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Title A name given to the resource The Author Subject The topic of the resource <em>The Author</em> Description An account of the resource A digitised run of the Society of Authors' monthly periodical, <em>The Author</em>, 1890<span>–</span>1914, made available together for the first time.<br /><br />Currently users can browse issues and <a href="https://historysoa.com/items/browse?search=&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bjoiner%5D=and&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Belement_id%5D=51&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Btype%5D=is+exactly&amp;advanced%5B0%5D%5Bterms%5D=Index&amp;collection=&amp;type=&amp;tags=&amp;exhibit=&amp;date_search_term=&amp;submit_search=Search+For+Items&amp;sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CTitle">indices</a> (not available for all volumes). Full text search for all issues, and other additional search functionality, will be added in 2022. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1890–1914 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context The-Author-Issues Publication Date The date of an event (in YYYY, YYYY-MM or YYYY-MM-DD format) 1897-09-01 Volume 8 Issue 4 Pages Page range in volume 89–108 Ngram Date Version of the date in YYYYMMDD format for use by the Ngram plugin 18970901 Ngram Text Version of the text with no HTML formatting for use by the Ngram plugin XT be Hutbor* (The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.) CONDUCTED B7 WALTER BESANT. Vol. VIII.—No. 4.] SEPTEMBER 1, 1897. [Price Sixpence. CONT PAOl General Memoranda. 89 From the Committee—//! /f« Whitcon.b 91 Literary Property— 1. On the New Law of Copyright 91 J. The Localisation of Copyright 9» Solecisms a Hundred Years Ago 93 New York Letter. By Norman Hapgood 91 ENTS. PAOl Notes from Elsewhere. By B. H. Sherard 97 Feuilleton.—The Story of a Broken Pen *W Book Advertising in 11*00 103 Freedom of Criticism 104 Book Talk J04 Literature in the Periodicals 106 The Books of the Month 108 PUBLICATIONS OP THE SOCIETY. 1. The Annual Report, That for January 1897 can be had on application to the Secretary. 2. The Author. A Monthly Journal devoted especially to the protection and maintenance of Literary Property. Issued to all Members, 6*. 6d. per annum. Back numbers are offered at the following prices: Vol. I., ios. 6d. (Bound); Vols. II., HI., and IV., 8s. 6d. each (Bound); Vol. V., 6s. 6d. (Unbound). 3. Literature and the Pension List. By W. Morris Colleb, Barrister-at-Law. (Henry Glaisher, 95, Strand, W.C.) 3*. 4. The History of the Societe des GeilS de Lettres. By S. Squire Sprioge, late Secretary to the Society, is. 5. The Cost of Production. In this work specimens are given of the most important forms of type, size of page, Ac., with estimates showing what it costs to produce the more common kinds of books. Henry Glaisher, 95, Strand, W.C. as. 6d. 6. The Various Methods of Publication. By S. Squire Sprigge. In this work, compiled from the papers in the Society's offices, the various forms of agreements proposed by Publishers to Authors are examined, and their meaning carefully explained, with an account of the various kinds of fraud which have been made possible by the different clauses in their agreements. Henry Glaisher, 95, Strand, W.C. 3s. 7. Copyright Law Reform. An Exposition of Lord Monkswell's Copyright Bill now before Parlia. ment. With Extracts from the Eeport of the Commission of 1878, and an Appendix containing the Berne Convention and the American Copyright Bill. By J. M. Lely. Eyre and Spottiswoode. is. 6d. 8. The Society Of Authors. A Record of its Action from its Foundation. By Walter Besant (Chairman of Committee, 1888—1892). is. 9. The Contract of Publication in Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Switzerland. By Ernst Lunge, J.U.D. 2s. 6d.  ## p. 88 (#506) ############################################# 11 AD VER TISEMENTS. g>ocietp of Jlufljors (gncorporafeb). 8ib Edwin Arnold, K.C.I.E., C.S.I. J. M. Barbie. A. W. X Beckett. ROBEKT BATEMAN. F. E. Beddabd, F.R.S. Sib Henrt Bebone, K.C.M.G. Sib Walter Besant. Augustine Birrell, M.P. Bbv. Prop. Bonnet, F.B.S. Right Hon. James Bryce, M.P. Bight Hon. Lord Burghclebe, P.C Hall Caine. Egerton Castle, F.S.A. P. W. Clatden. Edward Clodd. W. Morris Colles. Hon. John Collier. Sib W. Martin Conwat. F. Marion Crawford. The Earl of Desart. PRESIDENT. GEORGE IMZIEIRIEIDITH COUNCIL. Austin Dobbon. A. Conan Doyle, M.D. A. W. Dubourg. Prof. Michael Fosteb, F.E.S. D. W. Freshfield. Bichabd Gabnett, C.B., LL.D. Edmund Gosse. H. Bideb Haggard. Thomas Habdt. Anthony Hope Hawkins. Jerome K. Jerome. Eudyabd Kipling. Pbof. E. Bay Lankesteb, F.E.S. W. E. H. Lecky, P.C. J. M. Lely. Mbs. E. Lynn Linton. Rev. W. J. Loftie, F.S.A. Sir A. C. Mackenzie, Mus.Doo. Pbof. J. M. D. Meiklejohn. Hebman C. Mebivalb. Hon. Counsel — E. M. Undebdown, Q.C. Eev. C. H. Middleton-Wakk. Sir Lewis Mobbis. Henby Norman. Miss E. A. Obmerod. J. C. Pabkinson. Eight Hon. Lord Pibbbight, P.C, F.E.S. Sir Frederick Pollock, Bart., LL.D. Walter Herries Pollock, w. bapti8te scoones. Miss Flora L. Shaw. G. B. Sims. S. Squire Sprigge. J. J. Stevenson. Francis Storr. William Mot Thomas. H. D. Traill, D.C.L. Mrs. Humphry Ward. Miss Charlotte M. Yonob. COMMITTEE OF MANAGEMENT. Chairman—H. Eider Haggard. Sir W. Martin Conway. D. W. Fresiifield. Anthony Hope Hawkins. J. M. Lely. SUB-COMMITTEES. MUSIC. C. Villibrs Stanford, Mus.D. (Chairman). JACQUE8 BLUMENTHAL. J. L. MOLLOY. ( Field, Eoscoe, and Co., Lincoln's Inn Fields. '( G. Herbert Thring, B.A., 4, Portugal-street. Secretary—G. Herbert Thbing, BA. OFFICES: 4, Pobtuoal Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields, W.C. A. W. X Beckett. Sir Walter Besant. Egerton Castle, F.S.A. W. Morris Colles. ART. Hon. John Collier (Chairman). Sir W. Martin Conway. M. H. Spielmann. Solicitors- Sir A. C. Mackenzie, Mus.Doo. Henry Norman. Francis Storr. DRAMA. Henry Arthur Jones [Chairman] A. W. X Beckett. Edward Rose. IF. WATT &c SOIDsT, LITERARY AGENTS, Formerly of 2, PATERNOSTER SdUARE, Have now removed to HASTINGS HOUSE, NORFOLK STREET, STRAND, LONDON, W.C. Published every Friday morning; price, without JReports, S*d.; with Reports, Is. THE LAW TIMES, the Journal of the Law sx^ the Lawyers, which has now been established for over half a century supplies to the Profession a complete Record of the Progress of * °£au Reforms, and of all matters affecting the Legal Profession. yip Reports of the Law Times are now recognised as the most complete and efficient series published. Offices: Windsor House, Bre&m'B-buildings, E C THE ART of CHESS. By James Mason. Price 5a. net, by post 5s. 4d. London: Horace Cox, Windsor House, Bream's-buildings, E.C. THE KNIGHTS and KINGS of CHESS. By the Eev. G. A. MACDONNELL, B.A. With Portrait and 17 Illustra tions. Crown 8vo., cloth boards, price 2s. Cd. net London: HoBAOK Cox, Windsor House, Bream's-buildings, E.G.  ## p. 89 (#507) ############################################# XT be Hutbor* (The Organ of the Incorporated Society of Authors. Monthly.) CONDUCTED BY WALTER BESANT. Vol. Vin.—No. 4.] SEPTEMBER 1, 1897. [Price Sixpence. For the Opinion* expressed in papers that are signed or initialled the Authors alone are responsible. None of the papers or para- graphs must be taken as expressing the collective opinions of the Committee unless they are officially signed by G. Herbert Thring, Sec. THE Secretary of the Sooiety begs to give notioe that all remittances are acknowledged by return of post, and requests that all members not receiving an answer to important communications within two days will write to him without delay. All remittances should be crossed Union Bank of London, Chancery-lane, or be sent by registered letter only. Communications and letters are invited by the Editor on all subjects connected with literature, but on no other sub- jects whatever. Articles which cannot bo accepted are returned if stamps for the purpose accompany the MSS. GENERAL MEMORANDA. ]J\OTH some years it has been the practice to insert, in j every number of The Author, certain " General Con- siderations," Warnings, Notices, to., for the guidance of the reader. It has been objected as regards those warnings that the tricks or frauds against which they are directed cannot all be guarded against, for obvious reasons. It is, however, well that they should be borne in mind, and if any publisher refuses a clause of precaution he simply reveals his true character, and should be left to carry on his business in his own way. Let us, however, draw up a few of the rules to bo observed in an agreement. There are three methods of dealing with literary property:— I. That of selling it outright. This is in some respects the most satisfactory, if a proper price can be obtained. But the transaction should be managed by a competent agent. II. A profit-sharing agreement. In this case the following rules should be attended to: (1.) Not to sign any agreement in which the cost of pro- duction forms a part. (2.) Not to give the publisher the power of putting the profits into his own pocket by charging for advertisements VOL. VIII. in his own organs: or by oharging exohange advertise- ments. (3.) Not to allow a special oharge for " office expenses," unless the same allowance is made to the author. (4.) Not to give up American, Colonial, or Continental rights. (5.) Not to give up Berial or translation rights. (6.) Not to bind yourself for future work to any publisher. As well bind yourself for the future to any one solicitor or doctor! (7.) To stamp the agreement. III. The royalty system. In this system, which has oponed the door to a most amazing amount of overreaching and trading on the author's ignorance, it is above all things necessary to know what the proposed royalty means to both sides. It is now possible for an author to ascertain approximately and very nearly the truth. From time to time the very important figures connected with royalties are published in The Author. Readers can also work out the figures themselves from tho "Cost of Production." Let no one, not evon the youngest writer, sign a royalty agreement without finding out what it gives the publisher as well as himself. It has been objected that those precautions presuppose a great succoss for the book, and that very few books indeed attain to this great success. That is quite true: but there is always this uncertainty of literary property that, although the works of a great many authors carry with them no risk at all, and although of a great many it is known within a few copies what will be their minimum circulation, it is not known what will be their maximum. Therefore every author, for every book, should arrange on the ohance of a success which will not, probably, come at all; but which may come. The four points which the Society has always domanded from the outset are:— (1.) That both sides shall know what an agreement means. (2.) The inspection of tho3e account books which belong to the author. We are advised that this is a right, in the nature of a common law right, which cannot be denied or withheld. (3.) That there Bhall be no secret profits. (4.) That nothing Bhall be charged which has not been actually paid—for instance, that there shall be no charge for advertisements in the publisher's own organs and none tor exchanged advertisements and that all discounts shall be duly entered. If those points are carefully looked after, the author may rest pretty well assured that he is in right hands. At the same time he will do well to Bend his agreement to the secretary before he signs it. i 2  ## p. 90 (#508) ############################################# go THE AUTHOR. HOW TO USE THE SOCIETY. I. IjTVERY member has a right to ask for and to receive Fj advioe upon his agreements, his choice of a pub- lisher, or any dispute arising in the conduct of his business or the administration of his property. If the advioe sought is snch as can be given best by a solicitor, the member has a right to an opinion from the Society's solicitors. If the case is suoh that Counsel's opinion is desirable, the Com- mittee will obtain for him Counsel's opinion. All this without any cost to the member. 2. Remember that questions connected with copyright and publisher's agreements do not generally fall within the experience of ordinary solicitors. Therefore, do not scruple to use tho Socioty first—our solicitors are continually engaged upon such questions for us. 3. Send to the office copies of past agreements and past accounts with the loan of the books represented. This is in order to ascertain what has been the nature of your agree- ments, and the results to author and publisher respectively so far. The Seoretary will always be glad to have any agreements, new or old, for inspection and note. The infor- mation thus obtained may prove invaluable. 4. If the examination of your previous business trans- actions by the Secretary proves unfavourable, you should take advice as to a change of publishers. 5. Before signing any agreement whatever, send the pro- posed document to the Society for examination. 6. The Society is acquainted with the methods, and—in the case of fraudulent nouses—the tricks of every publish- ing firm in the country. 7. Remember always that in belonging to the Society yon are fighting the battles of other writers, even if you are reaping no benefit to yourself, and that you are advancing the best interests of literature in promoting the indepen- dence of the writer. 8. Send to the Editor of The Author notes of everything important to literature that you may hear or meet with. 9. The committee have now arranged for the reception of members' agreements and their preservation in a fireproof safe. The agreements will, of course, be regarded as con- fidential documents to be read only by the Secretary, who will keep tho key of tho safe. Tho Sooiety now offers:—(1) To read and advise upon agreements and publishers. (2) To stamp agreements in readiness for a possible action upon them. (3) To keep agreements. (4) To enforce payments due according to agreements. THE AUTHORS' SYNDICATE. MEMBERS are informed: I. That the Authors' Syndicate takes charge of the business of members of the Society. That it submits MSS. to publishers and editors, concludes agree- ments, examines, passes, and collects accounts, and, gene- rally, relieves members of the trouble of managing business details. 