-<br />
mans and the Macmillans have both found, it is<br />
impossible for any British publishing house to<br />
hold a position of consequence in the United<br />
States without having on its list a great many<br />
books of American authorship. Mr. Longman<br />
expects to sail for England a week from to-day.<br />
Mr. John Lane was also among the guests of the<br />
Authors—and so was Mr. Richard Le Gallienne,<br />
who returns home to-day.<br />
A story told at this reception of the Authors'<br />
Club is said not to be new—but it is perhaps true.<br />
A very unfunny article was sent by an ambitious<br />
amateur to an American comic paper, and at the<br />
foot of it the aspiring author has written in pencil,<br />
“What will you give for this P” “Ten yards<br />
start” was what the unfeeling editor wrote under-<br />
neath when he returned the MS. FI. R.<br />
- *- ~ 2-sº<br />
*<br />
NOTES AND NEWS.<br />
HE Canadian Copyright business still con-<br />
tinues to trouble the world. We publish<br />
in another part of this paper the Canadian<br />
case drawn out by themselves. It amounts, appa-<br />
rently, to this ; that while every civilised country<br />
in the world has acknowledged literary property<br />
to be as real and as worthy of being guarded as<br />
any other kind of property, Canada alone desires<br />
to secede from this honourable convention, and<br />
to appropriate and “convey ’’ literary property to<br />
her own supposed advantage—that is, the advan-<br />
tage of a few printers for whose sake this great<br />
iniquity is to be perpetrated.<br />
It has been found impossible to keep American<br />
books out of Canada, or Canadian books out of<br />
America. It is ridiculous to keep repeating that<br />
the laws forbid the importation of such books.<br />
Who regards the law P Who enforces it?<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 317 (#331) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
31 7<br />
Canada used to be overrun by American cheap<br />
piracies. Distant colonies, such as Jamaica and<br />
the Cape, used to be overrun by American cheap<br />
piracies, notwithstanding the law. With a frontier<br />
unprotected, unguarded, thousands of miles long,<br />
there can be no protection for such a law. For<br />
all intents and purposes the books published in<br />
America might have been before the Copyright<br />
Act published in Canada. And so it will be<br />
again. As for the old royalty of 12% per cent.,<br />
from which the author never got anything, that<br />
is to be exchanged for one of Io per cent, the<br />
receipts from which are equally dubious. We<br />
are told that no book is to be issued without a<br />
stamp. And who is to enforce this provision<br />
over the broad extent of Canada? Are we to<br />
expect the whole Canadian people individually to<br />
insist upon this stamp P Moreover, to offer a<br />
successful author Io per cent, when he receives<br />
I5, 20, and sometimes 25 per cent. is impudent.<br />
As, however, no one will now get anything, it<br />
matters nothing what they offer. Only it would<br />
have looked better to make the illusory proposal a<br />
little more attractive.<br />
The Canadians “resent the sale of their<br />
market.” What does this mean? It means that<br />
the American publishers buy of the author the<br />
Canadian rights; in the same way they buy the<br />
American rights. This gives them undisputed<br />
right to sell in Canada. Now, it is perfectly open<br />
to Canadian publishers, if there are any, to set up<br />
an office in New York. English authors will be<br />
Quite as ready to deal with them as with<br />
American publishers. It will be but a question<br />
of fair dealing—not a 10 per cent. royalty—and<br />
enterprise. English publishers have done this.<br />
Longmans have a house in New York; there is a<br />
Cassell and Co. in New York. Why cannot the<br />
Canadians do the same<br />
On the proposed Canadian Copyright Act, a<br />
small collection of opinions from three authors and<br />
two publishers appeared in the Contemporary<br />
Review of April. The opinions are very clear,<br />
and very clearly put. The Act is a blow against<br />
the recognition of literary property which has<br />
been obtained from all civilised nations. It proposes<br />
practically to take the works of English and<br />
American authors; to reprint them as the<br />
Canadian booksellers—they have no publishers—<br />
please; to cut them up and mutilate them as they<br />
please. These facts are plainly and forcibly<br />
brought out, and the opinions ought to be put<br />
together in a pamphlet with the rest of the<br />
protests against this iniquitous proposal. That<br />
the Act is not defended by the better class of<br />
Canadians is shown oy a protest of a Canadian<br />
lawyer here reproduced (see p. 3 Io), which first<br />
appeared in a Toronto paper. The last has not<br />
been said on this subject, nor has the Act yet<br />
become law. Meantime it is shameful that a<br />
country like Canada should for a moment enter-<br />
tain a proposal to revert to the old time of<br />
international piracy. .<br />
Here is a noble chance for novelists, or aspirants,<br />
who can construct a story of mystery. The<br />
Chicago Record offers to authors the following<br />
prizes for novels of incident, dramatic situations,<br />
and mystery. Bear in mind these conditions,<br />
O ye candidates Incident — always more<br />
incident — dramatic situations, surprises, and<br />
Tableaua, in every chapter : the mystery of a<br />
great and wonderful secret, to be discovered on<br />
the last page, to be kept up throughout. That is<br />
the first condition. The next is that the story must<br />
have been written by the candidate who sends it;<br />
sworn evidence of that must be sent with the<br />
story. Thirdly, the story must be, in length,<br />
from 140,000 to 160,000 words—viz., the average<br />
length of a serial to run six months in a weekly<br />
paper, viz., about 5000 or 6000 words for an<br />
instalment. Fourthly, the subjects must not be<br />
those of certain popular novels of the day. As to<br />
the prizes, they range from £2OOO down to<br />
£100. And the Chicago Record reserves the<br />
right of using such stories as do not win a prize<br />
for its own columns at 5 dollars, or £I, per<br />
column. Unsuccessful stories will be returned.<br />
Very well, the whole thing may be bogus; but I<br />
do not think that it is bogus, because so much<br />
publicity has been given to such an offer. If I<br />
were a young novelist I would have a try. Think<br />
of a mystery—murder, money, jewels, a claimant,<br />
a forgery. Fix upon as strong a motif as you can<br />
—don't be afraid of making it too strong; and<br />
then go ahead. The MSS. have to reach Chicago<br />
before Oct. I of this year. You have therefore<br />
less than five months to spend over the work.<br />
Chapman’s “Magazine of Fiction,” vol. I, No. 1,<br />
is lying before me. A magazine entirely devoted<br />
to fiction would seem a perilous undertaking,<br />
especially at a time when in every other number<br />
of every other magazine there appears an article<br />
on the Decay of Fiction. At the same time,<br />
however, in every advertising column there is<br />
a long list of books in their fiftieth, their<br />
hundredth edition, showing that the small num-<br />
ber of English families which can buy books<br />
are buying that class of book. The editor, Mr.<br />
Oswald Crawfurd, has probably gauged the<br />
demand before making the venture. Meantime<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 318 (#332) ############################################<br />
<br />
3.18<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
there is one new feature. The magazine is to<br />
contain dramatic dialogues; stories in dialogue;<br />
and even plays. We all know how much more<br />
pleasantly dialogue can be made in skilful hands<br />
to tell the story than long and tedious narrative.<br />
It is one of the later developments in the art of<br />
fiction that it is becoming more and more dramatic<br />
in form—not in set “tableaux,” after the old<br />
fashion, but in the substitution of dialogue for<br />
description. The new number contains eight<br />
papers—by Bret Harte, Anthony Hope, Stanley<br />
Weyman, George Brett, James Payn, Frankfort<br />
Moore, Violet Hunt, and John Davidson.<br />
A propos of Free Libraries and Tauchnitz books,<br />
the following suggestion seems worthy of con-<br />
sideration. Perhaps some Bradford citizen may<br />
take it up. I have to thank a correspondent,<br />
“F. N. W.,” for it.<br />
In nearly every case the borrowers of books from Free<br />
Libraries are compelled to pay one penny per annum for the<br />
renewal of their tickets. TXoes not this constitute a hiring<br />
within the letter of the law P I have submitted the case to<br />
three legal gentlemen, and all admit that it is an exceedingly<br />
nice point. At any rate, it seems to me to be worthy of<br />
consideration.<br />
I have before me the rules of the new<br />
Hampstead Public Libraries. I do not find in<br />
them anything about the payment of a penny.<br />
There are fines for the detention of books, but<br />
not for the renewal of a ticket. Perhaps there is<br />
no penny demanded at Bradford. Is not, how-<br />
ever, the circulation of a Tauchnitz book by a<br />
public library the infringement of the law P Is it<br />
not the same thing as the open distribution of<br />
smuggled goods P<br />
One is curious to watch the effect of the Free<br />
Libraries on the Circulating Libraries. For my<br />
own part, I do not expect any perceptible effect.<br />
The general shrinkage of incomes, if it goes on,<br />
will more and more diminish the number of sub-<br />
scribers, but not the Free Libraries, which will<br />
be used by the class below those who pay three<br />
guineas a year to Smith or Mudie. And since<br />
this class cannot possibly afford to buy books, not<br />
harm at all, but good, will be done by the exten-<br />
sion of the Free Libraries. Surely it is a good<br />
thing for an author to feel that his book will<br />
have the chance at least of being read by millions<br />
instead of by thousands. Surely those who<br />
desire to reach and to influence these millions<br />
will rejoice in thinking that their books are now<br />
within reach of so vast an audience; and surely<br />
it will not be a bad thing in the immediate future<br />
for a publisher to feel that he can place the whole<br />
of one edition at once among the libraries of the<br />
country.<br />
Authors are an irritable race, especially and<br />
proverbially those who write verse. The fol-<br />
lowing note explains the repetition of this maxim:<br />
My little volume I sent you, which was considered suffi-<br />
cient passport for enrolment in your honourable Society, has<br />
failed to be recognised in the Awthor in any way whatever,<br />
although all my friends (men of letters, too) have called<br />
Some of the poems perfect cameos, unique, and so on. I<br />
see, therefore, that my merits as an author by authors do<br />
not warrant my burdening the Society with my name.<br />
In other words, a member of the Society has<br />
withdrawn because he did not receive a notice of<br />
his book in these columns. The Author is not a<br />
review; it does not profess to publish criticisms<br />
on books. It does, however, announce and men-<br />
tion new books and new editions. Until lately it<br />
published a list of all the new books; for the sake<br />
of getting space this list has been now abandoned.<br />
With regard to young poets, it is found that the<br />