2. That the terms upon which its services can be secured will be forwarded upon detailed application. 3. That the Authors' Syndicate works only for those members of the Society whose work possesses a market value. 4. That the Syndicate can only undertake any negotiations whatever on the distinct understanding that those negotia- tions are placed exclusively in its hands, and that all communications relating thereto are referred to it. 5. That clients can only be seen by the Director by appointment, and that, when possible, at least two days' notice should be given. 6. That every attempt is made to deal with all communi- cations promptly. That stamps should, in alt coses, be sont to defray postage. 7. That the Authors' Syndicate does not invite MSS. without previous correspondence; does not hold itself responsible for MSS. forwarded without notice; and that in all cases MSS. must be accompanied by stamps to defray postage. 8. That the Syndicate undertakes arrangements for lectures by some of the leading members of the Socioty; that it has a "Transfer Department" for the sale and purchase of journals and periodicals; and that a " Register of Wants and Wanted" is open. Members aro invited to communicate their requirements to the Manager. There is an Honorary Advisory Committee, whoso services will be called upon in any ooso of dispute or difficulty. It is perhaps necessary to state that the members of the Advisory Committee have no peouniary interest whatever in the Syndicate. NOTICES. THE Editor of The Author begs to remind members of tho Society that, although the paper is sent to them free of charge, the cost of producing it would be a very heavy charge on the resources of the Society if a great many members did not forward to the Secretary the modest 6s. 6d. subscription for the year. The Editor is always glad to receive short papers and communications on all subjects connected with literature from members and others. Nothing can do more good to the Society than to make The Author complete, attractive, and interesting. Will those who are willing to aid in this work send thoir names and the special subjects on which they are willing to write P Communications for The Author should reach the Editor not later than the 21st of each month. All persons engaged in literary work of any kind, whether members of the Society or not, are invited to communicate to the Editor any points connected with their work which it would be advisable in the general interest to publish. Members and others who wish their MSS. read are requested not to send them to the Office without previously communicating with the Secretary. The utmost practicable despatch is aimed at, and MSS. are read in the order in which they are received. It must also be distinctly under- stood that the Sooiety does not, under any circumstances, undertake the publication of MSS. The Authors' Club is now open in its new premises, at 3, Whitehall-court, Charing Cross. Address the Secretary for information, rules of admission, &c. Will members take the trouble to ascertain whether they have paid their subscriptions for the year? If they will do this, and remit the amount, if still unpaid, or a banker's order, it will greatly assist the Secretary, and save him the trouble of sending out a reminder. Members are most earnestly entreated to attend to the following warning. It is a most foolish and may bo a most disastrous thing to enter into an agreement binding for a term of years. Let them ask themselves if they would give a solicitor the collection of their rents for five years to come, whatever his conduct, whether he was honest  ## p. 91 (#509) ############################################# THE AUTHOR. 9i or dishonest? Of conrse they would not. Why then hesitate for a moment when they are asked to sign them- selves into literary bondage for three or fire years? Those who possess the "Cost of Production" are requested to note that the cost of binding has advanced 15 per oent. This means, for those who do not like the trouble of "doing sums," the addition of three shillings in the pound on this head. In other words, if the cost of binding is set down in our book at eight pounds, to this must now be added twenty-four shillings more, so that it now stands at Jig 4s. The figures in our book are as near the exact truth as can be procured; but a printer's, or a binder's, bill is so elastic a thing that nothing more exact can be arrived at. Some remarks have been made upon the amount charged in the " Cost of Production" for advertising. Of course, we have not included any sums which may be charged for inserting advertisements in the publisher's own magazines, or in other magazines by exchange. As agreements too often go, there is nothing to prevent the publisher from sweeping the whole profits of a book into his own pocket, by inserting any number of advertisements in his own magazines, and by exchanging with others. Some there are who call this a form of fraud; it is not known what those who practise this method of swelling their own profits call it. FROM THE COMMITTEE. HIGH COURT OP JUSTICE.—QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION. (Sittings in Bankruptcy, before Mr. Registrar Hope.) In Be Whitcomb. THIS was an adjourned sitting for public examination under a receiving order made against H. and B. W. Whitcomb,described as of 12, Burleigh-street, Strand. The examina- tion of the debtor, H. Whitcomb, was ordered to be concluded on June 30 last, and the other debtor now attended. His accounts showed liabilities <£i 169, with assets ,£1034. Mr. C. A. Pope attended as assistant official receiver, and Mr. Mellor appeared for creditors. In the course of his evidence, B. W. Whitcomb s:ui<mI that he was an actor, and had followed that profession for eight or nine years, his income from that source averaging about £300 a year. In Sept. 1896, he started a journal known as the New Saturday,Andput about*£20ointo the undertaking. He had no knowledge of journalism, and it was arranged that his brother (the debtor, H. Whit- tomb) should act as manager of the paper. He skirted the journal because he thought it would prove a successful speculation. His brother, who had experience in journalistic work, was an un- discharged bankrupt at the time. The Assistant Official Receiver.—Was not the object of your becoming the registered proprietor merely to cover your brother and enable him to carry on the newspaper, in spite of the fact that he was an undischarged bankrupt P The debtor emphatically denied that this was the case, and said that the idea was to form a syndicate to carry on the business, but the syndi- cate never got beyond a suggestion. The paper was a loss throughout, and he was responsible for all the debts incurred. Mr. Mellor also briefly questioned the debtor, and the examination was ordered to be concluded. —The Times, Aug. 17. LITERARY PROPERTY. L—On the New Law op Copyright. THE Incorporated Society of Authors and the Incorporated Institute of Journalists are doing their best to press forward a long- needed amendment of the Law of Copyright. As things are, successful writers, dramatists, lecturers, and even preachers, are at the mercy of the un- scrupulous class of persons who find it much easier to steal other people's ideas than to create ideas of their own. Of course there is a copyright law in existence, but its imperfections are only fully known to those who have had occasion to seek its protection. By some strange perversity of judg- ment, it has long appeared to otherwise honest and honourable men that a broad distinction may properly be drawn between property in the pro- duction of a man's brains and property in the production of a man's hands. If a carpenter lawfully acquires a few slips of wood and makes them into a chair or a table, that chair or table is his own, and the individual who attempts to dispose of it, without first satisfying the maker, runs a good chance of spending a few weeks in close confinement. Even if the thief takes the precaution of taking the chair or table to pieces, and selling the pieces of wood separately, he is still held responsible for an act of dishonesty. Or, in another case, if the carpenter or ironworker or other artificer produces quite a new design in his work, and has the design properly registered, then he can prevent by law a less ingenious com- petitor from palpably copying that design and passing the work off as his own. But mark how the law deals with a brain-production in the shape of a book, or a play, or a lecture, or a sermon. Perhaps sermons are pilfered least; but this, in turn, may be because they are, as a rule, least worth pilfering. The principle holds good all the same, and those who are moving in the matter wish to protect brain-workers of all grades, just as hand-workers are already protected. Their principle is that what a man  ## p. 92 (#510) ############################################# 92 THE AUTHOR. produces by the exercise of thought, invention, and cultivated mental effort is as much his own property as the coster's donkey-cart belongs to the coster, and cannot be "appropriated" by the first person who sees his way to make money by the elementary process of taking something that does not belong to him. As a rule it is the novelist and the dramatist who get their brains "picked " most persistently. Mr. Brain Stoker, who gave evidence before the Lords' Committee, put the matter very clearly. The successful novel is forthwith pounced down on by the light- fingered dramatist; and the successful dramatist is the immediate victim of the cadging novelist. In other words, the man who has no ideas walks about like a hungry jackal, ready to devour, without leave and without reward, the ideas of the man more favoured in that respect than himself. Of course, in spite of the doubtful dictum that a good novel usually makes a bad play, there will always be a natural, and perhaps laudable, desire to see the characters of a favourite story personified on the stage. There is no harm in that; indeed, quite the contrary. But surely the man who wrote the story and created all that is worth appropriating from it ought to be pre- sumed to have such legal property in his own production as would prevent its appropriation by anyone without his consent, and without affording him any recompense. So with the dramatist; if after a long expenditure of thought he produces a play which "means money," why should the hack story-writer steal, from a back seat in the gallery, all the ideas, the situations, and the general effect that mean so much to the dramatist? Or, to take the lecturer, why, because he reads or recites his "book," should he be less protected than if he issued it in printed form? What a man writes, so far as it is his own, ought to be protected as his own; and it should be legally his "property" as against all comers who decline to pay the owner's price for it. To the question, Is there not already a Copyright Act? the short answer is that it fails in nine cases out of ten through technical defects, or through its limited application, or, perhaps most of all, through the expense and difficulty of putting it into operation. If a thief steals a pennyworth of tintacks he may be treated with "summary diligence," and the owner's rights be vindicated. If he "appro- j>riates " the year's labour of a man's brain he may go on his way rejoicing, for the chances are the law will be too slow, too clumsy, and too costly to overtake him. It is high time this state of things should be altered.—Birmingham Daily News, July io. II.—Localisation of Copyright. At a meeting of the Council of the Publishers' Association held on Aug. 6, it was resolved that the following recommendation should be circulated among the members:— The subject of the localisation of copyright, as illustrated by special American, Colonial, and Continental editions of English publications, having engaged the attention of the second Inter- national Publishers' Congress, held at Brussels in June, 1897, that body passed the following reso- lution: "La cession d'cditions localisces k certains pays implique pour le cessionaire l'obligation d'indiquer sur ces editions spcciales autorisces les pays auxquels la vente en est liinitee." The importance of the American market to Eng- lish publishers is so great that it seems specially desirable to secure the adherence of American publishers to this resolution. With that object it is recommended that authors and publishers (following the precedent of Continental and Colonial editions) should, in all agreements made with American publishers, stipulate that a noti- fication limiting the American issue to the United States be insisted on, while at the same time the British edition should bear a notice excluding it from circulation in the United States.— The Pub- lishers' Circular. SOLECISMS A HUNDRED YEARS AGO. u Tip j8 weu known that the ancient Greeks and I Romans took infinite pains to improve their respective languages. We have many re- markable instances of their labours to this effect in the writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the author who passes under the name of Demetrius Phalereus, Cicero, Quinctilian, Aulus Gellius, and others. The English reader will be surprised to see with what exactness they measured their periods, analysed their phrases, arranged their words, determined the length of their syllables, and avoided all harsh and ele- mentary sounds, in order to give grace and harmony to their compositions. To this refine- ment we may, in a great measure, ascribe that inexpressible charm which every man of taste and learning discovers in some of the classics, and which is not to be found in the generality of modern compositions. Such an attention to propriety and elegance of style is of the greatest importance, as no pro- duction can be read with pleasure, or transmitted to posterity with applause, if it is defective in this respect. It should likewise be considered, that the literary character of a nation will always  ## p. 93 (#511) ############################################# THE AUTHOR. 93 depend on the accuracy and elegance of its publi- cations. Since the" beginning of the present century the English language has been much improved and refined. Several able writers have examined its principles, and pointed out its beauties and defects, with a critical and philosophical investi- gation. I must, however, observe that many enormous solecisms still appear in almost all the produc- tions of our English writers, such as, You was. This expression sometimes occurs in books, is often heard in conversation, and frequently echoes through the caverns of West- minster Hall. The nominative case is the second person plural, and the verb to which it is united is the first or the third person singular. More or most universal. 'Its success was not more universal' (Gibbon, vol. II., p. 357). 'Money is the most universal incitement of human industry' (lb., vol. I., p. 356; vol. III., p. 66, <fec.). 'Company more universally accept- able' (Zeluco, vol. I., p. 398). 'That which pleases most universally is religion' (' Blair's Sermons,' vol. II., p. 168). What is universal cannot admit of augmentation. Of all others. 'The profession, of all others, for which he was the fittest' (Zeluco, vol. I., pp. 75, 118). 'The most precious of all others' (Anachar, vol. III., p. 288). 'It is that species of goodness with which, of all ot/iers, we are best acquainted' ('Blair's Sermons,' vol. II., p. 129). 'To collect a dictionary seems a work, of all others, least practicable in a state of blindness' (Johnson's 'Life of Milton,' p. 169). This ex- pression resembles the following absurdity in Milton: Adam, the goodliest man of men since born His sons; the fairest of her daughters Eve. B. IV., 322. I would not attempt to vindicate Milton, as some have done, by pleading that this is a figure of speech or a 'poetic licence.' I would rather say, with Horace, it is one of the Macula;, qnas ant incnria fndit, Ant humana parum cavit natnra. Ax. P. 552- No apology, however, can be made for the fore- going expression in prose. Either side. 'Either sex and every age was engaged in the pursuits of industry' (Gibbon, vol. I., 452). 'He retired with a multitude of captives of either sex' (lb., vol. IV., 281). 'Pilled with a great number of persons of either sex' (lb., vol. II., 324; alibi passim). 'In that violent conflict of parties, he (Edmund Smith) had a prologue and epilogue from the first wits on either side* (Johnson's 'Lives,' vol. II., p. 248). Either signifies only the one or the other; and is improperly used instead of each in the singular number, or both in the plural. We meet with innumerable writers who talk of looking into the tcomb of Time. But this expression suggests a gross and indelicate idea, and is in itself absurd; for Time, according to the mytho- logists, is an old fellow, the Chronos or Saturn of the ancients, and consequently has no womb. All personifications ought to be consistent. An accusative or objective case after a passive participle. 'He (Thompson) was taught the common rudiments of learning' (Johnson's 'Lives,' vol. IV., p. 252). 'He (Watts) was taught Latin by Mr. Pinhorae ' (lb., p. 278). 'He (Milton) was offered the continuance of his employ, ment' (lb., vol. I., p. 183). 'Thus I have been told the story' (Telem. vol. I., p. 92, edit 1795). It would be better to say: he was instructed in the rudiments of learning; he learned Latin under the tuition of Mr. Pinhorne; the King, or the Ministry, offered to continue him in his former employment; thus I have heard the story, or thus I have been informed. The author of these remarks has observed, with regret, the last of these expressions in a translation, which he wished to give the public in an unexceptionable style. But he has been long convinced that no work was ever published without some inadvertencies of the author and the printer. 'Two highwaymen were hung this morning.' This is a common vulgarism. We should rather say: 'two highwaymen were hanged.' This verb should be used in the regular form when it signifies to execute, and in the irregular when it denotes only suspension; as, 'he was hanged, and afterwards hung in chains.' The eldest of the two. 'Her eldest son, Esau' (Genesis xxvii., 15). When only two things are mentioned, there cannot be what grammarians sometimes call the third degree of comparison. In this case we should say, the younger, the elder, the wiser, the better. The conjunction nor is frequently used after an affirmative sentence very improperly in this manner: 'It was impossible that a soldier could esteem so dissolnte a sovereign, nor is it easy to conceal a just contempt' (' Gibbon,' vol. II., 5). 'Modern Europe has produced several illustrious women, who have sustained with glory the weight of empire; nor is our own age destitute of such distinguished characters' (lb. 32). It would, I think, be much better to begin the latter part of these sentences without this con- junction, which only seems to form a connection, but in reality has no corresponding negative.  ## p. 94 (#512) ############################################# 94 THE AUTHOR. The simple independent word 'not' would be preferable. The impropriety, I believe, has never yet been observed; and some, perhaps, may think the foregoing expressions unexceptionable. I shall not dispute with critics who are so easily satis- fied."—" Eubebiub," in the Gentleman's Maga- zine, for July 1797. NEW YORE LETTER. New York, July 18. THE recent announcement in England, that a magazine is to be started in England to comment on books and literary matters "in the American manner," would be more inte- resting with more explanation. If it means, as it probably does, in a light, bright, and somewhat callow manner, with what we call "freshness," it begins at a time when that tone is less in demand here than it was a short time ago. We have had so much " cleverness " of a certain kind that the public is sick of it. "Chap-Booky" used to be the adjective for this quality. Herbert Stone, editor of the Chap-Book, was in New York the other day, and I asked him if he had any ideal for the periodical. "Yes," he said, "a bi-weekly Atlantic Monthly. At first the ideal was the Saturday Review, but we have now given that up." Smartness simply did not pay any more than the other idea, yellowness—which he also imported from England—did, and he has also abandoned that. "Your book business and your paper will never pay," said a watchful critic to him, " until you make people take them seriously. They were amused by your experiment for awhile, but that sort of interest doesn't last." Stone is now trying to get as solid a line of books as he can, and also to get short essays and stories for the Chap-Booh, which shall carry by their solid worth. The essay of from 1000 to 2000 words on literary subjects or general topics of the day is especially called for just now. The Atlantic Monthly, which is as good as it has ever been now that Walter H. Page has charge of it, and is much the best periodical we have, wishes to get so many of these little essays that it can ru u two departments of them every month. The same sort of thing is wanted in books by all the leading publishers, except the Harpers, who confine their interests, as in fiction and essays and literature generally, to a few men of an estab- lished market. A tendency that is visible in current American criticism, especially in newspapers, is to substitute exposition for judgment; to tell just what is in a book, and quote the best things in it, saying comparatively little by way of comment. This is called " getting the news out of books," and the ethics of it and its effect on the sale have been fully discussed in The Author. Nothing pays like "news" of whatever kind. The marked success of the Bookman is largely due to the unusual amount of news in it. "I have always thought I ought to have been a newspaper man," said Professor Peck, the editor, the other day. Frank A. Munsey is going to show the essence of cheap American literary methods in their most interesting form to the English public by esta- blishing his magazine in London. If he lives up to his reputation, he will make the Strand and. the Pall Mall "bustle" before he has been there long, and also any other periodicals in his field which England may boast. The McClure- Doubleday Company is going into cheap editions of good works in the fall, heavily, relying on large sales, taking classics on which the copy* right has expired, and publishing them in pretty little sets in boxes at 25 cents, a volume. The public, at least, is the gainer. All writers will naturally be interested in the new edition of "Authors and Publishers," by G. H. and J. B. Putnam, especially as there is matter in it which was not in the earlier editions. George Haven Putnam is decidedly entertaining in his introduction, and he puts in many true observations,'_which are mixed, however, with some unconvincing ones. It is an old storv that a man ought not to write unless he is "called to," and Mr. Putnam retells it. But it is not a very pro- found observation. It is an axiom to any observer that a man often does best in something in which he is not most interested, and writing is not an exception to the ordinary laws of human nature. "Go to, let us make a book," has led to many of the best books we have, and the worst books are, in large part, those which the author was "com- pelled by something inside him" to write. Again in the cbapteron " publishing arrangements," Mr. Putnam makes some implications which might be staggered by cross-examination. For instance, he says "royalty is paid either on all the copies sold, or on all copies sold after enough have been sold to return the first manufacturing out- lays and to insure for the undertaking a profit instead of a deficiency. The theory of such a reservation is that the author and the publisher should begin to make money out of the book at the same time." A little later he puts in a parenthesis the argument that the suggestion comes from the author, so the publisher should not be asked to take any more risk than is neces- sary. And that point is worth dissecting. Mr.  ## p. 95 (#513) ############################################# THE AUTHOR. 95 Putnam probably would not deny that, leaving out authors who have reputations which make it possible for them to make good terms at any time, it is the general custom, in New York at least, for the publisher to pay no royalty on a thousand copies of a book if it has been offered to him, where he would pay from the beginning if he had heard of the existence of the book and asked for it; this even where he is sure the book will pay. In other words, he simply takes advantage of the author's desire to publish to pay him less than he could afford to pay him. Mr. Putnam calls the complaints of literary men about publishers "the baby act." One may admit it is a pure business deal, and yet think it only fair to get all the facts into the mind of writers, as they meet the publisher at a disadvantage as it is, as shown by the fact that a writer whose personal acquaintance with publishers helps him to "know the ropes" is sure to make a better bargain than one of equal standing who has not the information necessary to enable him to make a decent contract. Of course few authors in comparison to the whole number can get at the proper "counsellor" to whom Mr. Putnam refers. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that these differences of opinion ought not to turn the attention of any reader of this letter from the fact that no author, publisher, or general reader, who cares for the subject, can fail to find this book one of the most instructive and interesting accessible, and the attractive make-up adds another merit to it. I would add one to the list of methods of advertising mentioned. It appeared recently in the advertising columns of the Dial:— A NEW BOOK SENT FBEE. A new book of verse, issued by a well-known publishing house at one dollar, will be sent free to any address upon receipt of a postal-card request. If you wish to keep the book, sixty cents in stamps or money-order will make it yours. If yon do not wish to keep it, return by mail, and the postage (four cents) is the price you will have paid for the privilege of reading a new book. Address P. A. L., Box 84, Evanston, 111. Last fall the Century Company advertised John La Farge's "An Artist's Letters from Japan" for publication in the winter. It did not come out, and now they promise it again. There are pieces of prose in it as good as (and I have almost the boldness to say better than) any other American writer of the day could produce, and the sketches by the author, in at least two respects our strongest artist, add greatly to the charm. Mr. La Farge is a poet, and Japan brought out the best there is in him. Probably the tariff question will be settled this week. The chances seem to be that the pro- VOL. ▼III. visions about the importation of books will be about what they were under the McKinley law. The Dingley Bill, as originally intended, put a tax on books, whether they imported for sale, or for exhibition or instruction, and the exemptions on behalf of educational institutions amounted to nothing. The outcry from the public and the Press had its effect when the Bill got to the Senate Committee, for books imported for scientific and educational purposes were restored to the free list, and the whole thing left about as it is under the present Wilson law. Later, how- ever, the Senate, by amendments, put it back to the McKinley law, which means that literary productions more than twenty years old will com* in free, and some of the restrictions on importation for educational purposes are taken off; and this will probably be finally adopted by the Conference committee. New York, Aug. 16. Authors whose books appear in the United States this fall apparently have cause to be more cheerful than they have been for some time, if the general notion of the publishers is to be trusted. They seem even in the West and South, where they have been most depressed, to share the streak of confidence which the merchants are feeling. Of course the Republicans