fairest way with these is to let them speak for<br />
themselves. And the little volume referred to<br />
has either not reached me—it is still, probably,<br />
on the shelves of the secretary’s office—or I have<br />
mislaid it, for which, as the author takes it so<br />
much to heart, I am sorry. If he had communi-<br />
cated with me I would have had a search made<br />
for the book, and should have given him the<br />
same chance as the others—viz., allowed him to<br />
speak for himself.<br />
This restriction as to criticism does not prevent<br />
the writer of “Book Talk” from mentioning,<br />
selecting, or praising any book which he thinks<br />
may deserve it.<br />
The following must be taken for what it is<br />
worth on some results of the proposed “Net’”<br />
system:<br />
Some remarks made to me yesterday by a country book-<br />
seller upon the “Net” system in the price of books appear to<br />
me to touch upon a probable source of injury to authors<br />
through the “Net” system which, so far as I have seen, has<br />
been unnoted in the Awthor. He said: “I do not know to<br />
whom the extra profits go—certainly not to the booksellers;<br />
and, to prove that the profits do not go to us, I may tell you<br />
that for the future, unless we are paid ready money for<br />
books that are sold net, we are going to charge our<br />
customers twopence in the shilling upon the net price. We<br />
cannot afford to give credit unless we do this. Should our<br />
customers hesitate about paying twopence in the shilling<br />
upon the net price in the event of the book being put to<br />
their credit, we shall decline to order the book.”<br />
I will try to obtain by the next number some<br />
results of the “Net” system as applied to royal-<br />
ties. So far as the figures have been furnished<br />
me, they are simply surprising. If the system<br />
prevails, which seems unlikely, if only for the<br />
reason that the British public, which grows poorer<br />
every year, is not going to pay 6s., or even 5s.,<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 319 (#333) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
3 IQ<br />
instead of 4s. 6d., we shall have to revise the<br />
whole of our royalty tables.<br />
A letter appears to-day (April 26) in the Daily<br />
Chronicle which looks like the commencement of<br />
an outpouring against literary agents. A certain<br />
kind of publisher is never tired of attacking the<br />
wickedness of the literary agent, who makes his<br />
former practices impossible. This writer, who<br />
signs himself “An Onlooker,” accuses the literary<br />
agents of “emasculating ” literature by making<br />
Contracts for authors in advance, and “half a<br />
decade” or five years in advance. He sees in<br />
imagination, or has been told to see, a miserable<br />
author, pen in hand, hurriedly grinding away day<br />
and night, throwing off his sheets, producing far<br />
too rapidly for his powers, “bribed” by his agent.<br />
There is really nothing in the world on which<br />
greater rubbish, more ignorant rubbish, more<br />
mischievous rubbish is constantly written and<br />
believed than the production of literature, espe-<br />
cially fiction. To begin with, it is not the agent<br />
but the publisher who makes the contract ; it is<br />
a very rare thing for a publisher to trust an<br />
author's staying powers so long in advance as five<br />
years. It is the case that editors of good maga-<br />
zines secure the services of writers a year or two<br />
years in advance; it is also the case that pub-<br />
lishers secure the book rights of the same works<br />
in advance. Then comes the question whether, by<br />
engaging himself beforehand, an author neces-<br />
sarily hurries himself? Of course he does not.<br />
He may be so foolish as to undertake too much ;<br />
but most novelists bring out one novel only a year,<br />
and perhaps two or three short stories. Why<br />
should they not place these novels in advance?<br />
I should like to learn the names of any authors<br />
who have been “bribed ” into hurried and incom-<br />
plete work, or are under contracts beyond their<br />
powers to fulfil honourably. The agent does not<br />
— cannot — increase the production; he only<br />
relieves the writer of what is the most irksome,<br />
the most irritating, the most anxious part of his<br />
work—the commercial side of it.<br />
WALTER BESANT.<br />
*—- - -*<br />
NATURE AS INTERPRETED IN THE POEMS<br />
OF GEORGE MEREDITH,<br />
|TF the lover of Wordsworth were to seek<br />
among later English poets for his successor<br />
as the High Priest of Nature, he would be<br />
not a little surprised to find that his most ardent<br />
disciple is, not the late Laureate; not Matthew<br />
Arnold, who was loudest in his praise; but Mr.<br />
George Meredith whose genius appears at first<br />
glance so unlike that of Wordsworth as to leave<br />
but few points of resemblance. Notwithstanding<br />
this diversity, even the most cursory reader of<br />
Mr. Meredith’s poetry must be struck by the fact<br />
that in it the lesson which Wordsworth made it<br />
his life’s highest aim to inculcate has found its<br />
simplest as well as fullest expression.<br />
The familiar stanza in the second part of<br />
“Expostulation and Reply ’’ in which Words-<br />
worth declared that -<br />
One impulse from a vernal wood<br />
May teach you more of man,<br />
Of moral evil and of good,<br />
Than all the sages can,<br />
must surely have lingered in Mr. Meredith’s<br />
memory when he wrote the concluding lines of<br />
his poem on “South-West Wind in the Wood-<br />
land ’’ in which he tells us that he who hearkens<br />
to the voice of Nature and yields his spirit to<br />
her benignant influence with a complete trust in<br />
her powers and purposes will obtain<br />
More knowledge of her secret, more<br />
Delight in her beneficence,<br />
Than hours of musing, or the lore<br />
That lives with men could ever give.<br />
That this was more than a mere passing phase<br />
of thought in Mr. Meredith’s mind no reader of<br />
his poems can doubt. The volume in which the<br />
lines quoted occur is the earliest collection of his<br />
poems; that published by Parker in 1851, and<br />
though the poet in it did not lay so much stress<br />
on the importance to man of a close communion<br />
with Nature, as he does in later volumes, there is<br />
nevertheless more than one significant reference<br />
to the love of Earth for her children, and her<br />
beneficent influence in restoring the moral as<br />
well as physical health of those who have for-<br />
saken her for a season.<br />
In “London by Lamplight,” a later poem in<br />
the same book, the writer expresses his belief in<br />
the sanative forces of Nature and faith in her<br />
power to regenerate the dwellers in crowded<br />
cities could they but be restored to her arms.<br />
He who loves Nature will, he declares, never be<br />
forlorn ; and a vision of her loveliness is more<br />
than a recompense for days of weariness and toil,<br />
In more than one poem he tells us that he who<br />
once gains Nature as his friend will never lose<br />
her; that the joys of her bestowal are never<br />
ending.<br />
In “Modern Love, &c.,” a book published<br />
eleven years later, the poet dwells with even<br />
greater emphasis upon a theme which may truly<br />
be said to constitute the most important portion<br />
of his message to his fellowman. In this volume<br />
the “Ode to the Spirit of the Earth in the<br />
Autumn” is devoted to the proclamation of an<br />
evangel, which though it has found many<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 320 (#334) ############################################<br />
<br />
32O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
expositors has not, since preached by Words-<br />
worth, been urged on man’s acceptance with a<br />
force and persistence equal to Mr. Meredith’s.<br />
The truth and beauty of earth who is “our<br />
only visible friend,” her love and care for her<br />
offspring, who renounce and denounce her, her<br />
serenity, her sanity, her healthfulness, her free-<br />
dom from sorrow, are dwelt on with an ecstacy of<br />
expression for which the only parallel is to be<br />
found in the utterances of the earlier poet. Even<br />
death, hitherto the great bugbear of humanity,<br />
ceases to be thus regarded by the lover of earth,<br />
O, green bounteous earth !<br />
Bacchante Mother stern to those<br />
Who live not in thy heart of mirth;<br />
Death ! Shall I shrink from loving thee P<br />
Into the breast that gives the rose,<br />
Shall I with shuddering fall P<br />
Earth knows no desolation,<br />
She smells regeneration<br />
In the moist breath of decay.<br />
She knows not loss :<br />
She feels her need,<br />
Who the winged seed<br />
With the leaf doth toss. -<br />
And to this serenity, this majestic calm, man<br />
may aspire if he truly loves and feels confidence<br />
in Mother Earth,<br />
She can lead us, only she,<br />
TJnto God’s footstool, whither she reaches;<br />
Loved, enjoyed, her gifts must be ;<br />
Reverenced the truths she teaches,<br />
Ere a man may hope that he<br />
Ever can attain the glee<br />
Of things without a destiny |<br />
The fervour and depth of Mr. Meredith’s<br />
utterances on this theme are plainly shown by the<br />
fact that after an interval of over twenty years,<br />
during which the poet was immersed in prose, he<br />
devoted a complete book to “Poems and Lyrics<br />
of the Joy of Earth,” in which we find the same<br />
expressions of joyous confidence in Nature. Man,<br />
we are told, is a compact of blood, and brain, and<br />
spirit, and should he, in his folly, attempt to<br />
favour anyone of these at the expense of<br />
the others a dire result may be expected.<br />
The purely sensual nature is equally in danger<br />
with the purely intellectual or the rigidly ascetic.<br />
Earth from whom we derive the health which is<br />
the source of all lasting happiness demands that<br />
blood, and brain, and spirit maintain a happy<br />
union, and, for love of her, we unquestionably<br />
obey her behests with ultimate and certain good<br />
to ourselves.<br />
Earth your haven, Earth your helm,<br />
You command a double realm<br />
Labouring here to pay your debt,<br />
Till your little sun be set,<br />
Leaving her the future task<br />
Loving her too well to ask.<br />
From her we can learn every lesson if we but<br />
hearken to her, and bear with us a wise receptive-<br />
ness. By thus doing we gain “a larger self,” and<br />
a sweeter fellowship with all animate things<br />
6. In SU162S.<br />
In a poem entitled “Earth and Man” their<br />
relationship is even more clearly defined than in<br />
any earlier work from the same hand, and the<br />
folly of man's attempt to read “the riddle of the<br />
painful earth,” instead of resignedly and calmly<br />
accepting a mother's love, is shown in no mis-<br />
takable terms. The poem resembles, in treat-<br />
ment, a familiar passage in “Empedocles on<br />
Etna,” inasmuch as it shows that man, while he<br />
curses earth, is one with the power against which<br />
his curses are levelled, a power which labours for<br />
man’s good whether he curse or bless,<br />
If he aloft for aid<br />
Imploring storms, her essence is the spur,<br />
His cry to Heaven is a cry to her<br />
He would evade.<br />
#: $<br />
# e #: :#:<br />
And her desires are those<br />
For happiness, for lastingness, for light.<br />
'Tis she who kindles in his haunting night<br />
The hoped dawn-rose.<br />
As if the poet had, with this book, exhausted<br />
this fruitful theme, we have no hint of it in<br />