think their laws are responsible; others believe that the good crops are starting a change which has been long preparing, and the real fatalistic American spirit says, "When everything has been bad so long there will be an improvement, and nobody will know why." The middle of the summer brings some of the most conspicuous books. Of course they are mostly novels, and it is noticeable that publishers are tending more and more to believe the summer a good time for the publication of important fiction, but there are enough other works on the list to make one wonder if our idea that the three hot months are a fatal time for the birth of a book is to be done away with. With one of the books to come out in the fall a little story is connected. Writers have long been warned in this paper not to allow a publisher to deduct anything for office expenses, and pos- sibly the spirit of that warning would cover this case. A certain firm in this city stands as high as any in America, and it is often said, "Send your book to so and so, and you will be treated squarely, with no unexpected developments when settlement time comes." None stands higher in America, and it is practically part of a firm of equal standing in Great Britain. Last winter it brought out a story, the first literary work of K  ## p. 96 (#514) ############################################# 96 THE AUTHOR. a poor man. The story had remarkable success, and is still selling rapidly. Ten per cent, royalty was the arrangement. When the first payment came to be made 150 dollars was deducted for editing. The beauty of the charge is, that the firm had no editing to do, as it was all done by an outsider, a friend of the author, who was inte- rested in the success of the book. It all amounts to this. Some of our little publishers have to say, " We cannot pay you royalty until after we have sold 500 or 1000 copies," but this big firm was too dignified for that, so it takes out the royalty on the first 1500 copies by a subterfuge. Some of the firms have their fall announce- ments ready. On the Putnam's list studies of interesting things in American history are pro- minent. The second volume of the writings of Thomas Jefferson, the fourth volume of the writings of James Monroe, four volumes of the life and correspondence of Rufus King are announced. It is a fact, not a publisher's adver- tisement, that some of the volumes in this series of the works of the early American statesmen have sold at auction at twice their original price immediately after publication, which is a good omen for the direction of the interests of the readers of this country. Lives of Grant and Lee are also on the Putnam's list, and the second volume of the "Literary History of the Ameri- can Revolution," which in its first volume was one of the best books of last season, although not yet announced, will doubtless appear before very long. Among the interesting books of the same company connected with politics will be a volume of essays by Theodore Roosevelt, not yet announced, but probably to be ready during the fall. He is now Assistant-Secretary of the Navy, and before taking that position made a great stir as President of the Police Board of New York City. He has been in politics a good deal, and he has a taste for the picturesque, and a number of his essays and sketches deal with aspects of political life which are peculiar to this country, and which, indeed, offer one of the best literary fields we have, and one of the least worked. Among the novels of prominence which have just appeared, one of the most interesting is Miss Wilkins's "Jerome," published by the Harpers. It is a hybrid, partly a study in her usual line of New England pride and poverty, and partly a love story, which is touching because it plays with accuracy upon the well tested chords. It is, I believe, her third novel, and confirms the indica- tion of the other two, that her permanent repu- tation will rest on her short stories. The strong parts of her novels are precisely the touches that might be taken out and made into short stories, and the more complex structure of the novel is what she is weakest in. In this story the plot, although skilfully handled, is artificial and made up of the conventional devices. The machinery includes several timely inheritances and other overworked means, in carrying out which she is sometimes led to injure her characters by impro- babilities. But Miss Wilkins is an artist, and her conversations especially, which are always her greatest strength, are excellent in this book. Her style is her most marked imitation. When she talks in her own person she is frequently guilty of something approaching precocity, but her cha- racters, varied enough in their well-defined field, talk admirably. She brings out the severer aspects of New England life and character with constant power, and probably with no more exaggeration than is legitimate for artistic em- phasis; and a person who reads her stories and tempers them with Miss Jewett's will get some- where near the facts. Another good student of American life is to be honoured by the Appletons with a uniform edition. The works of Mr. Hamlin Garland, whom the Spectator thinks a woman, will appear as follows: (1) "Spoils of Office"; (2) "Wayside Court- ships"; (3) "Jason Edwards"; (4) "The Member of the Third House." William Gillette, whose recent success in London as dramatic author and actor has been so decided, reached home on Saturday. He is a man of originality as well as of skill. Years ago, after the success of "Held by the Enemy," which had some literary merit, his friends regretted the attention which he gave to pure farce. He used to answer that he was not writing for posterity, which could take care of itself, but that he was endeavouring to amuse the people who were alive to-day, which he thought a sufficiently high aim. The Macmillan Company has just accepted a novel of railroad life by Herbert E. Hamblen, who, under the name of Fred B. Williams, wrote "On Many Seas," one of the successes of last year. The new book tells the life of the railroad engineer with the ingenuousness, so the Macmillan reader tells me, that made the success of the sea stories. Mr. Hamblen is himself an engineer, and the scene of the book is limited to what he sees in his daily life on his engine. Perhaps this will come nearer to making a success of the subject, the possibilities of which have been so much extolled of late, than Mr. Kipling's fanciful treatment of it in the last number of Scribner's Magazine. The tariff on books passed in the form which seemed probable at the date of my last letter. There is no duty on books for public institutions,  ## p. 97 (#515) ############################################# THE AUTHOR. 97 or on books printed in foreign languages, or on English books more than twenty years old. The tax on Art is retained in its worst form. Norman Hapoood. NOTES PEOM ELSEWHERE. AREVIEW entitled " Industrial Jim-Jams," dealing with my book on the White Slaves, appears to have given such sincere pleasure to many people that it may interest these further to hear that the acting editor of the periodical in which this review appears informs me that it was "written by a very capable man, who was fully in sympathy with your object, but not with your method; and had he felt it possible to deliver a favourable verdict he would gladly have done so." This letter was an answer to one of mine, in which I had pointed out certain misrepresenta- tions, and had objected to the introduction, as irrelevant, of the following remark: "Mr. Sherard, we understand, has published novels. They do not appear to have brought him a great reputa- tion. This is somewhat strange. 'The White Slaves of England' is proof that, as a fiction writer, Mr. Sherard possesses powers of no common order." The acting editor in question concludes his letter with a piece of advice. "Meantime," he writes, " if you will permit me, in all friendliness, to say so, nothing could be calculated to do you more harm than the foolish document you send from the 'degenerate' Max Nordau." This in reference to a long critique which the author of "Degeneration "—whom I have only met once in my life—wrote me spontaneously after reading the book in question. This review and this letter form a valuable addition to the literary documents which the publication of " The White Slaves " has brought with it, and to which I referred in my last. George Cable, the American author, is to visit England shortly on a lecture tour, and will make his dfbnt at Liverpool, when Ian Maclaren will take the chair. Though a man of very small physique, Mr. Cable is a powerful speaker, having been specially trained for the lecture platform by a New YorK elocutionist. He is the delight of American audiences, and it is to be hoped that his reception in England may be a very warm one. Mr. Cable believes in regularity and methodicity of work. He sits down to his work every morning at nine o'clock with the strictest punctuality, and writes till one, when he lunches, resuming work at two, and working on steadily till six. I am very glad to hear that Mark Twain's financial troubles have been greatly exaggerated in the papers, and that his deliverance from the same is only a question of months, so that one of the best fellows in the world will soon be released from what is more cruel to the writer than to any other worker. Mark's troubles all sprang from a type-setting machine, an invention in which he sank every penny of his fortune; and h propos of this a pretty and very creditable story is told of him. When, on a New Year's Day, he carried to Mrs. Grant, as her first returns on the "Lifeof General Grant," the largest cheque which has ever changed hands over a literary transac- tion, Mrs. Grant asked him to invest it for her. "No, no," said Mark Twain, "don't ask me to do that. I should only invest it in this type-setting machine, and there's far too much risk about that." I think this was very fine of Mark Twain. Mark Twain's description of the Jubilee pro- cession, published in the New York Journal, was considered in America a magnificent piece of writing. Hearst, the proprietor of the Journal, is very anxious that Mark Twain should con- tribute a series of fifty letters to the Sunday issue of his paper. The fight for pre-eminence between the Journal and the World is not without its pathos. However much one may disapprove of Mr. Joseph Pulitzer's journalistic methods, one cannot but admire his stupendous energy. He is almost, if not totally, blind; he is a confirmed invalid (they say of him, in New York, that he has seven organic diseases), yet since the competition of the Journal began to make itself felt, he has resumed the entire direction of his colossal enterprise, and may be seen day and night—as in the old days of his early struggles —■ working from fifteen to twenty hours out of the twenty-four, surrounded by stenographers, fighting a fight of the bitterness of which none but those who know the fierceness of the competition in American journalism can have any conception, 10 maintain the supremacy, commercial, it must be admitted, of his creation, a creation of which, he is so proud, that one day he told me that he would far rather see his son edito ■ of the New York World than President of the United States, for the power and influence enjoyed. The Mercnre de France publishing house in Paris allows its authors to stamp each copy of a book published by that firm as a check on sales. Whether this is the reason of the popularity which this firm enjoys amongst authors I do not know, but the fact is that the Edition du Mercure de France is getting all the books of the younger authors, and has scored many successes,  ## p. 98 (#516) ############################################# 98 THE AUTHOR. including the most phenomenal success known in the Paris publishing trade during the last five years. A similar plan was under consideration by the Canadian Government. It was proposed that the author should stamp each copy of his book— he could either do it himself or by deputy—at one of the Government offices at Toronto, and that only books so stamped would enjoy copy- right protection, unstamped copies being regarded as piracies. It was also proposed that the author's royalties should be paid to him directly by the Government office. I may add that it would have been necessary, had this proposal been carried into effect, only to bring the fly-leaves of the edition to the stamping house. I remember that when something similar was proposed in England, a publisher wrote pointing out the material diffi- culty of sending van-loads of books—representing the first edition of a popular author's book—to the author's house to be stamped, and suggesting the probable reluctance of the author to deal with such a task. It is, of course, the less popular authors—the men to whom the selling of a single copy is of some importance—who would mainly benefit, and to whom this system would be most welcome. A charming photograph of Sir Henry Irving— as a young man—has recently come to light at a photographer's in Douglas. It should be posses- sed by every admirer. Mr. Edward Terry was acting at that time with Henry Irving in Douglas, and he recently referred to this. "I was only getting thirty shillings a week," said Mr. Terry "and you were the star." "I was a star at thirty-five shillings a week," said Henry Irving. Robert H. Shebaed. FEUILLETON. The Stoet op a Beoken Pen. UP in a garret a young author, with genius enough, as I conceive, to get him a tomb at Westminster, had he lived, died pre- maturely. The poets, therefore, in their select "Corner," have escaped crowding by one memo- rial, which is undeniably a benefit in its way. I know something about the manner of his death and something of the history of his life. I breathed the same air with him, and gripped his hand almost daily for a few years during the early part of his short career, when he roused in me a more than passing interest as a youth likely, if God favoured him, to accomplish no small thing in the world. To me, who am by nature careful, and slow to conceive and act upon ideas, his has always seemed a truly remarkable character. The