“Poems and Ballads of Tragic Life,” published<br />
in 1887, the contents of which deal with phases<br />
of human life and passion, but the subject was<br />
happily far from exhausted, and accordingly, in<br />
the following year a volume entitled “A Reading<br />
of Earth’’ was published. This book, which is<br />
the last volume of poetry he has written, must<br />
for the present be considered to contain Mr.<br />
Meredith’s final expressions on “man and nature,<br />
and on human life.” In it he sets himself not<br />
so much to demonstrate man's relationship to<br />
nature as to interpret her many moods, and to<br />
state the benefits accruing to man from a con-<br />
templation of each and all of them. In “Rough<br />
Weather ” a comparison is drawn between a life<br />
of ignoble ease and warmth, and one of hardship<br />
and wrestling with adverse forces, and the gifts<br />
of Nature are proved to be designed for him<br />
who has courage to endure.<br />
Nature<br />
Judged of shrinking nerves, appears<br />
A mother whom no cry can melt ;<br />
But read her past desires and fears,<br />
The letters on her breast are spelt.<br />
Would we learn of earth her lesson P. Then<br />
we must be prepared to accept symbols instead of<br />
words; yet we have but to ask to learn—<br />
Harsh wisdom gives Earth, no more ;<br />
In one the spur and the curb :<br />
An answer to thoughts or deeds,<br />
To the Legends an alien look;<br />
To the Questions a figure of Clay.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 321 (#335) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
32 I<br />
Yet we have but to see and hear,<br />
Crave we her medical herb.<br />
And to love her is to gain this<br />
For love we Earth, then serve we all ;<br />
Her mystic secret then is ours,<br />
the secret of unruffled calm and enduring patience<br />
mingled with a steadfast faith in the welfare of<br />
the human race.<br />
Nature has been variously interpreted by the<br />
poets since Wordsworth's day, but by none with<br />
such keen vision and set purpose as by Mr.<br />
Meredith. His interpretation while it differs in<br />
some points from Wordsworth's, more closely<br />
resembles it than does that of any of his contem-<br />
poraries. In Lord Tennyson’s poems, save in<br />
“In Memoriam ” in which she is described as<br />
antagonistic to and careless of life, Nature assumes<br />
the appearance of a vast field in which human<br />
figures move, and to which it forms a suitable<br />
background. In Mr. Browning's we get a degree<br />
nearer; here her sunshine and her storms exhibit<br />
her sympathy with the woes and joys of man.<br />
Mr. Swinburne's interpretation—if such it can be<br />
called—resembles Mr. Browning's, while Rossetti's<br />
exhibits an affinity to the Laureate's, with the<br />
addition that the poet evidently sees with a<br />
painter's eye; and Mr. Wm. Morris also selects<br />
his landscapes and groups his figures with a view<br />
to artistic effect. Matthew Arnold’s alone ap-<br />
proaches Mr. Meredith’s conception, and that<br />
very rarely; once, in the passage of “Empedocles”<br />
already referred to, and again in a short poem<br />
entitled “A Wish,” in which he speaks of the<br />
Earth as a friend<br />
Which never was the friend of one,<br />
Nor promised love it could not give,<br />
But lit for all its generous sun, -<br />
And lived itself, and made us live.<br />
It is rumoured that Mr. Meredith intends for<br />
the future to devote himself exclusively to poetry.<br />
Such an announcement cannot but be gratifying<br />
to all lovers of poetry, for Mr. Meredith, while<br />
he has followed the steps of Wordsworth in his<br />
interpretation of Nature, has also realised his<br />
predecessor's conception of the poet inasmuch as<br />
he is a teacher, a great teacher. As a con-<br />
tribution to the literature of optimism his poems<br />
occupy an important position. They have the<br />
same health-giving powers as Nature herself,<br />
and are as inspiriting as the seasons.<br />
*-* -<br />
*- - -<br />
HE WOULD BIE AN AUTHOR,<br />
DO not for a moment suppose that my<br />
experiences have been in the least extraor-<br />
dinary. Perhaps it is unwise of me to<br />
attempt to write them down: and yet they may<br />
have some interest for hopeful aspirants to<br />
literary honours, even if they should be of no<br />
service to such.<br />
First let me state the conditions under which I<br />
began to scribble. Before attaining my ninth<br />
birthday I left school to begin work at a mine, the<br />
School Board being then in its infancy. From<br />
that early age until I was over twenty-one a pen<br />
was scarcely ever in my fingers, although, like<br />
Mr. Toots in “Dombey and Son,” I could perhaps<br />
have managed to “chalk a bit.” Hitherto the<br />
whole of my time had been spent in work and<br />
play, with a little random reading in my leisure,<br />
a very little indeed. Perhaps I had some discri-<br />
mination between what was good and what was<br />
not of the little reading I did, but so far from my<br />
mind was the thought of authorship that I do<br />
not remember even to have written a letter.<br />
Being an impulsive and impressionable youth, I<br />
wasted most of my leisure in courting, wooing one<br />
delicate girl to such good purpose that by the<br />
time I had attained my majority I had been<br />
married nearly three years, and was over head<br />
and ears in debt, having known what it was to<br />
be out of work and to have the doctor calling for<br />
weeks together.<br />
These facts are given simply to show how<br />
thoroughly unfitted and unprepared I was for any<br />
attempt at authorship, even if I had then pos-<br />
sessed the desire for it, which, let me admit, I did<br />
not. About this time, however, the idea struck<br />
me that it would be a pleasant pastime to copy<br />
out such short pieces of prose or verse as took my<br />
fancy, wherefore I purchased a sixpenny exercise-<br />
book and occasionally put my hand to the task of<br />
improving my writing, but betrayed no great<br />
earnestness in the matter. Having never been a<br />
visitor at public-houses, my evenings were<br />
mostly spent at home; yet, with the exception of<br />
two or three old standard books and the serial<br />
stories of the local newspaper, I still read very<br />
little. One day a friend lent me a volume of<br />
Burns' poems, which proved a delightful revela-<br />
tion, and gave me an appetite for more. Later I<br />
read Cowper, Thomson, Wordsworth, Byron,<br />
Moore, &c., each of whom in turn delighted me,<br />
and thenceforth I became a student of literature<br />
in general, with a slowly increasing enthusiasm<br />
for books and writers. Now, when the new<br />
magazines come to the reading-room I look them<br />
over with a feverish eagerness that is almost<br />
painful.<br />
About seven years ago, being still in low cir-<br />
cumstances, I began occasionally to puzzle out a<br />
few verses, with now and again a very short<br />
sketch in prose. Instead of consigning these<br />
first attempts to the flames, I sent them to an<br />
editor who sometimes publicly criticised the work<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 322 (#336) ############################################<br />
<br />
322<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
of would-be authors, wherefore I had the glorious<br />
satisfaction of seeing some of them in print.<br />
After a number of failures and a little unremune-<br />
rated success, one lucky piece at last merited, or<br />
gained at any rate, the distinction of being<br />
paid for. The circumstances under which this<br />
first payment reached me make an almost tragic<br />
story, which there is no space to tell in this<br />
paper. -<br />
This brings me to about five years ago. The<br />
period between that date and the present is the<br />
time of my most important experiences. Finding<br />
that I was now able to write short sketches and<br />
verses which might merit the consideration of<br />
editors, I began to inclose stamped addressed<br />
envelopes with my MSS., a judicious practice not<br />
hitherto adopted. My handwriting was still that<br />
of an unpolished scribbler; the punctuation may<br />
have been fairly good, but the spelling—. This<br />
latter feature of my composition is even yet very<br />
imperfect; it is doubtful if I shall ever learn to<br />
spell correctly. The theory of grammar is one<br />
to which I could never give any continued<br />
attention.<br />
A careful estimate of my work, done during<br />
leisure evenings these five years, gives the follow-<br />
ing result: About 450 pieces have been written,<br />
short stories, short articles, and verses, chiefly<br />
the latter. As near as I am able to compute, the<br />
work may be divided into 190 prose pieces and<br />
26o of verse. Of the whole 450, the accepted<br />
pieces, all of which have been paid for, number<br />
360; verses 250, stories and articles I IO; thus<br />
leaving eighty prose pieces and ten of verse<br />
declined.<br />
The verses average about four stanzas in length,<br />
and the payment has varied from 5s. to half-a-<br />
guinea. The length of the stories and articles<br />
varies from two to six pages of foolscap, and the<br />
payment from Ios. to two guineas.<br />
The successful pieces have not all been accepted<br />
the first time they were submitted, not a few<br />
having been returned, rewritten, and sent again.<br />
Several contributions have come back after they<br />
had been cut up and given out to the printers<br />
Only some four or five pieces have been entirely<br />
lost.<br />
The rejected work has mostly been returned<br />
within a fortnight or three weeks, but occasionally<br />
pieces have stayed away longer, a few having<br />
come home after they had been away over a year.<br />
Most of the accepted work has been paid for<br />
about the date of publication, but I have found<br />
the most regularly paying publishers subject to<br />
slight variation, while others pay for work a week<br />
or two after it appears. Some publishers send a<br />
copy of the journal containing one's contribution,<br />
but others don’t ; wherefore, seeing that I have<br />
not been a regular subscriber to every paper<br />
written to, a number of stories have been accepted<br />
which I have never had the pleasure of seeing in<br />
print.<br />
Besides the verses, articles, and short stories,<br />
I have to count two attempts at serial story<br />
writing, neither of which have been persevered<br />
with, both having been dropped before the<br />
tenth chapter was begun. From these a few<br />
chapters were accept when offered as short<br />
stories. A third attempt promises to be more<br />
successful, as it is now about half written, and<br />
has something more than a mere chance of being<br />
accepted.<br />
Verse writing has been a very pleasant<br />
recreation. My method is to write them on a<br />
slate, so that it is easy to erase a word or a line<br />
and substitute a better. I find it hard work to<br />
write prose, and am very slow at it, seldom pro-<br />
ducing more than three pages of foolscap in four<br />
hours.<br />
During the last few years I have often been<br />
disheartened, but have quickly regained hope,<br />
and have persevered in the face of discourage-<br />
ment and difficulty; yet I am fully pursuaded<br />
that the same time and energy given to any<br />
other kind of work might have made me a<br />
fortune.<br />
It seems to me that in order to become a "<br />
successful author one should have a great<br />
enthusiasm for literary work, a good education,<br />