con- centrated energy of mind which he was capable of manifesting moved me not a few times to admira- tion, even in his youth, and the tremendous enthnsiasm which lay behind an apparently re- served nature made me even then, at times, appre- hensive for his future. In my own mind, there can be no doubt that he had burning within him the divine spark which is called Genius. In appearance, as I last remember him, he was slender and somewhat fair, with a face narrow at the base and broad at the brow, showing the gift of a great imagination. His mouth was like a woman's; but his eyes were, perhaps, the most noteworthy feature about him—very prominent and brilliant, betokening a strong spirit in an unequal body. He was sensitive to the last degree, and, as a consequence, made few friends. With the exception of myself, he talked fami- liarly with no one during the whole term of his stay at the commercial house to which his parents sent him on leaving school, and where I first shook him by the hand. To me, however, for some reason or other, he attached himself strongly. With an almost childish craving for sympathy, when we knew each other better, he would pour into my ear the dreams and aspirations which possessed him, most of which to me seemed splen- didly impracticable, and all of which were exceed- ingly ambitious. There are three books at my side now, formerly belonging to him. They were purchased when he was nearing his fifteenth year, and two of them have a small square disfigurement on the back, underneath the title, where doubtless a secondhand-bookseller's label once adhered marking the price. One is Murray's Grammar, another a Latin Primer, and the third Trench's "Study of Words." On the fly-leaf of each book, written large in the centre of the page in an unformed hand (and yet a hand which betrays the germ of his singular individuality) is the one word, " Advance." I have found in my experience that a single word may sometimes speak a volume; and as I gaze at this one simple verb it seems to me that I see my author completely embodied in its two syllables. In writing that word he seems for the first time to have given voice to what was in him, and to have begun the inglorious tragedy of his life. The parentage of my author was humble, and it was therefore at an early hour of the day that he was started to work in the vineyard of this our world. At the period to which I have come he had for nearly two years tasted the joys of labour in the driving of a commercial pen from nine in the morning until six in the evening.  ## p. 99 (#517) ############################################# THE AUTHOR. 99 It was an evening close upon a year after the inscription of that motto in his three books, and he was seated behind one of the partitions in a little eating house in North-street, taking tea after his day's labours. Over that simple repast he perused the pages of yesterday's Telegraph. Now it happened that in that paper there appeared a leader, written in a somewhat lofty style and with considerable show of language, and dealing with matters of literary importance. On that leader he at length alighted. "While I read it," he says in his diary, "the strangest thing happened. The earth and all things vanished away from me and I Moated up into a heaven of aspiration and dreamed dreams and saw visions of the future, and found my destiny. When I returned to earth I brought a purpose with me. The spirit of language had at length found me: I had caught the melody of speech and had seen for the first time the beauty of the written word. I could no longer remain a mere reader: I also would write. The question that had for so long been dancing through my brain unanswered was then, under those circumstances, finally decided. I had identified myself: 1 was a writer." He goes on to relate, in his characteristic style, how, lost in his great discovery, he " walked the streets on air like a man with his first love, and spent the midnight hours sleepless, in the restless and delightful torture of a first conception, trying to work out an idea." That is the second chapter in the history of his life; the second stage in his development when he found what he conceived to be his purpose in life. And from the date of this discovery right onwards to the end I should say there was but one idea in his head. Then began the struggle against adverse circumstances. His education, which had been sadly curtailed, owing to poverty on the part of his parents, had to be repaired and extended; and, most galling of all, his lack of means obliged him to continue to give eight of his best hours daily to mechanical drudgery, which became abhorrence itself to him. Writing, in one place, retrospectively of this period, he says: "Ah! How I slaved, even in those early days! While the sun crossed from the East to the West my fingers would be driving that detested office pen in company with ten others, of whom I was the least. Then while the others left the office to wield a billiard cue or sing songs in friends' houses, I would mount to my own room and take up another pen or dip deep into my books for hours and hours until the oil in my lamp became midnight oil, and the short hours sounded, and a man's stride down the silent street suggested to one's mind a footstep in a city of the dead. And next morning there would come the office again; and McCrae, peering into my face with those small keen eyes of his, would point out the bluish tint round my own eyes, and would tell me, perhaps, that my voice was dry and tremulous, a sign that my nerves were becoming deranged. Dear, honest old fellow! How often did he repeat to me the maxim of which he was so fond: 'Safe with caution, Arthur, my boy, safe with caution; you are overdoing it.' I acknowledge his wisdom; but I am built in another way; and that very night would see me in front of my lamp again and my bed empty at one o'clock. No doubt I was a fool. 'Nature never can be defied with impunity, and penalty always follows abuse,' as McCrae taught me. I know it—don't I know it But I can't help it—Excelsior!" In process of time, after training his powers to some extent on syntax, Latin, and standard literature, he began to turn off at intervals scrappy productions of his own, both in prose and verse. One of the former, in a moment of self-exaltation, he posted to the editor of that important publication, Blackwood's Magazine. It was returned. "I hid it away," he says, " at the back of a drawer; read through once more the story of the early struggles of Balzac, greatest of French novelists, and set my pen again to paper." Eighteen months and more passed, and one morning the following telegram arrived at the offices in Abercrombie-street:—" My son unfit to come business for some days. Writing." It was from his father, and it was what I had for some time been expecting. I went to the outskirts of the town that evening and rang the bell of the little house wheie his parents lived. I found him in a condition that was abject; unable to remain still, his forehead like fire to the touch, and in his eyes an expression that frightened his mother, as she told me in the passage, in a whisper, the moment I arrived. I heard (what I already knew) that he had been unable to sleep for five consecutive nights, his imagination working furiously and his head swarming with nightmare immediately he closed his eves. There was nothing to be done but to call in a medical man, who administered a powerful sleeping draught. This had the desired effect of allaying the alarming activity of brain by throwing him into a stupor, but the physician afterwards informed me that he had escaped brain fever by a kind of miracle. After three weeks' complete rest he climbed his stool atthe office again, but very weak, and with his mind in a state of semi-torpor. This condition remained for nearly three months, during which  ## p. 100 (#518) ############################################ IOO THE AUTHOR. time the earth spun round him unregarded, and he seemed completely to have lost interest in every- thing—even in his writing. I half began to think that he had abandoned his plans, and that his ambition had died within him. But I was deceived; gradually, as his mind strengthened and freshened, the old ideas returned; the fever to write stirred in his veins again one day, and he cleaned his pens and laid paper out on his table in his bedroom. But his parents mercifully held him off from the resumption of his work for some time, and removed his lamp every night half an hour after he went to his room. At the end of a year, however, from the date of his break-down, (by which time he had recovered to a surprising degree), seeing that it was useless to deny him any longer, his parents to some extent relaxed their prohibition and he fell upon his work again, but with tempered zeal at first. Then a calamity occurred; for in ten weeks his home was empty, his father and his mother descending, almost abreast, into the same grave. He buried them in succession with many tears, and returned to the now silent little house melancholy and unsettled in mind. He was the only child of his parents; they were strange reserved people, with no capacity for making friends; and there were no relatives of theirs living that ever I heard of. I was in Canada on business at the time, and was kept away for six weeks. I am afraid I never properly understood him; I fear nobody really did. Our friendship had been somewhat strained for a while past—I think it must have been because I sometimes failed to see things as he saw them—but I was not prepared for the communication that was put into my hands on my return to Edinburgh. It bore his signature, and was dated two weeks back, my housekeeper having been instructed not to forward it, but to let it await my home-coming. In it he told me that he had sold the household effects of his late home, and, with the modest sum thus realised, intended to repair to London, and fight his way to fame in the city where so many literary men had come to light in the past. Further, he said —and this was the unkindest cut—that, knowing well enough I should not fall in with his plans, and desiring to take all the responsibility of his conduct upon his own shoulders, he would not send me his address until his name was known in the world. From the tone of his letter he evidently did not think that this determination on his part would keep us asunder very loug, and he spoke with enthusiasm of the early day when I should receive the first printed work of his pen. Anyhow, he concluded, come fortune or failure, he would be free; never again should a detested office stool support him. I did not attempt to follow him up for some months; and when I did set inquiries afloat later they came to nothing. It was not until five years afterwards that I heard news of him. The rest of my story comes partly from the lips of those who at different periods housed him as lodger, but chiefly from the many pages of diaries in which, with increasing elaborateness as he neared the end, he recorded the experiences through which he passed and the emotions which beset him as he journeyed through those lonely, ineffectual years. The self-consciousness which he developed in his solitude in the crowded wilderness of London is full of an eloquent pathos for me. He tells how he spent his first few months in the metropolis; how, seizing with avidity upon the marvellous wealth of varied life which it offered for observation, his feet never wearied of treading its highways and low places, and his eyes were never tired of gazing upon the human faces which for ever in the streets crowded about him. Somehow no other town, north or south, is like London in its peculiar fascination for the student of humanity. He says: "I think I have learnt to read the secret writing on men's faces and to gather the tale that is told by the lined mouth, the hungry, the eager, or the saddened eye, and the marked brow. I have become an artist in humanity! I can read, too, the signs of disease; the dusky pallor of complexion; the eye hung with a pouch (there are so many of these amongst the restless city men), the eye painted dark underneath; the yellow tint, the purple tint, the small red fever spot on the cheek. How many faces that pass tell disease, and how many death! And I know the character behind the prominent and the receding chin, and the full cheek, and the one with high cheek bones, and in fair hair and black hair. Also in the walk of a man and in the cut and shape of his hands as he sits in the 'buses. Humanity is becoming an open book to me. Many strangers I pity who pass me, and many I despise, and some I love. There are a few faces burnt deep into my memory that I shall never forget. A woman went by me yesterday in the street—I caught her eyes full - her face I shall never forget." There is much like this in his diary. Had I the skill, I could paint a history of him from this material which would be wondered at for nine full days. Whenever he saw a crowd he joined it, and read the faces, and afterwards recorded what he saw there in his note-books, "An acci- dent," he says in one place, "is a gold mine to me. It opens up the possibilities of the human face as lightning opens up the night."  ## p. 101 (#519) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 101 A tall, maudlin woman in University-street, one of his landladies, said to me: "He give me the creeps, sometimes, he did, the way he used to look at you, as if he could see right through you, and all the time making believe he wasn't noticing you." During his first year in London he seems to have written chiefly short stories and essays. One of the former apparently found its way into the pages of some obscure weekly journal. I have not been able to trace it, but there is a note in one of his diaries joyfully recording the event, and also the fact that it was not paid for. One day also he sent a production of his to a leading novelist for criticism, for I find amongst his letters a communication from , in which that competent writer gives him some good advice as well as some warm praise. The letter says :— "You have only to persevere in order to acquire a really fine style, a distinctive style of your own. There are turns of thought and touches which show the true possibility of style. But you seem not to have had sufficient association with the world; jour characters have not enough red blood in their veins, they are too imaginative. You should draw more upon real life for your creations." In the early part of '87, shortly after the receipt of this letter, he began his novel, the work which drew this modicum of praise from the critic's mouth. Remembering his advice, he conceived the idea of putting himself into his work, so that, as he himself expresses it, " there should be at least a pound of real human flesh amongst my characters." "For," he continues, "what my literary friend says is, I fear, but too true. My field, which I thought so rich, is after all a barren one. A man's face I may know, I may be able to read the speech that is in his eyes, or tell the malady that is in his body, but I do not know his soul. I have never seen a mother actually bereft of her child, nor have I yet seen amongst those I know two loving hearts torn asunder. I may fancy I can read the history of such things in the faces of strangers; but I cannot be sure. I have never had another soul beside my own fully bared to my vision. If there would but come a violent passion of love in my own breast! So my characters have not much flesh and bone; they do not seem to palpitate with real emotion as if they had lived and loved, and wept, and beat their hearts out against the world. However, there is myself. I have lived, and if I have not yet loved, I have wept, and I have already been roughly handled by the world. I had. not thought of that before. I will put myself into my work." To this end therefore there sprang into existence at this period some further note books, and he also began to greatly elaborate the diaries which he already used. There is a book labelled "My Emotions," another "My Appearance," a third " Thoughts," and in these he daily dissected himself and served himself up for his novel. I have had tears in my eyes in reading some of these notes. Slowly and with infinite pains the work was created. About the period when he would be in the middle of it there occurs a sentence in the book of "Thoughts," over which I have bent my brows many times. It is in the centre of a clean page; there is no other writing on the page. It is :— "Love paints the world with roses for a man—and for a month!" Why he wrote this sentence and left it alone ou the sheet I cannot gather, for nowhere in the whole number of his books are the details filled in. Only, there is a gap of three months in the diary of '88 caused by the removal of many leaves; and, also, it was about this time that his heart went more completely than ever into his book and he began to sit over it with such incessant energy. The sentence is pregnant and impressive enough; it holds the suggestion of a bitter story within its narrow compass, and the active imagination may fill it in. But one would like to have known in detail how his singular heart was captured and occupied and then left desolate; what the circumstances were and who was the person that stirred that " violent passion of love in his own breast" (if it were such) for which he had so ardently longed. How he lived about this period has been some- thing of a mystery to me, for he was apparently producing nothing that paid. On this matter he is silent in his diaries. But there are certain indications which would had one almost to suppose that he wrote short stories for a woman who paid him for them and published them under her own name. His novel became his very daily bread. "I have sat over it," he wrote just before it was finished, "for six half years, sometimes with burning eyes and flying pen—beautiful sensation! sometimes almost weeping. I have continued over it often, till a dull pain coming out of the side of my head has warned me that I have gone too far, and shall pay for it with a sleepless night." He had been living in a way that was certain to kill him. He had a constitutional weakness which made his mode of life to him like a stone  ## p. 102 (#520) ############################################ THE AUTHOtt. round the neck of a man in the water. In one place he says: "It was good of my father to give me his powerful nervous brain for heritage, but I could have dispensed with my mother's weak heart. That dusky pallor is always on my face now; people have begun to notice it in the streets; Mary can run up the stairs easily. I am older than she, and I am a man, but I had to stop four times this morning coming up the stairs, and T get these feelings of deadly faintness more often. I must drink more brandy." And yet, apparently, he never had a serious thought of giving up. The tenacity of his ambition was terrible, and his heart, although weak at the valves, was the heart of a hero. His pen still went from side to side of the MS., and at the other end of it his weakening brain continued to evolve the novel. At length the following entry appears: "I am now a prisoner in my own room as secure as ever Crusoe was on his famous island; I have not been out of the house for three weeks, and see no present likelihood of going. That terrible flight of stairs has mastered me at last. Regent's Park is now a thing of the past. I finished my novel yesterday, and this morning pushed it away from me in disgust. All is vanity beneath the sun! I will get Mary to buy me some flowers—I almost forget the smell of them." On Sept. 20, 1894 he was up in a garret within ear-shot of the traffic of Marylebone-road. It was a tall house in reduced circumstances and now let out to many lodgers. There was a church within throwing distance from the back, and when the wind was in the right direction and the windows were open, one might detect some fra- grance in the air from Regent's Park. But the author's window had not been opened for many days. There was a servant girl at this place between whom and the author there appears to have existed a bond of genuine friendship, and from her I gathered much of the information which has enabled me to fill in the details of these last pages. A little brown-eyed, sympathetic girl, quite out of place in the sordid London lodging- house. The first entry in his diary of this date is unfinished, and the writing is that of one in pain: "It is early morning. I can just hear the market carts rumbling by in the distance. I am half dead. No sleep now for nearly a week, and my head racked with neuralgia" There is also the last entry in the book labelled "My Appearance," which was no doubt made on this day, although he did a quite unusual thing for him in omitting to date the page: "Dark and hollow under the eyes; Hps colourless, and cheeks more dusky white than ever." Mary came up at nine with his breakfast, and found him in his armchair, his novel open on his lap, but his head resting on his hand, and his eyes fixed vacantly upon the fire-place. As Mary was lighting the fire he asked' her a question. "Mary, did you ever hear of anyone who had forgotten how to pray?" Mary said, "No, Sir." "No!" he said in a low voice, and remained quiet. There are no more entries in his books. At one his dinner came up, and went away again untasted. He talked with Mary as long as she could stay, told her the neuralgia had now gone, and that he had had a sort of a doze but did not feel refreshed, on the contrary he felt more exhausted; and asked her about her home in Suffolk. He seemed to cling to her presence like a child. And when the sound of her over-large shoes on the stairs had died away in the base- ment he felt as if all the world had left him alone to die. He told her this when she brought up his tea. That long afternoon must have crawled away by hours that seemed endless. Wrapped in his long overcoat (which he always wore about the room), and with his hands lying listlessly on the chair arms, he waited and waited. Outside, there was a white, dead sky weeping a dismal mist, the smoke, under the influence of the heavy air, curling low as it left the chimney pots opposite and wreathing outside his window; and there was the faint sound of traffic from the streets; and there were the chimes at intervals from the clock of the neighbouring church. What thoughts came to him in that lonely vigil waiting for the Messenger, one can only in faith and hope surmise. One wonders if he had even then quite penetrated to the vanity of human things; if he beheld anything beyond the dust and ashes; if God came first and, in the last hour, before the Messenger arrived, taught him how to pray. Once, unable for the moment to bear it any longer, he sent his hand out towards the bell-rope —the tongue of the bell in the basement lifted and swung within an ace of striking. But it did not: and he waited on alone.' At six, the mockery of tea, and conversation with Mary. At eleven, Marv, looking sleepily in at the doorway, saw the author lying- on his bed  ## p. 103 (#521) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. 103 in his clothes. She thought him asleep, and carried her candle into her bedroom opposite, but left his door ajar. Twelve; and, later, the clocks with an un- happy want of unanimity struck one. A minute afterwards there was a sound in his room as of a match being scratched along its bos unsteadily; then the same sound again; thea the noise of something like a book striking the floor. Whether it reached his ears or not I cannot say, but next minute there came the creaking of a door, and Mary, in her nightdress, was crouch- ing in his doorway peering into the room with large frightened eyes. What she saw and heard, down to the minutest detail, appears to have been cut into her mind with terrible distinctness. The author was muttering, " It's come at last," meaning, doubtless, the end. He was in his arm- chair, his face showing deathly white against its black leather ; there was a glowing match between his fingers and a candle sputtering on the table immediately before him. There was dead stillness for a moment when the candle burnt with a clear flame and the shadows in the room receded. The servant was about to make a movement to go to him, but she held back; for his hands, still with the match between the fingers, were coming together in the attitude of prayer. But suddenly his head and arms fell forward—a cab rattled by in the street below—and Mary, with a smothered scream, fainted in the doorway. When she opened her eyes and presently recovered, the candle was out, but pale moonlight was in the room and around the figure in the chair. Coming in stealthily, she gazed at the head that was hanging motionless on the breast and at the right hand, which would not hold a pen again, falling straight and limp by his side. Then, shivering, and with her hands over her eyes, she went to call her mistress. When his novel came out one of the critics said: "There are unquestionable signs of something more than talent in this work— there is promise of real genius. Who is the author?" The Vestry of Marylebone, at any time, pro- vided expenses are defrayed, can produce a hand- ful, of bones from one of their pauper coffins, the remains of this dead autltor. BOOS ADVERTISE IN 1900. THE following appears in the Month of New York. It will perhaps furnish a few instructive suggestions to some of our own enterprising publishers:— "A young gentleman, who has had a good deal to do with the adver- tising of books in the conventional, legitimate way, has amused himself by making up the following sample of an advertisement such as we may expect to see in the year ltwo. There is humour In the Idea, and it has been carried out in the happiest spirit" BOOK SLAUGHTER. BELLA BLAIR'S GREAT NOVEL. Her brightest and belt. "HER HUSBAND'S WIFE." With the collaboration of EIGHT (8) FAMOUS AUTHORS. AT EVERY NOTION COUNTER. THRILLING . . . PATHETIC . . U PLIFTING . . Clutches the Heart Strings. SEVEN (7) HEROINES. Four blondes, three brunettes. SIX (0) HEROES. Count them for yourself. One a gambler, one a nobleman; the others, ministers, burglars, divorce's, and college t GREAT TRIPLE PLOT. Enacted simultaneously In London, Duluth, and Smolensk. Characters all from life. (Key with every copy.) Tiro Six Two Tveelre Nine Three One CHIEF Railroad Collisions Marriage* Abductions Court Scenes Scandal* Death Beds (all fatal) Subvay ex}>losion INCIDENTS. Two .Sir Two Txelre Nine Three One ONLY A FEW COPIES LEFT. Tfi ANIV fs\IP ordering before the 16th Inst, we s Kf f\L^ I V/l 1 L. present (for cash orders only) ELEGANT RED AND BLUE MANIOUBE SET. will an HOW TO ORDER. 1st. Press the Are alarm button three times, and simply wit. 2nd. At any Notion Counter. 3rd. Hand your order to any policeman. 4th. Send for one of our female Parisian canvassers. Send for pamphlet of Press Notices: Gladstone, Stedman, and Howells hare all praised it warmly. N.B.—Costumes in this novel described by "Gyp"; subtleties by Henry James; love scenes by K1U Wheeler W. . . . x; railroal accidents by Jolcai; abductions by Edgar Saltua; court scenes by Anna Katharine Green; scandals by the editor of the J ;marriage services by a corps of carefully selected and highly trained bishops; drunks and disorderlies by Stephen Crane. SCRIP & COMPANY, Publishers, Hew York.  ## p. 104 (#522) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. FREEDOM OF CRITICISM. AN action for libel was brought a few weeks ago by Miss Lottie Collins, a music-hall artiste, against Society, a journal which had criticised one of the songs of her repertoire. For describing the song as vulgar, the editor had to pay ,£25. Writing in To-Day, Mr. S. L. Bensusan tells us that unintelligent "puff" has been the form of notice which music-hall per- formances have received in the Press until lately, when there has been an attempt to substitute the critique for the " puff." This authority would like to see men representing responsible journals taking up a fair and well-defined position with regard to the variety stage; in nearly every respect, he says, the modern music-hall calls for reform. But that is a question apart. The point the journalist and the critic may be supposed to put is this: If the criticism of a song is penalised to-day, what guarantee is there that a British jury may not fall foul of the criticism of a book to-morrow? Another aspect. The Newspaper Society has issued a return of the number of libel actions, mostly against newspapers, which have been tried in recent years. In 1878 there were forty-six; in 1896 there were eighty-two. The total damages noted in the High Court returns for last year was .