exceptional experiences, unlimited patience, un-<br />
ceasing perseverance, a rare imagination, and a<br />
reliable bank account to fall back upon during<br />
the “declined with thanks’ period. Of course,<br />
if one has been reared in the literary atmosphere,<br />
and editors are among one's friends, it is easier<br />
to get a start. My lot was not cast in this<br />
atmosphere, and I am afraid I do not possess<br />
anyone of these qualifications. So far I look<br />
upon myself as a failure, but have put down these<br />
facts for what they might be worth to any<br />
aspirant who finds himself at a similar dis-<br />
advantage. Perhaps I may be able to gain a<br />
livelihood by this kind of work in time, with<br />
health and good fortune to assist me. Seeing<br />
that I was over twenty-eight years of age when<br />
my first story was accepted, and am now only<br />
thirty-three, also taking into consideration the<br />
fact that I gave little or no study to literature<br />
until a few years ago, it is evident I am still a<br />
child in the literary school. Probably this paper<br />
will be regarded as unwarrantably egotistical,<br />
which doubtless it is, wherefore, although my<br />
experiences are not half told, I must bring it to a<br />
close.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 323 (#337) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
323<br />
AUTHORSHIP AND JOURNALISM IN<br />
RUSSIA.<br />
HE literary profession the wide world over<br />
is one long tale of disappointment, drud-<br />
gery, deprivation, and destitution. The<br />
few exceptions to the rule only go to prove its<br />
generalness.<br />
Authorship in the Tsar's realms is about at its<br />
lowest ebb. The daily feuilleton in the news-<br />
papers has almost completely done away with<br />
works of a lasting character. Instead of authors<br />
trying to elevate the reading public, they have<br />
descended to their level. They only seek to<br />
amuse them and pander to their tastes without<br />
any attempt at instruction. The details of the<br />
latest domestic scandal are woven into a dialogue,<br />
utterly devoid of plot or moral, and presented<br />
for the readers' delectation. The few composi-<br />
tions exhibiting any signs of originality in con-<br />
struction of plot or portrayal of character are<br />
invariably of foreign origin, and find their way<br />
into the Russian press in translation. In this<br />
latter branch of the art British authors are in<br />
great vogue, and several familiar names are to be<br />
met with in contemporary magazines. A short<br />
while ago the statistics of a provincial library<br />
showed that the authors, taken in their respec-<br />
tive order of popularity, most in demand were<br />
Tolstoi, Lermontoff, Turgenieff, Gogol, Pees-<br />
wensky, Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Mayne Reid,<br />
Walter Scott, Dickens, and Lord Byron. I did<br />
not see a single contemporary English author,<br />
but this was not to be wondered at, as the trans-<br />
lations of their works appear in magazines and<br />
newspapers, and seldom, if ever, come out in book<br />
form.<br />
The literature of to-day, in more senses than<br />
one, is of the most ephemeral nature. The<br />
puerile, pernicious productions which at present<br />
find acceptance testify to the decline and gradual<br />
decay of the author's craft. Racy writers on<br />
topical subjects flourish abundantly, but masters<br />
of pure diction, finished style, aiming at instruc-<br />
tion and elevation, will be sought for in vain.<br />
The halo of mystery which encircles the harem,<br />
the brutishness which distinguishes the Orient, the<br />
'breath of scandal which taints a noble name—all<br />
these have their slaves. It is only the contempla-<br />
tion of the workings of the passions of the lowest<br />
possible order that stirs a ripple of interest on the<br />
placid surface of the great sea of surfeited<br />
pleasure which characterises the present genera-<br />
tion. Some affirm that Tolstoi was little known<br />
before his realistic book “ Kreutzer Sonata ?”<br />
turned the general public's attention to him. And<br />
who now of all living Russian writers can claim<br />
to rank among first-rate authors P. They could be<br />
counted on the digits of one hand. The only one<br />
that enjoys a world-wide renown is Tolstoi. And<br />
he is as if he were no more. He came of that<br />
Russian strain which had Pushkin and Lermon-<br />
toff for its representatives. They studied natu-<br />
ralism, and died in practising it. Both writers<br />
met their death in a duel, in consequence of an<br />
unholy love. In his youth Tolstoi was also not<br />
free of the divine passion, and out of his youthful<br />
experiences he evolved a tale which was true to<br />
the life, and for which the world thanked him.<br />
But now he is returning to the fallacies of a by-<br />
gone age. He is vainly trying to revive the<br />
myths of a long-flown past; to rehabilitate the<br />
Garden of Eden; to hasten the Milennium—all<br />
equal impossibilities. The hoary head befits the<br />
philosophical mind, but his “Babellic” structure<br />
constructed to a fantastic Utopian design will<br />
never exist on its chimerical groundwork. The<br />
store of sound reason and clear judgment which<br />
he has rejected will yet become the corner-stone<br />
of a more substantial and enduring edifice erected<br />
on the principles of labour and progress. One<br />
trait in his character we cannot help admiring is<br />
his sincerity. He is sincere in everything he<br />
does, as long as his belief in its virtue lasts. But,<br />
then, belief is so very flexible. He may change it<br />
to-morrow. At the risk of being discursive, I<br />
will relate the following as illustrative of the<br />
commercial value of a name: When the Count<br />
was on the Caucasus serving in the army, he sent<br />
some of his first effusions to a Moscow editor,<br />
who replied that he would accept them, but<br />
could not pay for them. Now Tolstoi is<br />
offered fabulous prices for his works, but he<br />
replies that he accepts no pay. What would<br />
then have been treasured beyond all measure is<br />
now despised as mere worthless dross. Vanity of<br />
vanities, all is vanity, saith Solomon — espe-<br />
cially riches, for they take wings and fly away<br />
with the morn. “Two things have I required of<br />
Thee,” saith Agur, the prophet, “deny me them<br />
not before I die. Remove me far from vanity and<br />
lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me<br />
with food convenient for me.”<br />
The ordinary scribe has often to exist and<br />
nourish a wife and family on the poorest pittance<br />
—pay which a daily labourer would scorn. In pro-<br />
portion to the vast population, it is a surprisingly<br />
small percentage of the people that ever take a<br />
paper into their hands. The “Negramotnia,” or<br />
those unable to read or write, are in an over-<br />
whelming majority in rural districts, and in the<br />
towns themselves the number is simply appalling.<br />
Sometimes the number of those in villages boast-<br />
ing only a rudimentary education descends to as<br />
low a figure as I per cent., and even lower, so it<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 324 (#338) ############################################<br />
<br />
324<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
is no matter for amazement, when we consider<br />
the ignorance of the populace, that the writer's<br />
labours in Russia are so little valued. True, his<br />
lot has been slightly bettered by the liberal grant<br />
of the Tsar, but it is only like a drop in the<br />
oeean, and can only prove of real benefit to the<br />
indigent writer if the Imperial example is fol-<br />
lowed by private subscriptions to the fund from<br />
wealthy patrons of the literary art.<br />
Of course we must recollect that the teeming<br />
millions of the Russian empire are as yet in the<br />
elementary stages of civilisation, but the Govern-<br />
ment is using its best endeavours to educate the<br />
masses, and its efforts must eventually be crowned<br />
with success, and then a brighter day will dawn<br />
for those engaged in literature.<br />
WILLIAM ADDIson.<br />
Odessa, 27 March I I.<br />
*-- ~ *<br />
e= * *<br />
BOOK TALK.<br />
HE Dover Chronicle says Mr. Joseph Hatton<br />
is sojourning at St. Margaret's Bay and<br />
making excursions about the coast between<br />
Deal and Dover with a view to certain incidents<br />
in a new novel that is to begin its serial career<br />
during the autumn in a London weekly. “The<br />
Banishment of Jessop Blythe.” is Mr. Hatton's<br />
latest book, and he chose to adopt the method<br />
of three volumes in one, in which shape the<br />
novel is in active demand at the libraries<br />
and booksellers’. In May or June Mr. Hatton<br />
will publish a shilling novelette entitled “Tom<br />
Chester's Sweetheart" (Hutchinsons). It will<br />
be an extended treatment of the author's story<br />
entitled “The Editor” that appeared in the<br />
Ludgate Monthly. “The Banishment of Jessop<br />
Blythe’’ is published in America by Messrs.<br />
Lippincott.<br />
The large edition of “The Money Lender<br />
Unmasked,” by Mr. Thomas Farrow, was entirely<br />
exhausted within one month from the date of<br />
publication. A second edition has been prepared<br />
and is now ready. This work appears to be one<br />
of the successes of the season, and, in view of the<br />
attention of Parliament having been drawn to the<br />
subject, promises to be of much service as a<br />
standard work of reference should a Royal Com-<br />
mission be granted. In the new edition Mr.<br />
Farrow has still further strengthened the “Intro-<br />
ductory” portion.<br />
Mr. C. L. Marson's book, “The Psalms at<br />
Work,” will shortly appear in a second edition<br />
(Elliot Stock). A revised edition of “The<br />
Blessed Dead in Paradise,” by J. E. Walker,<br />
with an introduction by Canon Bell, will also be<br />
published immediately by the same firm.<br />
Mrs. Alec Tweedie’s first book, “A Girl’s Ride<br />
in Iceland,” will be published in a third edition<br />
in May by Mr. Horace Cox. It will be brought<br />
out at Is., but will be much revised, making it<br />
up to date. Several Icelandic stories will be<br />
added, and many new illustrations. Mrs.<br />
Tweedie's last book, “Wilton, Q.C., or Life in a<br />
Bighland Shooting Box,” is in a second edition,<br />
the first having sold out a month from publica-<br />
tion.<br />
“John Bickerdyke” will shortly issue a volume<br />
of reminiscences, short stories, and essays on the<br />
scientific side of angling. The volume will be<br />
entitled “Days of My Life on Waters Fresh and<br />
Salt, and Other Papers,” and will be illustrated<br />
by an intaglio frontispiece and a number of full-<br />
page illustrations made from photographs taken<br />
Ha the author. The publishers are Longman<br />
and Co.<br />
The same author also has in the press a<br />
volume on modern sea fishing. This book, which<br />
is expected about July, will form one of the<br />
Badminton Series (Longman and Co.). It is<br />
being illustrated by Mr. C. Napier Hemy and Mr.<br />
R. E. Pritchett, and will contain contributions on<br />
Antipodean and other foreign fish, tarpon, and<br />
whaling by Mr. William Senior (“Red Spinner”),<br />
Mr. Alfred C. Harmsworth, and Sir H. Gore<br />
Booth,<br />
About the end of May Mr. E. Norrys Connell<br />
will issue a new novel called “The House of the<br />
Strange Woman.” Mr. Connell is already<br />
favourably known as the author of “In the<br />
Green Park.” This book should have been out<br />
earlier, but the firm of printers who were origi-<br />
nally charged with its production took exception<br />
to certain chapters on conscientious grounds. The<br />
volume is to be the pioneer of a new series of<br />
four-shilling novels which, at Mr. Connell’s sug-<br />
gestion, Messrs. Henry and Co. purpose issuing<br />
in an unique form.<br />
The “Parnassos,” the Philological Society of<br />
Athens, have elected—époqêvos—unanimously—<br />
as honorary member Mrs. Elizabeth M. Edmonds,<br />
author of “Amygdala’’ and of many works on<br />
modern Greece and modern Greeks.<br />
Professor Warr’s book for the “Dawn of Euro-<br />
pean Literature” series (S.P.C.K.) on the Greek<br />
epic will appear next month.<br />
Captain Lionel Trotter, author of “India under<br />
Victoria,” “Warren Hastings,” &c., is engaged<br />
upon a “Life of General John Nicholson,” who,<br />
after a brilliant career in the Punjaub, fell in the<br />
prime of manhood while leading his storming<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 325 (#339) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
325<br />
column along the ramparts of Delhi, in Septem-<br />
ber, 1857. Several of Nicholson's old friends<br />
have promised their aid in this work.<br />
The Delegates of the Clarendon Press are about<br />
to issue Vol. XIII. of Professor Buchheim’s<br />
“German Classics,” consisting of Schiller's<br />
pathetic tragedy, “Maria Stuart.” The text<br />
will be provided with a complete commentary,<br />
and preceded by an historical and a critical<br />
introduction. The distinguishing features of this<br />
edition will consist in the fact that the drama<br />
will be annotated strictly in accordance with the<br />
English, French, and Latin sources consulted<br />
by Schiller, and that several of his sources have<br />
been traced for the first time by the Editor.<br />
Mr. Robert H. Sherard’s new novel, “Jacob<br />
Niemand,” will be published as a six-shilling<br />
volume in June by Messrs. Ward and Downey,<br />
Mr. Sherard has recently written, and disposed<br />
of for publication in serial form, a story entitled<br />
“The Mocking Bird.” His authorised biography<br />
of Mme. Sarah Bernhardt is not yet finished,<br />
and cannot be ready till the autumn.<br />
“Greece and Her Hopes and Troubles,” by<br />
“Hilarion” (Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons),<br />
is a short and plain statement of what Greece is,<br />
what she has done, and what she hopes to accom-<br />
plish. It contrasts the Greece of the present day<br />
with the time of bondage to the Turk. The<br />
object of the author is to set down the exact<br />
truths concerning the country and the people<br />
without exaggeration or suppression. The cession<br />
of the Ionian Islands, for instance, is regarded<br />
from the Hellenic point of view as one of the<br />
most generous acts ever recorded of any nation.<br />
The Rev. James Bowmes has just published a<br />
volume of verse (Sonnenschein) called “Randolph<br />
Lord De Vere, and other Poems.”<br />
extract gives one of the shorter poems:<br />
Ye merry breezes fresh that come and go,<br />
And mark your course by songs from waving corn,<br />
And laughter from the rivers as they flow,<br />
Ye cannot move a heart all worldly worn<br />
Thou sun that spreadest with thy radiant light<br />
The forest, vale, and heathered mountain side,<br />
And causest them to look contented, bright,<br />
Thou can’st not soothe a heart that time has tried<br />
Ye stars that dwell within the sapphire sky,<br />
And view with tender eyes the earth below,<br />
With all your love and all your sympathy,<br />
Ye cannot cheer a heart bowed down with woe<br />
Then, breezes, airy spirits, roam around !<br />
Shine, sun, until thine everlasting gloom<br />
Gaze, stars, from out the blue expanse profound !<br />
All will behold some day my silent tomb<br />
“The Two Dunmores: a Sporting Love Story<br />
of To-day,” is apparently a first work by “Blake<br />
Lamond.” It is published by Remington and<br />
The following .<br />
Co. The author should avoid the habit of giving<br />
too much detail. In order to convey a vivid<br />
picture not all the background should be painted.<br />
The impression is best produced by selection and<br />
suggestion.<br />
“Ernest England : a Drama for the Closet,” is<br />
by J. A. Tucker, late editor of the Daily News,<br />
Calcutta (Leadenhall Press). The work is a<br />
mixture of prose and poetry. It is a perfectly<br />
serious work, of great length, and treats of many<br />
subjects. Why, alas ! will men write such<br />
terribly long dramas P Three hundred and fifty<br />
pages | Who, even in a long review, could do<br />
justice to this lengthy prose-poem P<br />
“Tales from the Western Moors,” by Geoffrey<br />
Mortimer, a new name. The book contains<br />
nearly twenty tales, some of them more than<br />
about twelve pages long. The writer knows his<br />
country, and the dialect and manners of the<br />
people, well. The publishers are Gibbings and<br />
Co., Bloomsbury.<br />
“French Gems ” is quite a little book (Elliot<br />
Stock)—a booklet of eighty pages—containing on<br />
the left hand a sentence, a reflection, a text, a<br />
poem, in French ; and on the right hand “Reflec-<br />
tions,” in English verse. The author of the<br />
“Reflections,” “J. G.,” hopes to assist the mission<br />
to French-speaking foreigners in Great Britain in<br />
connection with the French Reformed Church,<br />
Bayswater, under the care of the Rev. J. M. H.<br />
Du Pontet de la Harpe.<br />
“A Future Roman Empire’ is a pamphlet<br />
rather than a book, by Mr. George Edward Tanner<br />
(Elliot Stock). It is a sequel to a work by the<br />
same writer, called “Unpopular Politics.” The<br />
writer contemplates the possibility of the revival<br />
of a second great Roman Empire, of which he<br />
gives a map. He is, apparently, determined that<br />
the second empire shall be exactly the same as<br />
the first. He includes all the countries round<br />
the Mediterranean to the British Isles, but<br />
excludes Germany and Russia, and Asia beyond<br />
the Euphrates. Most of us will probably emi-<br />
grate when that empire arrives.<br />
Mr. George Moore has finished the scheme of<br />
his new novel, and will now set to work upon<br />
it. It deals with the career of a prima donna<br />
who feals uneasy about the life she is leading, and<br />
at length submits herself to a priest for advice.<br />
His counsel is that she should go into a convent,<br />
and this agrees with her own inclinations. So she<br />
becomes a nun; and around the secrecy of life in<br />
a convent the story is woven. Mr. Moore antici-<br />
pates that the writing of the book will occupy him<br />
for two years. His completed work, called “Celi-<br />
bates,” will be issued within the next few days.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 326 (#340) ############################################<br />
<br />
326<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
the autumn by Messrs. Methuen.<br />
Mr. John Hollingshead's Reminiscences will be<br />
published early this month by Messrs. Sampson<br />
Low, in two volumes. The title is “My Life-<br />
time,” and a portrait of the author is given.<br />
Messrs. Chapman and Hall have in prepara-<br />
tion a novel entitled “Elizabeth's Pretenders,”<br />
by Mr. Hamilton Aidé; also “Pages from the Day<br />
Book of Dethia Hardacre,” by Mrs. Fuller Mait-<br />
land.<br />
Mr. Douglas Freshfield, the president of the<br />
Alpine Club, has written a book on Mountaineer-<br />
ing, which will be published by Mr. Edward<br />
Arnold. It will consist of a record of the explo-<br />
ration of Central Caucasus by members of the<br />
club throughout the last twenty-five years, and of<br />
the author's own experiences particularly, he hav-<br />
ing spent two summers there lately. The book<br />
will be in two large volumes, illustrated, and with<br />
maps. Another new work of travel is “Three<br />
Months in the Forests of France,” by Miss Mar-<br />
garet Stokes,” the author of “Six Months in the<br />
Apennines.” The book is a description of a pil-<br />
grimage in search of the Irish saints of France.<br />
Messrs. Bell and Sons are the publishers.<br />
The series of letters written by Robert Louis<br />
Stevenson, during his life in Samoa, to his friend<br />
Mr. Sidney Colvin, are to be published early in<br />
These are said<br />
to be the most interesting of any of Stevenson's<br />
correspondence during the period of his remote<br />
exile, and contain a record from month to month<br />
of his work and opinions. A portrait of the<br />
novelist will be the frontispiece to the book,<br />
which will appear simultaneously in America.<br />
Mr. Lilley's recent lectures at the Royal Insti-<br />
bution are to appear in book form under the title<br />
“Four Humorists of the Nineteenth Century.”<br />
Dickens represents the democrat in humour.<br />
Thackeray the philosopher, George Eliot the<br />
poet, and Carlyle the prophet.<br />
To his many other successes, Mr. Stead will<br />
attempt to add that of a novel writer. His first<br />
novel will be called “A Modern Maid in Modern<br />
Babylon,” and will relate the adventures of a<br />
young girl who came to London some years ago.<br />
It will be published some time this year.<br />
The Marquis of Lorne has written a “Gover-<br />
nor’s Guide to Windsor Castle,” which Messrs.<br />
Cassell have published. This will doubtless set a<br />
fashion in such things, and it is interesting reading,<br />
which can be appreciated either at the Castle or at<br />
home. -<br />
Mr. Justin McCarthy expects to have the last<br />
two volumes of his “History of the Georges,”<br />
ready at the beginning of next year. The latter<br />
part of Mr. J. H. McCarthy’s work on the French<br />
Revolution is to appear in the autumn.<br />
Another series of fiction has made a start,<br />
namely “The Times Novels.” This, of course,<br />
consists of stories that have appeared in the<br />
Weekly edition of the Times. The series, which<br />
is published by Messrs. Osgood, opens with “A<br />
Daughter of the Soil,” by Mrs. Francis. Mr.<br />
Egerton Castle’s “Light of Scarthey’” will be the<br />
next to appear.<br />
The next reprint in the beautiful Kelmscott<br />
Press series will be “Sir Percyvelle of Galles.” It<br />
appears shortly, but Mr. Morris has already sold<br />
the greater part of the issue, which consists of 35o<br />
paper copies, and eight on vellum.<br />
A new work by Mr. Frank Vincent, in which he<br />
gives a survey of the entire continent of Africa.<br />
from his recent journeyings there, will be published<br />
shortly by Mr. Heinemann. It will be called<br />
“The Actual Africa; or, the Coming Continent,”<br />
and will have IOO full page illustrations.<br />
Mr. Henry James will also at an early date<br />
issue “Terminations,” a new volume of stories<br />
(Heinemann.)<br />
Messrs. Nichols are about to issue Victor Hugo's<br />
works in English. There are from twenty to<br />
thirty volumes in the series, fully illustrated, and<br />
they will appear at intervals of a month. No<br />
English translation of Hugo exists so complete as<br />
this.<br />
A series of handbooks on the Cathedrals of<br />
England is about to be commenced by Messrs.<br />
Dent. Everything of interest concerning the<br />
buildings, the traditions, and historical associations<br />
surrounding them, will be told by writers who are<br />
thoroughly conversant with the matter. “Canter-<br />
bury,” by the Hon. and Rev. W. H. Fremantle,<br />
Dean of Ripon (a former Canon of Canterbury),<br />