£18,238. The amount of the costs is not recorded, nor the amount paid to settle the thirty or forty cases settled out of court; but probably the total penalty is not less than £50,000 a year. The Daily Chronicle, in re- cording these figures, is confident that a large part of the money is a fine which the newspapers have to pay for doing their duty. How easy and cheap a notice of an action for libel is, the words of NortJiern Finance and Trade, a Manchester organ, explain :— The initiatory coat of issuing the writ need not be more than a few shillings, and the man who takes it oat may not even intend to take it into court, the object being to frighten the individual against whom the document is issued, to pay something in damages and costs rather than go through a long, costly, and harassing action at law. No matter how trivial the charge of libel may bo; nor how certain it may be that the plaintiff will withdraw from the action; the unfortunate defendant has to take all Bteps to defend himself as if the action would be fought out; and the first call upon him is generally .£150 on the part of his own solicitor, " to be going on with." Of course, in nine cases out of ten, the plaintiff is no better than a blackmailer and a man of straw, and an action for libel lands an editor in a big loss, although he may win all along the line. A recent utterance of Lord Chief Justice Russell is very valuable as an aid to—at any rate—the critic of financial schemes in the dis- charge of his duty. In the case of Wicks v. The Financial Times, the Lord Chief Justice con- cluded his charge to the jury in these terms: Gentlemen, I repeat, the main question is, Is this an honest article f If you arrive at the conclusion that it is an honest article, I would not advise you to be astute to see whether there may not be here or there a little more exaggeration than your own judgment would go with. I would not advise you to be scrupulous to consider and scrutinise whether the writer has crossed all his t's and dotted all his i's. As was once said in a case of libel, I would not advise you to condemn the defendant merely because the patches and the feathers of his rhetoric have not been composed as you in your better good taste perhaps might have 00m- posed it. If you believe the thing is honest, I would not look for inaccuracies, unless they are inaccuracies which you think of the greatest importance as indicating unfair- ness or as constituting libels and imputations. If, on the contrary, you think it is dishonest, and that there is any foundation, any real foundation, I mean, for the suggestion that it iB not an honestly conceived article, then, of course, you ought to give your verdict for the plaintiff. But if you think it was honest, if you think, taking the whole thing into consideration, either that there is no libel, or that, although there are observations in it which in your judg- ment might be so considered, yet they are covered by fair comment, you ought to give your verdiot for the defen- dants. BOOK TALE. EEADERS who are interested in India may be glad to know that Messrs. W. Thacker, of Creed-lane, have in the press a book of social gossip, dating from a period a little earlier than the "Forty-one Years of Lord Roberts, which has had such a remarkable success. The present work is called "A Servant of John Company," and contains the recollections of Mr. H. G-. Keene, CLE., with illustrations (from the author's sketches) drawn by the well-known artist of the Illustrated London News, Mr. Wm. Simpson, R.I. Mr. Tighe Hopkins has written the Christmas annual for Mr. Arrowsmith's Bristol Library this year, and has called it "Pepita of the Pagoda." Mr. Rudyard Kipling's works are to be issued in a uniform edition of twelve volumes, by Messrs. Macmillan. The first volume " Plain Tales from the Hills," containing a new portrait of the author, etched by Mr. William Strang, will probably appear next month, the others following at monthly intervals. The issue of the edition is limited to 1050 copies. Each volume will cost half a guinea net. Mr. Cutcliffe Hine's new book, "The Paradise Coal-Boat," to be published by Mr. James Bowden, is the outeome of many thousand miles of travel, and deals specially with the life of the steamer sailor.  ## p. 105 (#523) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. Mr. E. D. Chetwode has a new story to be pub- lished by Messrs. Pearson. It will be called "John of Strathbourne," and it is laid in the stirring times of Francis the First. It has been announced that a Dutch publisher has already brought out a Dutch translation of Miss Olive Schreiner's "Trooper Peter Halkett of Mashonaland," and that the owners of the English copyright are never likely to get a penny therefrom. The Rev. S. Baring-Gould is engaged on a Welsh story. An edition of "The Shepheard's Calender," with twelve pictures and other devices, by Mr. Walter Crane, is in preparation by Messrs. Harper Brothers. Mr. Bichard Ashe King is writing a new Life of Goldsmith. "John Oliver Hobbes's" new novel, "The School for Saints," is announced among the early autumn publications of Mr. Unwin. The Eev. H. R. Haweis has written a volume on "Old Violins" for Mr. George Redway's series of books for collectors. A selection of the late R. L. Stevenson's poems has been set to music by Katharine M. Ram- say, and will be published as "Song Flowers," by Messrs. Gardner, Darton, and Co. Mr. S. R. Crockett has written an introduction for the volume, and the illustrated headings and tail- pieces will be by Mr. Gordon Browne. A book by Miss Susan Horner on Greek Vases, containing a history of their manufacture, their uses, and their gradual development, illustrated, will be published by Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein. Mr. Claude Phillips is at work on a catalogue of the Wallace Collection of pictures, of which he has been appointed keeper. He has also in view a more elaborate work on the subject. Mr. George Griffith has written an historical romance called "The Knights of the White Rose," telling of the adventures in the service of the Grand Monarch of a company of exiled sons of English, Scotch, and Irish noble families. It will be published by Messrs. F. V. White and Co. Mr. F. C. Burkitt will edit the fragment of Aquila which he recently discovered in the Cambridge University Library. The volume will contain photographs, and probably an excursus or appendix by Dr. Taylor, master of St. John's College. The story for girls written by the late Christina Rosetti nearly fifty years ago, which was an- nounced in these columns some months ago, is now announced by Mr. James Bowden for early publication. It is entitled "Maude," and has not hitherto been published. A short sketch of the authoress, by Dante G. Rossetti, and a preface, giving the history of the story, by W. M. Rossetti, will be included. Mr. Brimley Johnson is editing a selection of the prose writings of the late W. B. Rands, better known under the pseudonym of "Matthew Browne." The volume will be published by Mr. James Bowden. Mr. A. E. T. Watson, editor of the Badminton Magazine, is bringing out a volume of his stories through Messrs. Longman. Mrs. Walford will be represented this autumn by a novel entitled " Iva Kildare," which Messrs. Longman hope to issue next month. Miss Nina F. Layard has placed a volume entitled " Songs in Many Moods" with Messrs. Longman for publication. A new illustrated edition of Thackeray's works will begin to appear shortly, with biographical and anecdotal introductions by Mrs. Richmond Ritchie. Each novel will be complete in one volume, and they will appear at intervals of one month. A hitherto unpublished portrait of the novelist will be given. The publishers, of course, are Messrs. Smith, Elder, and Co. George Eliot's "Scenes of Clerical Life" will shortly be published in a sixpenny edition, by Messrs. Blackwood. Mr. E. Livingston Prescott's new romance of military life, called "The Rip's Redemption," will be published in a few days by Messrs. Nisbet. "To Be Had in Remembrance" is the title of a new anthology of poems concerning the future life, which will be edited by Mr. A. E. Chance and published by Mr. Stock. Mr. Blackmore's new romance, "Dariel," will be issued shortly by Messrs. Blackwood. "Loraa Doone," by the way, is about to be published by Messrs. Sampson Low in a sixpenny form. Mr. Robert Leighton and Mrs. Marie Connor Leighton, who have written a number of serials, are about to publish certain of them in volume form through Mr. Grant Richards. The first will be '* Convict 99." Miss Jean Middlemass is about to run a serial called "A Life's Surrender" in the syndicate of newspapers connected with the National Press Agency. Mr. Graham Wallas has written "The Life of Francis Place," which Messrs. Longman will publish.  ## p. 106 (#524) ############################################ io6 THE AUTHOR. The late William Morris's last wort, "The Sundering Flood," is nearly ready at the Kelms- cott Press. There will be 300 copies at the sub- scription price of two guineas, and ten on vellum at ten guineas. Miss H. C. Foxcroft is the author of "TheLife and Letters of Sir George Savile, Baronet, First Marquis of Halifax," which Messrs. Longman have in the press. The volume edited by Mr. Frederick Wedmore and his daughter, and entitled "Poems of the Love and Pride of England," will be published shortly by Messrs. Ward, Lock, and Co. Among living writers who will be represented in it are Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Watts- Dunton, the Poet Laureate, Sir Lewis Morris, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Kobert Bridges, and Mr. Conan Doyle. Mr. Walter Redmond, M.P., has contributed articles to an Irish newspaper on "A Shooting Trip in the Australian Bush," the result of his visit there. These will be published in book form, and will constitute Mr. Redmond's debut as an author. The Marquis of Granby is writing "The Trout," and Mr. J. E. Harting "The Rabbit," for Messrs. Longman and Co.'s "Fur, Feather, and Fin" series of volumes. The fourth and last volume of the "Life of Edward Bouverie Pusey, D.D.," by Dr. Liddon, edited and prepared for publication by the Rev. J. 0. Johnston, the Rev. Dr. Wilson, and the Rev. Canon Newbolt, is in the press by Messrs. Longman. The second volume of Dr. Gardiner's "History of the Commonwealth" is in the press (Long- man). Mr. J. K. Laughton is preparing "The Life and Letters of Henry Reeve, C.B.," late editor of the Edinburgh Review, which will be published by Messrs. Longman. This firm will also pub- lish in the course of the autumn a memoir of the late Sir Henry Rawlinson, Bart., <fce. It is written chiefly by the Rev. Canon Rawlinson, but the present baronet will contribute one chapter, and Lord Roberts another. Mr. W. W. Yates has written " The Father of the Brontes." He has made a close study of the family history. A portrait of Mr. Bronte as he was in 1809 will be given. "Wellington: His Comrades and his Contem- poraries," is the title of a work on the great soldier by Major Griffiths, which Mr. George Allen will publish. Mr. Bernard Quaritch has in hand the publica- tion of a work entitled "A Florentine Picture- Chronicle: Being a Series of Ninety-nine Draw- ings representing Scenes and Personages of Sacred and Profane History by Maso Finiguerra, Reproduced in Facsimile from the Originals in the British Museum by the Imperial Press, Berlin, with a Critical and Descriptive Text by Sidney Colvin, M.A., Keeper of the Prints and Drawings in the British Museum." The British Museum acquired the drawings in 1889 from Mr. Ruskin, who had bought them eighteen years previously. Mr. Colvin at length discovered evidence to show that they are the work of the famous Florentine goldsmith, niello-worker, and engraver, Maso Finiguerra (1426-1464). Mr. Colvin hopes to set forth in quite a new light the artistic personality of this master. The edition of the work will consist of 300 copies, the price to subscribers before publication being ^9 9s., and afterwards ,£12 12*. LITERATURE IN THE PERIODICALS. Book Titles. Daily Newt for Ang. 7. Daily Chronicle for Ang. 13. Booksellers' Discounts. Interview with Mr. T. Bar* leigh: Daily Chronicle for Aug. 14. Interview with Mr. Frederick Maomillan: Daily News for Ang. 4. Opinions of Booksellers; Daily News for Aug. 11 and 13. Interview with Mr. M. H. Hodder: Daily News for Ang. 16. The True Story of Eugene Aram. H. B. Irving. Nineteenth Century for Angnst. The Novels of Mr. George Gissing. H. G. Wells. Contemporary Revieic for Angnst. George Du Maurier. Henry James. Barper't for September. The Sentiment of Chivalry: Burke and Scott. T. £. Kebbel. Macmillan't Magazine for Angnst. Some Unpublished Letters of Dean Swift. Geo. Birkbeck Hill. Atlantic Monthly for Angnst and September. Ten Years of English Literature. Edmund Gosse. North American Review for Angnst. Stationers' Hall has printed a " Lexicographical Index " of all productions entered there since the passing of the Copyright Act of 1842. From that year up to 1884 all entries made at the Hall are alphabetically indexed, either under authors' names or under titles; while from 1884 forward, not only authors and titles, but sub-titles, subjects, and even publishers, are recorded in the same alphabetical arrangement. This is a substantial reform, but the drawback, as the Daily News writer remarks, lies in the fact that the Copyright Acts impose no obligation to register literary pro- ductions unless the owner of the copyright is about to take legal proceedings for infringement —which he very seldom has to do. "It would certainly be safe to say that of the quarter of a  ## p. 107 (#525) ############################################ THE AUTHOR. million or more of books and pamphlets published in Great Britain since 1842, not 25,000 have been heard of at Stationers' Hall." Therefore, "Mr. Payn's felicitations to his brother novelists and men of letters, must continue to be premature till the Legislature has created that long-desired institution, a compulsory register of all literary property." It is also suggested that the fee for registration should be reduced from 5*. to, say, is. Another proposal is that an index of all books as they reach the British Museum should be made there, and kept at the disposal of those who wish to consult it. Mr. T. Burleigh, of Oxfoi-d-street, who is the secretary of the Booksellers' Association, has given extracts from his own business ledger to prove the narrow profits that are being made in the trade. He quotes his dealings with eight first-class publishers for a certain period. All the books are copyright volumes. Here is the statement: JB1649 10s. 6<2. did not produce enough to pay working expenses. JE1391 7s. yd. produced 2j per cent, beyond working expenses. JE406 6s. yd. produced 51 per cent. .