will appear first. “Ely,” by Dean Stubbs; and<br />
“Tewkesbury,” by Dr. Spence, will follow.<br />
Another book for children comes soon from<br />
Mrs. Molesworth, entitled “Sheila's Mystery.” It<br />
will be published by Messrs. Macmillan. This<br />
writer has now produced about seventy books.<br />
Mr. Clement Scott's book on Irving First<br />
Nights, from “The Bells” to “King Arthur,” is.<br />
expected to be ready by the end of the month.<br />
Mr. G. W. Smalley, who will soon cease to be the<br />
Dondon correspondent of the New York Tribune<br />
and becomes the New York correspondent of the<br />
Times, is bringing out a new book entitled “Studies<br />
of Men,” which Messrs. Macmillan will publish<br />
this month. It consists of a large number of Mr.<br />
Smalley’s character sketches of eminent men,<br />
which are mostly reprints in a revised form from<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 327 (#341) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
327<br />
the Tribune. Among the subjects are the German<br />
Emperor, Lord Rosebery, Sir William Harcourt,<br />
Cardinal Newman, Professor Tyndall, Mr. Balfour,<br />
Prince Bismark, Mr. Parnell, and about forty<br />
others. Before he leaves London the distinguished<br />
journalist is to be entertained at dinner by a<br />
Select company of his American and English<br />
confrères.<br />
The announcement of a “Ruskin Reader ’’ from<br />
Mr. George Allen's press serves to remind us that<br />
this publishing house is named after Ruskin, a<br />
fact which might pardonably be forgotten, since<br />
Mr. Allen is extending his business so far beyond<br />
Ruskinian literature alone. The new reader is to<br />
be out in a few days. It has been compiled from<br />
“Modern Painters,” “The Seven Lamps of<br />
Architecture,” and “The Stones of Venice,” and<br />
is intended for young students. From Ruskin<br />
House will also come “The History of Huon<br />
of Bordeaux,” by Mr. Robert Steel, illustrated by<br />
Mr. Fred Mason; and “Biographical Essays"—<br />
of Dean Stanley, Dean Alford, Mrs. Duncan<br />
Stewart, and others—by Mr. Augustus J. Hare,<br />
in addition to the latter's Life of the Gurney<br />
Family already announced.<br />
Mr. E. Denison Ross has completed the trans-<br />
lation of “The Tarikk-i-Rashidi,” a rare Persian<br />
work, which has hitherto existed only in manu-<br />
script, and the volume will be issued by Messrs.<br />
Sampson Low shortly. It forms a history of the<br />
Central Asian section of the Moghuls, who<br />
separated themselves early in the fourteenth<br />
century from the main stem of the Chaghatai<br />
dynasty. Their princes became masters of<br />
Moghulistan and of all Eastern Turkistan, and<br />
continued powerful for more than 250 years.<br />
The author of the work is Mirza Mohammad<br />
Haidar, cousin of the Emperor Baber of<br />
Hindustan, the grandfather of the famous<br />
Akbar. Mr. Ney Elias, H.M.'s Consul-General<br />
for Khovason, has superintended the translation<br />
and written an introduction and explanatory<br />
notes.<br />
Mr. H. E. Watts’s “Life of Miguel de<br />
Cervantes Saavedra,” which will be uniform with<br />
his new edition of “Don Quixote,” is to be<br />
published by Messrs. A. and C. Black on July 1.<br />
The book of the month has been the “Tetters<br />
of Samuel Taylor Coleridge,” published by Mr.<br />
Heinemann. The letters are mostly new, and<br />
include those written to Mrs. Coleridge, Words-<br />
worth, Southey, Charles Lamb, John Murray,<br />
and Thomas Poole, giving much invaluable light<br />
upon the poet's career. They extend from 1785<br />
to 1833, but are yet not a complete collection.<br />
The editor, Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge, grand-<br />
son of the poet, says that “a complete collection<br />
must await the ‘coming of the milder day,” a<br />
renewed long suffering on the part of his old<br />
enemy the ‘literary public.’”<br />
Great eagerness was manifested in getting a<br />
translation of Tolstoy's new novel, “Master and<br />
Man * into sale. Six days after receiving the MS.<br />
Messrs. Chapman and Hall had a large edition<br />
in the market. Mr. Walter Scott follows more<br />
leisurely with a translation. What would have<br />
been the first to reach this country, however,<br />
was stopped and suppressed, for some reason, on<br />
the Russian frontier.<br />
A “Life of the late Lord Randolph Churchill”<br />
will be published very shortly. Mr. T. H. S.<br />
Escott is the biographer, and he has been assisted<br />
in compiling the work by Lord Dufferin, Lord<br />
Reay, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, and Sir John<br />
Gorst. Messrs. Hutchinson are the publishers.<br />
The City Treasurer of Birmingham, Mr. W. R.<br />
Hughes, who wrote “A Week's Trip in Dickens's<br />
Land,” has placed his valuable collection of<br />
Dickens' editions and memorabilia at the service<br />
of Mr. Thomas Wright for the “Life of Dickens.”<br />
which the latter is preparing. A good deal of<br />
new matter has, it is said, been established by<br />
Mr. Wright, chiefly concerning the novelist's<br />
childhood. The work will not be ready before<br />
the end of the year, at the earliest.<br />
In Mr. David Nutt’s “Tudor Translation ”<br />
series the next issue will be North’s “Plutarch,”<br />
with an introduction by Mr. George Wyndham.<br />
It will appear in six volumes, between now and<br />
December. Forthcoming publications in the<br />
series include “Holland's Suetonius,” “Fenton's<br />
Bandello,” “Shelton's Don Quixote,” and<br />
“Holand's Livy.”<br />
Messrs Bell have in course of preparation a new<br />
series of Royal Naval Handbooks, which will be<br />
edited by Commander C. U. Robinson, author of<br />
“The British Fleet.” Admiral Sir Vesey Hamil-<br />
ton writes on Naval Administration and Organisa-<br />
tion, Professor Laughton on Naval Strategy,<br />
Captain C. Campbell on the Internal Economy of<br />
a Warship, and Captain H. G. Garbett on Naval<br />
Gunnery. The Entry and Training of Officers and<br />
Men is by Lieut. J. Allen, Torpedoes by Lieut. J.<br />
Armstrong, Steam in the Navy by Fleet-Engineer<br />
R. C. Oldknow, and Naval Architecture by Mr.<br />
J. J. Welch.<br />
Mr. Israel Gollancz is working at an edition of<br />
Henry VI., besides having in preparation books<br />
on the “Hamlet Saga,” “Tancred and Gismunda,”<br />
and the Anglo-Saxon poems in the Exeter book.<br />
The “Temple Shakespeare,” which is edited by<br />
Mr. Gollancz, has had an enormous sale, Messrs.<br />
Dent putting it at considerably over 200,000.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 328 (#342) ############################################<br />
<br />
328<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
The past month has witnessed the appearance<br />
of the New Budget, an illustrated weekly, which<br />
took the place, without the loss of a week, of the<br />
Pall Mall Budget, the latter having been with-<br />
drawn, somewhat unaccountably, from the field on<br />
the last Saturday of March. The editor of the<br />
deceased magazine, and the majority of its staff,<br />
have come over to the new venture, which is being<br />
conducted with spirit largely on the same lines.<br />
Mr. Harry Furniss, having accepted control of the<br />
art section, his own journal Lika Joko likewise<br />
closes its career. Another new sixpenny weekly<br />
is The Hour, which is edited by Mr. C. H. Wil-<br />
liamson. It is of course illustrated, and it makes<br />
a feature of prize competitions and insurance<br />
schemes. Vanity Fair changed hands last month,<br />
but the new proprietor is not announced, except<br />
that he is “a gentleman of taste and credit.”<br />
Mr. Charles Dixon's book on “The Migration<br />
of British Birds” will be ready at Messrs. Chap-<br />
man and Hall's immediately. In it the author<br />
advances what is believed to be an entirely new<br />
law governing the geographical dispersal of<br />
species, and illustrates its application in the case<br />
of British birds.<br />
Several volumes of verse will be published<br />
by Mr. Lane immediately. These include Mr.<br />
Le Gallienne's new book, entitled “Robert Louis<br />
Stevenson, an Elegy; and Other Poems, mostly<br />
Personal ; ” and Mr. Francis Thomson's, which is<br />
called “Songs Wing to Wing; ” “Vespertilia<br />
and other Poems,” by Mrs. Rosamond Marriott<br />
Watson (for which Mr. Anning Bell has designed<br />
a special title-page); and “Poems of the Day<br />
and Year,” by Mr. Frederick Tennyson. A<br />
novel called “Consummation,” by Victoria Cross,<br />
is also announced to appear soon from the Bodley<br />
Head, and will be the first of a new four-and-<br />
sixpenny series.<br />
A correspondent assures the Chronicle that<br />
the circulation of one million copies was not<br />
secured, as it had stated, by a single novel by<br />
the American writer, Albert Ross (Lynn Boyd<br />
Porter), but by a series of six novels. He points<br />
out that of “Ben Hur,” another American book,<br />
4OO,OOO copies were sold ; while “Mr. Barnes of<br />
New York,” first written by Mr. A. C. Gunter<br />
as a play, and then adapted in despair to novel<br />
form, caught on to the extent of 250,000. But<br />
the million record appears still to be a-begging,<br />
The sale of King Solomon’s Mines,” which is<br />
being reprinted, will thus be brought up to<br />
IOO,OOO in this country and the colonies, and Max<br />
O’Rell's “John Bull and Co.,” is in its 20th<br />
thousand. “The Bonnie Brier Bush,” by Ian<br />
Maclaren, approaches 40,000, and a “Yellow<br />
Aster” 28,000.<br />
One result of General Booth’s recent Trans-<br />
atlantic tour will be a work on “Darkest<br />
America.” He will not have it ready for a<br />
considerable time, however. Two new volumes<br />
will shortly appear in the “Chief Ancient Philo-<br />
sophies” series of the Society for Promoting<br />
Christian Knowledge. They are “Platonism,” by<br />
the Rev. T. B. Strong, of Christ Church, Oxford;<br />
and “Neo-Platonism,” by the Rev. Dr. Charles<br />
Bigg. “The Greek Epic,” by Professor Warr, of<br />
Ring's College, which will also be issued imme-<br />
diately, is an addition to the “Dawn of European<br />
Literature” series. Mr Fisher Unwin publishes<br />
a biography of the late W. F. A. Gaussen,<br />
of Pembroke College, Cambridge, the translator<br />
of Potapenko's Works. The book is called<br />
“Memorials of a Short Life,” the Rev. Canon<br />
Browne of St. Paul’s edits it, and writes an<br />
introduction, the remainder consisting of personal<br />
letters. In the “National Churches" series, pub-<br />
lished by Wells Gardner, the next volume will<br />
be “The History of the Church in America,” by<br />
Dr. Leighton Coleman, Bishop of Delaware. It<br />
will be issued simultaneously in England and<br />
America in a few days.<br />
“The Musical Educator” is the title of a work<br />
which Messrs. Jack, of Edinburgh, will issue in<br />
five illustrated volumes. Amongst the contribu-<br />
tors are Mr. James Sneddon, Mr. J. C. Grieve,<br />
Mr. William Townsend, Mr. F. Lauback, and Mr.<br />
William Daly. Dr. John Greig is the editor.<br />
Esmé Stuart's new novel “Married to Order ’’<br />
will be issued immediately in the two-volume<br />
library form. Esmé Stuart is the author of “Joan<br />
Wellacot,” “A Woman of Forty,” “ Kestell of<br />
Greystone,” &c. The publisher is Horace Cox,<br />
Windsor House, Bream's-buildings.<br />
“A Fisherman’s Fancies,” by F. B. Doveton,<br />
published by Elliot Stock, is a book of collections<br />
of short sketches which will no doubt appeal to<br />
those of the public who desire to pass away a<br />
pleasant half-hour. The sketches that touch on<br />
fishing, and which no doubt give the name to the<br />
book, are excellent reading for those who are fond<br />
of that sport.<br />
Mr. Justin Charles MacCartie, author of<br />
“Making his Pile,” has just produced a new<br />
story called “The Darleys of Dingo Dingo,”<br />
which deals with Australian country life of the<br />
present day. It is published by Messrs. Gay and<br />
Bird.<br />
It has been announced in the Academy and<br />
other papers that Mr. F. H. Perry Coste, B.Sc.,<br />
&c., is the author of “Towards Utopia,” and<br />
“On the Organisation of Science,” which have<br />
been issued under the nom de guerre of a “Free<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 329 (#343) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
329<br />
Lance.” Towards Utopia,” which, in spite of its<br />
Utopian title, disclaims any very “Utopian’”<br />
dreams, is mainly occupied with an attempt to<br />
trace broadly the various economic and moral<br />
factors through which a natural evolution of society<br />
to a semi-Utopian state may be brought about.<br />
The American rights in “Towards Utopia’’ were<br />
acquired by Messrs. Appleton as soon as the book<br />
appeared; and immediately afterwards the author<br />
received and refused an offer for a German transla-<br />
tion.<br />
The output of new books in the United States<br />
last year was in the following order:—First,<br />
fiction, then political and social science, then<br />
theology, religion, biography, history, travels, and<br />
poetry. There were 2821 books by American<br />
writers printed in the United States, IOS6 books<br />
were imported, and 577 books by English and<br />
other foreign authors were produced on the other<br />
side. The greatest number of importations was<br />
in theology and religion, and reached 262 volumes<br />
In 1893 a large number of volumes, already in<br />
hand, had to be published, though the times were<br />
unfavourable, and in 1894 the publishers, already<br />
fearful of hard times, were more careful about<br />
entering into new engagements.-PWestminster<br />
Gazette.<br />
Another case of a public library circulating<br />
pirated books has been discovered by the West-<br />
minster Gazeffe.<br />
We have before us Ruskin’s “Time and Tide,” bearing<br />
the following inscription on the title page: “New York :<br />
John Wiley and Sons, 15, Astor-place, 1888.” For many<br />
months past this “pirate ’’ has been freely issued at the<br />
Tate Lending Library, Brixton. We learn from the Chief<br />
Librarian that it was a presentation copy, and while he<br />
would certainly not dream of purchasing a “pirate,” he saw<br />
no reason to refuse one as a gift.<br />
It is a nice case for the conscience. He would<br />
be a very conscientious person who would refuse<br />
to keep on his shelves a gift book because it<br />
belonged to a pirated edition. But surely a<br />
public library is in a different position; such a<br />
book certainly ought not to be kept on the shelves<br />
and lent out to readers.<br />
*– ~ --"<br />
&= - -<br />
CORRESPONDENCE,<br />
I.—EDITORS’ RULES.<br />
FEAR, we are but wasting time, paper, and<br />
ink in this controversy if we are to wait<br />
until the editors, out of the kindness of<br />
their hearts, bind themselves to pay within a<br />
certain time for MSS. Probably the end of this<br />
world will arrive before they do so.<br />
No, there are two paragraphs in your last copy<br />
of the Author which contain, I think, the key to<br />
the difficulty. Page 281 (under “Warnings and<br />
Advice”):<br />
“It is not generally understood that the author,<br />
as the vendor, has the absolute right of drafting<br />
the agreement upon whatever terms the transac-<br />
tion is to be carried out.”<br />
This is surely as true of the magazine article<br />
as of the book.<br />
Page 304 (under “Musical Publishing”) :<br />
“It is for the greatest (writers) composers to<br />
begin to insist upon more equitable terms.”<br />
To those whose papers are too well known, and<br />
too valuable, to be refused because “equitable<br />
terms ” are necessary to secure them we, the<br />
smaller fry, must look for help in this matter.<br />
Let them insist on a certain set of rules (as the<br />
rule) and editors will soon cease to take their<br />
own time to settle accounts, and learn the<br />
valuable lesson that “Short accounts make long<br />
friends.” R. L. I.<br />
II.—PARALLELISM.<br />
Mr. Langbridge's sort of “ Kubla Khan’’<br />
experience is one which, I fancy, a good many<br />
people can parallel, though whether one should<br />
be scrupulous “in tampering with the gift of a<br />
dream ” is a matter which I leave the Psychical<br />
Researchists to decide. It may not be unin-<br />
teresting to your readers to give the experiences<br />
of others who have dreamed poems or books or<br />
speeches and have just caught hold of the last<br />
line or last sentence as they awoke.<br />
Twice I have, on coming up to the surface of<br />
consciousness, finished, once a poem and once a<br />
sermon, out loud.<br />
The poem ended with the sonorous line<br />
And stemmed the torrent with a pervious prone;<br />
the sermon with<br />
Churches are the martello towers of religion.<br />
I have not “tampered with these dream-gifts,”<br />
and leave others to discover their literary or<br />
philosophic value !<br />
April 9. G. S. LAYARD,<br />
Lorraine Cottage,<br />
Great Malvern.<br />
III.-GoD AND THE ANT.<br />
May I ask Frederick Langbridge if he has ever<br />
published the sonnet he gives on p. 304 of the<br />
Author? If not, both he and Coulson Ker-<br />
nahan are “parallelists,” for I have seen exactly<br />
the same thought somewhere, though I cannot<br />
place it, and in extremely similar words to<br />
those which Mr. Langbridge uses. Or am I a<br />
“parallelist” also P ALAN OSCAR.<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 330 (#344) ############################################<br />
<br />
33O<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
IV.--THE RIGHT, OR THE WRONG, To MUTIILATE<br />
A PAPER.<br />
It would be interesting to all writers who<br />
contribute papers to magazines to know certainly<br />
whether in so doing they render themselves liable<br />
to have their paper mutilated to suit editorial<br />
difficulties concerning space.<br />
It seems to me that, although an editor has the<br />
absolute right of refusing any paper, once he<br />
accepts it he binds himself to reproduce it as<br />
it stands, unless by special agreement with the<br />
author.<br />
Personally I have always held this ground, and<br />
am happy to say that in the course of fifteen<br />
years of very extensive work for many magazines<br />
I have only on two occasions had any cause for<br />
Complaint.<br />
I regret to have to say that one of these has oc-<br />
curred in the present year. Early in 1893 I offered<br />
an article to one of the illustrated magazines to<br />
which I have frequently contributed, and by which<br />
it was accepted, but publication delayed,<br />
About December, 1893, I prepared a very care-<br />
fully written account of the details of an event of<br />
which I was anxious to preserve a permanent<br />
record. As I had secured a good illustration, I<br />
offered it to the same magazine, which, as usual,<br />
welcomed it. Publication, however, was delayed,<br />
and only the following autumn were proofs sent<br />
to me. I corrected these most carefully, bringing<br />
the subject up to date. In December another<br />
copy of these proofs, not corrected, was sent to<br />
me, and I again corrected them, the editor<br />
expressing his regret at the prolonged delay in<br />
publication.<br />
The paper was announced as being in the<br />
February number, and various persons interested<br />
ordered copies, to find a dull, matter-of-fact<br />
article compressed into three pages, without<br />
illustration, upwards of twenty paragraphs having<br />
been cut out from ten distinct places, the result<br />
naturally being as bald as the letter of a hurried<br />
newspaper correspondent.<br />
Supposing that the editor must have been<br />
suffering from influenza, and that some stranger<br />
was responsible for this discourtesy, I wrote<br />
asking for an explanation, and, receiving none,<br />
I wrote again more strongly, requesting the<br />
return of the paper and illustrations sent in 1893.<br />
To which the editor replies: “He is glad to<br />
be able to repudiate entirely the charge of dis-<br />
courtesy—a charge which would with more justice<br />
be brought against a contributor who demands<br />
an apology for the absolutely necessary abridg-<br />
ment which every editor is fully entitled to make<br />
in any article sent to him for publication.”<br />
Is he P. That is just the question. Does every<br />
contributor to a magazine lay himself open to<br />
find his most careful work mutilated in this<br />
barbarous manner, and then presented to the<br />
public with his (or her) signature at the end of<br />
it P I hope not. But when an editor who has<br />
printed perhaps a dozen of my papers verbatim<br />
suddenly deals thus with one—and, strangely<br />
enough, the only one of the whole lot which was<br />
really of consequence—where does security lie?<br />
On my requesting the return of the article<br />
accepted two years ago, it was sent with some<br />
minor illustrations. I wrote back stating that<br />
two large paintings had not been sent. To this<br />
the editor replies that they had been photo-<br />
graphed and returned to me by parcel post about<br />
the end of December, and that he is not respon-<br />
sible for accidental loss.<br />
That is to say, they were despatched in the<br />
busiest week of the year without any notice or<br />
any subsequent inquiry as to their receipt not<br />
having been acknowledged. This seems to me<br />
another point which ought to be clearly defined.<br />
When illustrations or MSS. are returned by parcel<br />
post, ought not an intimation to that effect to be<br />
sent by ordinary post? A general business agree-<br />
ment on these points would be satisfactory. C.<br />
W.—MINOR POETs.<br />
Your correspondent of April, “Mary Augusta<br />
Salmond,” is probably unaware that when a<br />
minor poet publishes a volume of verses, he does<br />
so almost invariably at his own risk. In any<br />
case, the chances of profit accruing to himself<br />
from such a source are infinitesimal.<br />
Again, there are few, if any, periodicals that<br />
will pay for a poem in lyrical form.<br />
For these reasons, it is rarely indeed that the<br />
writer of the words of a song, however popular it<br />
may become, makes anything beyond his fee for<br />
the musical copyright. Therefore, whilst heartily<br />
agreeing with Mrs. Salmond on other points, I<br />
must, in the interest of brother minor poets, point<br />
out that, though the price paid for the copyright<br />
may be considered a fairly adequate return for a<br />
mere drawing-room or schoolroom song, in the<br />
case of a ballad or more important work being<br />
taken up by a public singer it is not so, and<br />
some arrangement should in justice be made by<br />
which the poet would have a share, however small,<br />
in the performing rights of his work, as well as<br />
the composer, singer, and publisher. The words<br />
are manifestly the raison d'être of the composi-<br />
tion. HELEN MARION BURNSIDE.<br />
VI.-A CoINCIDENCE.<br />
May I ask for a few lines of your space?<br />
In the Times of March 29 last I read: “The<br />