£14 28. od. „ 10 „ £$3 31. gd. „ ii „ £74 17s. gd. „ 7 £10 7s. sd. „ 5 „ JB131 118. od. ., 3 „ £16 is. 6d. just paid working expenses. The above represents handling thousands of books by the best authors, "Surely," says Mr. Burleigh, "those authors may well consider whether such a condition of the book trade can be satisfactory to anybody." Out of his profit he has to make good the loss on ,£1649 10s. 6d., and to keep stock. "I want to know," he adds, "where I come in for food and raiment?" Mr. Glaisher, bookseller, declares that the proposed change to a fixed discount of 2d. in the i*. would be bad for authors and publishers, and would make the whole trade suffer. It would mean, for one thing, a decrease in the sale of six-shilling novels, for although the public have said nothing yet about these becoming shorter and padded out with leaded type, they would not give an extra sixpence for them. What the country bookseller suffers from, in Mr. Glaisher's opinion, is lack of enterprise. "I find country drapers much more awake," he declares, "than the booksellers are. Offer a country draper a special book, and if the price is low he will take a large stock. Then he gets a fair profit." Mr. Henry Bumpus, speaking for him- self—as distinct from his firm—doubts the wisdom of the proposed change. He is opposed to coercion, and would have any alteration of discount come about voluntarily. Another large trader is doubtful whether the opposition of the few London houses who are against the scheme could be overcome. This gentleman does not think that to the man who pays 4*. 6d. for a novel another sixpence is of vital importance; but, on the other hand, Mr. Stoneham, one of the leaders of the old "3d. in the is." party, is quite convinced that the public would not submit to this, and once the prices went up, he, for one, would not be able to sell nearly so many six- shilling novels. Mr. Kichard Poole, a country bookseller, disputes the charge that it is "lack of enterprise" prevents his class from buying largely. The reason, on the contrary, he says, is that the demand would not justify it:— Where then can his profit be if he has to pay 48. 2d. and commission, or 48. 6d. net, for his 6s. book, plus expenses? The result of these discounts is that booksellers in small country towns (and in the aggregate they are many) do not now, as a rule, Btock these books, and this fact does not tend to increase sales. The country draper may be open to buy a special book " if the price be low," but I have never yet known this apply to new books of the day. As regards the suggestion that the public will not pay 5*., instead of 4s. 6d., for the 6*. novel, a decided contradiction comes from Sheffield. The District Booksellers' Association there became convinced of the virtue of the proposed reform, and on the 1st July they began the system of allowing 2d. in the shilling off the published prices of the general run of books. Since that time the Sheffield booksellers have sold 6s. novels at 5s., and their experience—expressed officially —is that the public do not object, but, on the contrary, they purchase the books and sympathise with the movement. Mr. M. H. Hodder, of the firm of Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton, publishers, does not believe that an alteration in the discount in the country will greatly help the booksellers there. Indeed, he believes it will take trade from them. The discount system in London he is positive cannot be altered, and he foresees only a greater patronage to the metropolitan dealer if a less discount is the rule in the country. Mr. Macmillan remarks that if the authors are not willing, then the whole scheme will be dropped. Mr. Henry James enjoyed the acquaintance of the late Mr. Du Maurier during nineteen years. One of the most notable things in his paper, which is largely persona', is the account of the effect of the "Trilby" boom upon Du Maurier, an event which coincided with his diminished relish for life. Mr. James has "small difficulty in seeing" these occurrences rather painfully related:— What I Bee certainly is that no such violence of publicity can leavo untroubled and unadulterated the sources of the  ## p. 108 (#526) ############################################ io8 THE AUTHOR. production in which it may have found Hb pretext. The whole phenomenon grew and grew until it became, at any rate for this particular victim, a fountain of gloom and a portent of woe; it darkened all his sky with a hugeness of vulgarity. It became a mere immensity of sound, the senseless hnm of a million of newspapers, and the irresponsible chatter of ten million of gossips. The pleasant sense of having done well was deprived of all sweetness, all privacy, all sanctity. . . . The demonstrations and revelations encircled him like a ronde infernale. The new Swift letters are those written by him to his friend Knightley Chetwode, of Wood- brooke, during the seventeen years (1714-1731) which followed his appointment to the deanery of St. Patrick's. THE BOOES OE THE MONTH. [August 24 to Sept. 23.—113 Books.] Allbutt, T. 0. (ed.). A System of Medicine. Vol. III. 25/- net. Ailing-ham, II., and Crawford. B. Captain Cuellar's AdTentures in Connacht and Ulster, A.D., 1588; Captain Cucllar'B Narrative of the Spanish Armada, Ac. 2/- Stock. Ames, P. W. (ed.). The Mirror of the Sinful Soul. A prose trans- lation from the French, made by the PrinccBS (afterwards Queen) Elizabeth. 10 ,'6. Ashor. Anderson, E. J. Some AspectB of Mimicry. Galway : M. Clayton. Anne, Mrs. C. A Women of Moods. 5/- Burns and Oaten. Anonymous ("A.B."). The Blasted Life. 1/- Roxbnrghe. 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Homburg and its Waters. Low.  ## p. 108 (#527) ############################################ AD VER TISEMENTS. How Ready, Crown 8to., Cloth Boards, Silver Lettering, Price 6s. A LADY OF WALES. "A Story of the Siege of Chester, 1645." BY THE ReY. YINCENT J. LEATHERDALE, M.A. London: HORACE Cox, Windsor House, Bream's-buildings, E.C. Now ready, domy 8vo., cloth boards, price 10s. 6d. IN NEW SOUTH AFRICA. Travels in the Transvaal and Rhodesia. With Hap and Twenty-six Illustrations, By II. LINCOLN TANGYE. CONTENTS. Introductory. PABT I Cuaptbr L—The Land of Oold and the Way there. „ IL—Across Desert and Veldt. ,, in.—Johannesburg the Qolden. „ IV.—A Transvaal Coach Journey. „ V.—Natal: the South African Garden. ,, VI.—Ostracised in Africa. Home with the Swallows. PART H.—BAMBLES IN BHODESIA. Chapter I.—Eendragt Haakt Magt. „ II.—Into the Country of Lobengula. „ IH.—The Trail of War. „ IV.—Ooldmintng, Ancient and Modern. „ V.—Sic Transit Gloria Mundl. „ VI To Northern Mashonaland. „ VU.—Primitive Art. The Misadventures of a Wagon. Index. London: Horace Cox, Windsor House, Bream's-buildlngs, 3.0. Crown 8vo., cloth boards, price 6s. HATHEESAGE: A Tale of North Derbyshire. BT CHARLES EDMUND HALL, Author of " An Ancient Ancestor," &o. London: HOBJLCI^Cox, Windsor House, Bream's-buildings, E.O. Books for Writers and Readers. AUTHORS and PUBLISHERS. A Manual of Suggestions for Beginners in Literature. Comprising a Description of Publishing Methods and Arrangements, Directions for the Preparation of MSS. for the PresB, Explanations of the Details of Book-Manufacturing, Instructions for Proof-Beading, Spocimens of Typography, the Text of the United States Copy- right Law, and Information concerning International Copyrights, together with General Hints for Authors. By G. H. 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Second Edition, Revised, with Additions, and with the Record of Legislation brought down to March, 189C. Crown 8vo., gilt top, 7s. 6d. "The question of copyright is becoming of greater importance day by day, and we desire, therefore, to draw attention to this excellent volume, full as It is of facts and arguments connected with the law of copyright. . . . Wo advise those who desire to equip themselves to take part in the discussions to which the copyright difficulty con- stantly gives rise to obtain this book, and to study the facts contained In it."—Law Journal. AUTHORS and THEIR PUBLIC in ANCIENT TIMES. A Sketch of Literary Conditions and of the Relations with the Public of Literary Producers, from the Earliest Times to the Fall of the Roman Empire. By GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, M.A. Third Edition, Revised. Crown 8vo., gilt top, 6s. 11A painstaking investigation of relations existing betwocn the public and literary producers from the earliest times to the invention of printing."—Review of Rerievi. ** Mr. Putnam has given us hero an entertaining and useful book." —Spectator. '*Mr. Putnam has ransacked every work of any authority which has appeared either in this country, in France, or in Germany; and this, combined with his own evidently extensive research and read- ing, baa resulted in a book of a very special value and importance."— Bookworm. ____ BOOKS and THEIR MAKERS DURING the MIDDLE AGES. A Study of the Conditions of the Produc- tion and Distribution of Literature from the Fall of the Roman Empire to the Close of the Seventeenth Century. Hy GEORGE HAVEN PUTNAM, M.A. 2 vols., 8vo., gilt tops, each 10s. Gd. "Mr. Putnam has treated a scholarly subject in a scholarly fashion. . . . Of Bpecial interest fs tho chapter In which the author deals with the gradual evolution of the conception of literary property and of the laws of copyright, a question on which he has made himself a recognised authority."—Spectator. "The book in a compilation from which much information and instruction may be derived."— Times. '"Books and Their Makers' is a treasury of information and anecdote which should be neglected by no one who is interested in the production and regulation of literature."— Academy. "Mr. Putnam has done what the majority of bibliographers have failed to do—he has produced a most readable epitome of the history of the period covered by his work, so far as it had bearing on the annals of typography. It is in this respect, therefore, that 'Books and Their Makers will be found of great value, and to attract readers who would bo repelled by a mere typographical skeleton."—Daily Chronicle. G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS, LONDON AND NEW YORK.  ## p. 108 (#528) ############################################ iv AD VER TISEMENTS. THE MERCANTILE TYPEWRITING OFFICE (Manageress-MISS MORG-AN.) 158, LEADENHALL STREET, LONDON, E.C. Authors' MSS. carefully copied from lOd. per 1000 words. Special Terms for Contract Work. All descriptions of Typewriting, Shorthand, and Translation work executed with accuracy and despatch. TO AUTHORS A.ND OTHERS. THE LITERARY, TECHNICAL, AND TYPEWRITING ASSOCIATION, 16, FURNIVAL STREET, HOLBORN, E.C, UNDERTAKE all kinds or RESEARCHES it the British Museum, Somercet Boose, Patent Office, Ac MSS. Revised and Prepared for Press; Proofs Bead. TYPEWRITING of all kinds carefully and promptly executed. Circulars, Ac. duplicated. SHORTHAND 'WRITERS Sent Out at Short Notice, with or without Type Machine. Only experienced persons employed. Terms moderate. Prospectus and Estimates Free. First-class references. Typewriting by Clergyman's Daughter and Assistants. MISS E. M. 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(ESTABLISHED 1883.) Authors' MSS. carefully copied from Is. per 1000 words. Duplicate copies third price. Skilled typists sent out by hour, day, or week. French MSS. accurately copied, or typewritten English translation! supplied. References kindly permitted to Sir Walter BeBant; also to Messrs. A. P. Watt and Son, Literary Agents, Hastings House, Norfolk-street, Strand, W.Q. THE AUTHOR'S HAIRLESS PAPER-PAD. (Thb Leadenhall Press Ltd.), GO, Leaden hall Street, London, E.C. Contains hairless paper, over which the pen slips with perfect freedom. Sixpence each: 5*. per dozen, ruled or plain. TYPIST, 44, Oakley Street Flats, Chelsea, S.W. Authors' MSS. carefully transcribed. References kindly PERMITTED TO MANY WILL-KNOWS AUTHORS. Fire - Proof Safe for MSS. Particulars on application. Telegraphic address: "Patzbn, London." OECRETAEYSHIP, Private or otherwise, WANTED by b LADY in January or earlier. Experienced. Reference to C. S. Loch, Esq., 15, Buckingham Street, Strand. Address " M.," care of The Warden, Women's University Settlement, Nelson Square, S.E. CROCKFORD'S CLERICAL DIRECTORY 1897. Being a Statistical Book of Reference for facts relating to the Clergy in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the ColonieB; with a fuller Index relating to Parishos and Benefices than any ever yet given to the public. London: Horace Oox, Windsor House, Bream's-buildlngs, E.C. Printed and Published by Horace Cox, Windsor House, Bream's-buildinga, London, E.C. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The Author, Vol. 08 Issue 04 (September 1897) Subject The topic of the resource <em>The Author</em>, Vol. 08 Issue 04 (September 1897) Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived <a href="https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015049239455" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015049239455</a> Type The nature or genre of the resource Publication Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1897-09-01-The-Author-8-4 publications The Author