monologue is less an English than a French off-<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 331 (#345) ############################################<br />
<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
33 I<br />
shoot of the drama, but it would soon cease to be<br />
so were many such pretty sketches or dramatic<br />
episodes written as that produced last night by<br />
Mr. Henry Hamilton under the title of ‘For-<br />
tune’s Fool.” An unhappy lover in his<br />
lonely chambers bewails the fate that has snatched<br />
away from him the woman of his dreams. *<br />
Life has no more charm for Philip Challoner,<br />
and, after evoking all his sweetest souvenirs by<br />
reading her letters, and, seated at the piano,<br />
singing her favourite song, he swallows a dose of<br />
poison. The postman knocks, and the<br />
doomed man takes from the letter-box two letters,<br />
one informing him that he is heir to a fortune,<br />
the other from the lady herself, declaring her<br />
inability to live without him, and her resolution<br />
to marry him at all hazards. As he dies, a dis-<br />
creet knock at the door announces the lady’s<br />
arrival, whereupon the curtain falls.” The omis-<br />
sions indicated are not material, and, with one<br />
exception, the above account very closely renders<br />
the course of the monologue acted by Mr. Lewis<br />
Waller. The exception—I attended at the Hay-<br />
market Theatre on April 5—lay in the fact that,<br />
not two letters, so far as I myself could gather, but<br />
only one, the second of the two noted above, was<br />
delivered by the postman, and received by the<br />
lover—too late.<br />
A short story entitled “Arsenic” appeared in<br />
Beecham's Christmas Annual (Messrs. F. J.<br />
Lambert and Co., Temple-chambers and Bouverie-<br />
street) for 1889. The contributors to the number<br />
included Joseph Hatton, James Greenwood,<br />
Fergus Hume, Florence Marryat, and Manville<br />
Fenn, and I was informed that at the price—viz.,<br />
one penny—more than 400,000 copies had been<br />
sold. “Arsenic ’’ purports to be the narrative of<br />
a man who, committing suicide by means of that<br />
poison, writes of his ruin and his hopelessness,<br />
and watches for the gradual symptoms as long as<br />
he can hold the pen. In this way he is made to<br />
tell the story; and between the lines the reader<br />
should discern a tale of feminine infidelity which<br />
the writer, the deserted husband, does not suspect.<br />
He evokes his sweetest souvenirs. These, how-<br />
ever, are not associated with a wealthy person<br />
whom he loves apparently in vain, but with his<br />
little dead child, upon the slenderness of whose<br />
resemblance to her mother he seems to dwell with<br />
gratification—all such gratification as may be left<br />
to him in his last hour. He becomes delirious;<br />
he dies. The next morning the postman knocks<br />
at his door with a registered letter. The post-<br />
man's comment, “It’s the unexpected, voyez-vous,<br />
that happens,” forms the last word.<br />
“Arsenic ’’ was contributed to the number in<br />
question by myself; and it bore my name. The<br />
differences of treatment in the two cases are<br />
obvious, but it has been pointed out to me that a<br />
republication of the story, with some others,<br />
might expose me to an unfounded charge of<br />
plagiarism. My sole object, therefore, now, is to<br />
beg, Sir, for an opportunity of stating in your<br />
columns that the appearance of my little story<br />
“Arsenic’’ did not follow, but preceded, and by<br />
about five years, the production of Mr. Hamilton’s<br />
monologue “Fortune's Fool.” H. F. WooD.<br />
3, Rue de Miromesnil, Paris, April 17.<br />
[The resemblance is worth noting. It is also<br />
worth noting that Mr. Wood does not suggest any<br />
kind of plagiarism. Such a situation—the<br />
unfortunate suicide just when everything was<br />
coming right—is one likely to suggest itself to<br />
any imaginative writer.—ED.]<br />
VII.-‘‘JANE | ?”<br />
In the last of Mr. R. Sherard’s interesting<br />
letters from Paris, he says that the finding in<br />
“Moll Flanders ” a passage similar to one in<br />
“Jane Eyre' has led him to think less as a<br />
work of art of the latter powerful and most<br />
common of stories, and, though he does not say<br />
this, it has certainly led him to think less of,<br />
Charlotte Bronté as a woman.<br />
For “when asked,” he writes, “how she<br />
came to think of so striking a scene (the hearing<br />
by Jane of blind Rochester's far-away cry for<br />
her), she wsed to drape herself in some mystery<br />
ğı and reply, ‘ I wrote it because it is true,”<br />
leaving one to imagine that this was a thing of her<br />
own experience”—surely, if Mr. Sherard’s ex-<br />
planation be the right one, a mean and unworthy<br />
subterfuge, and one altogether at variance with<br />
the character we know of honest, single-minded<br />
Charlotte. 3.<br />
That the dire need of some loved one in distress<br />
—the cry across the gulf of separation of one<br />
human soul to another in sympathy—may make<br />
itself heard in some plane of emotional conscious-<br />
ness normally latent is a truth too vital to have<br />
confined itself to the recognition of Defoe alone.<br />
For my own part, that little note of Mr. Sherard's<br />
confirms a conviction I have always had—viz.,<br />
that the love of Jane for Rochester is the story of<br />
some unrecorded love in Charlotte Brontë's own<br />
life. -<br />
I have never read the passage in question<br />
without having been strongly impressed with the<br />
sense that that cry for “Jane ! Jane ! Jane!” had<br />
at some time or another entered, iron-like, into the<br />
writer’s own soul.<br />
The intense and passionate tenderness por-<br />
trayed—the love tearing itself up by its bleeding<br />
human roots in order that its ideal shall not<br />
suffer—is too vivid to have taken origin wholly in<br />
<br />
<br />
## p. 332 (#346) ############################################<br />
<br />
332<br />
THE AUTHOR.<br />
fancy. The writer interprets a passion she<br />
knows—a thing as different from mere delinea-<br />
tion of a passion she knows about as genius is<br />
from talent. In “Jane Eyre’ Charlotte Brontë<br />
has interpreted, perhaps more truly and touch-<br />
ingly than any other. writer, a woman's love—<br />
intense, sincere, high-minded, yet all the while<br />
tenderly human.<br />
I greatly doubt that Defoe had anything to<br />
teach her. ARABELLA KENEALY.<br />
VIII.-AMERICAN DELAYs.<br />
I began to write a novel a year last October.<br />
By the following March it was in a publisher's<br />
hands, and by the end of May my agreement<br />
with an English firm was signed. In the mean-<br />
time a friend in the States arranged with an<br />
American firm to copyright the story there. The<br />
American contract was signed by me in September<br />
last. The book is not yet out, and my English<br />
publishers write that they cannot get the<br />
Americans to fix any positive date. It will be<br />
said I should have insisted upon a certain time<br />
in my agreements. To this I reply that I am<br />
not a “known” author, and, considering myself<br />
fortunate in having received fair offers from two<br />
well-established publishers, I was satisfied to<br />
trust them, especially as the making of any such<br />
decided arrangement would have entailed much<br />
delay in signing contracts, and endless correspon-<br />
dence. Moreover, the book is one whose value<br />
depends greatly on an early appearance—a fact,<br />
I thought, obvious to any press reader, and<br />
which my London publishers recognised. They<br />
wanted to get it out last season, and advertised<br />
it in their autumn announcements.<br />
Here, then, is a “frightful example” for English<br />
writers and publishers. My novel would have<br />
been published six months ago, or earlier, had it<br />
not been for the American copyright. Are we to<br />
have the same trouble with Canada?<br />
By the way, has the Authors' Syndicate agents<br />
in the States ? And, if not, would it not be<br />
possible to establish a branch there? We newly-<br />
hatched ones are so ignorant<br />
NEW COMER.<br />
IX. —OUR ExTRAVAGANT DINNER.<br />
Mild private protests availing nothing, here,<br />
with your permission, a public one. Is the annual<br />
dinner intended for all the members of the<br />
Society, or only the more wealthy P. If all, then<br />
why guinea tickets P Cannot we have the pleasure<br />
of meeting one another once a year without an<br />
unnecessary, in many cases prohibitive, tax P<br />
Public dinners are always indifferent, and a satis-<br />
fying meal can be obtained for a quarter of this<br />
tax. I was well (as the place goes) and sufficiently<br />
fed the other day for just that sum. The occasion<br />
also a club dinner, and at the same restaurant.<br />
We are not gluttons, but come to the dinner less<br />
to devour our half-guinea's worth than to meet<br />
one another and hear the speeches and uphold the<br />
Society. Why, again, must those who do not<br />
drink wine pay for it—even those who are wine<br />
bibbers not choosing their wine, but having that<br />
which is given them P<br />
The cost of the dinner is equal to the cost of<br />
one year's subscription to the Society; the satis-<br />
faction transient, and the benefits nil. I feel so<br />
disgusted with this extravagance I contemplate<br />
resigning. Those who have the management of<br />
the dinner should consider all the members, and<br />
not merely their own particular tastes and means.<br />
I believe this grumble will be echoed by many<br />
members of the Society, particularly those living<br />
outside London, who to come to the dinner incur<br />
the additional cost of about a sovereign for bed,<br />
breakfast, and railway fare. This sort of thing is<br />
all very well for wealthy publishers, but not for<br />
those like<br />
A Dw ELLER IN RURAL GRUB STREET.<br />
P.S. Grumble No. 2.--Why should we waste<br />
Our money in advertising the dinner and the list of<br />
big and medium guns who are going to be present<br />
at it P Every member receives the notice privately,<br />
and we do not invite the public to come in their<br />
thousands, so the money seems absolutely thrown<br />
away. The publication of such a list of names is,<br />
I venture to assert, in questionable taste.<br />
A. D. IN R. G. S.<br />
[Perhaps an answer to the “grumble’” may be<br />
found in the following considerations: (1) The<br />
“tax * is not demanded of members; no one need<br />
pay it who does not choose. (2) Public dinners<br />
are expected to have a certain amount of show.<br />
(3) The dinner is a public occasion at which the<br />
Society shows to the world something of its im-<br />
portance. (4) The wine question and the charge<br />
of wine to those who do not drink it is one of<br />
practical management. The issue of cheaper<br />
tickets without wine has been tried, and proved<br />
unworkable for various reasons. (5) The adver-<br />
tisement of the stewards is the best advertisement<br />
we can have of the Society itself. To these con-<br />
siderations it may be added that frequent sugges-<br />
tions have been made to hold a conversazione or a<br />
series of lectures or readings, at which the Society<br />
may gather without payment. It is to be hoped<br />
that some practical suggestions may be brought<br />
before the committee. Perhaps the evening might<br />
take the form of a private dinner among ourselves<br />
at very moderate cost, without advertisement or<br />
publicity.—ED.] | https://historysoa.com/files/original/5/276/1895-05-01-The-Author-5-12.pdf | publications, The Author |