of the whole people, not the few. He will continue to be always the bookseller of the few, because high-priced books must still be issued, and cheapness can only be introduced where popularity is possible. For the author there is the comfortable reflection that, even if his book is reduced from 6s. to 6d., and his royalty from 18. 3d. to a penny, 15,000 copies at the latter price will bring him in as much as a thousand at the former; and that 200,000 at the latter means 13,300 at the former —and unless he is in the front rank of popularity, he will not probably exceed this figure. Now, with an improved system of distribution, the cheap literature will make a bid for millions, not for thousands. It will also be possible to bring out a book at 6s. and after two years or so to produce a cheap sixpenny edition. What have the publishers proposed in the teeth of these changes? With all the signs before them of a demand for cheap literature and a supply of it, they propose to make the public pay more instead of less, and, on pretence of giving the booksellers relief, to put more into their own pockets. In the teeth of the competition going on they proposed to bind the unfortunate booksellers by an iron and degrading slavery. They were to have no books at all, or books only at a prohibitory price, unless they obeyed the orders of the publisher, who forbade them to sell their own property at any price they pleased. In the teeth of the increasing poverty of the trade, they propose to maintain the system of forcing all the risks upon the booksellers. With the result that every year fewer books get the chance of being offered to the public. We have now, in conjunction with the Book. sellers' Association, adopted an alternative scheme which involves neither coercion nor slavery, but leaves contract free. It was given in the last number of The Author at length. It means simply as follows: 1. Books at 6s, and under to remain as at present. 2. If a publisher wishes to bring out a book at net price, and to make any special pretend that all his arrangements are 13 as 12. These rules will, it is hoped, if they are accepted by the publishers or any of them, relieve the trade very materially. If they are not accepted, the Society must endeavour to devise some other way. Meantime the members are earnestly invited to consider the urgency of the case and the fact that the publishers are proposing to make things worse instead of better, and to suggest any expedient that may occur to them whereby the bookseller, and especially the country bookseller, may be assisted to make a livelihood by a trade which is indispensable to everybody connected with the production of literature. POPULAR TASTE IN BOOKS. WH HAT is "the popular taste"? What is it going to be if, as is whispered, "new and original" work is brought to market at a popular price-a shilling or even sixpence per volume ? This question is so much in the air just now, that I venture to take up a little space in The Author with reminiscences of a personal experience which may throw some light on the subject. In 1886 a library for working men and women was established which, from its constitution and severe a test of the management, became as reception which writers who would cater for "the proletariate" must expect as anything could well be. This library lived and flourished for eight years, and then died simply because a large ratesupported free library took its place. It was situated in Hoxton, and its members were all residents in the neighbourhood or came from still poorer parts of East London. It was controlled by a committee of working men, elected annually by its subscribers, and was unconnected with any political party, Church, or social "move. ment." Those who joined it, and paid their subscriptions to its treasurer, did so, firstly, because they wanted to read; secondly, because they found that, if they desired to read a particular book, that work, if not already in the library, could be procured for them at short notice. This is the point upon which I wish to lay most stress. 3. Books are to be sent "on sale or return." 4. The "odd copy" is to be abolished, and one price is to be charged. This clause is This clause is as much in the interest of the author as the bookseller, because the publisher will now be relieved of the temptation to to read. VOL. IX. Out of the eight hundred volumes which the library gradually acquired, all but a very small number were chosen by the members without suggestion or hint from anyone as to what they ought Of course the library had generous friends, to whose kindness, and faith in working men, its success was largely due. Through these gentlemen, as the number of the members increased, consignments of all works named by any member of the library came into its possession. Lists were handed to the librarian from time to time, were examined by the committee, and passed on to the donors. Now and then some book was mentioned that could only be of very slight interest, and this was expunged from the list; but, during the whole eight years of the library's existence, there were not a score of these. Thus, month by month and year by year, was collected a library of a class which its members, if they could have afforded it, would have had in their own homes. I hold a catalogue of these works. All of them have been read, and well read. Many had to be renewed a number of times, so eagerly were they sought for. I will write down these favoured volumes in the order of their popularity: "Adam Bede," " Westward Ho!" "The Golden Butterfly," "Lorna Doone," Green's "History of England,” “David Copperfield," "Ready Money Mortiboy," "Jane Eyre," "Wives and Daughters." In fiction, the favourite authors were: Dickens, Scott, Besant, Dumas, Miss Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Henry Wood, Bulwer Lytton, Ouida, Mrs. Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë, Edna Lyall. In history, Green and Macaulay naturally came first; but Stubbs's "Constitutional History was chosen by a cabinet-maker, and read by many others. Carlyle was represented by the "Cromwell Letters" and "The French Revolution." In science, interest centred round Darwin. "The Origin of Species" and "Descent of Man" were chosen early in the day, and much read. The political economists studied Mill and Jevons, and Spencer and Ruskin were frequently out. There were biographies by Ainger, Morley, Leslie Stephen, Disraeli, and Saintsbury. Travels by Livingstone, Ballantyne, Sir Samuel Baker, Miss Bird, and Stanley. Prescott's "Conquests of Mexico and Peru" were very popular. Motley's were very popular. Motley's "Dutch Republic," Lord Beaconsfield's " Letters," Progress and Poverty," all were there, with more "standard works" than I have space to name. And what of the members ? There was a rule that no one might belong whose income exceeded two pounds a week. Few of the people reached such luxury. The elder men, our committeemen and their friends, were mostly compositors, cabinet-makers, painters, packers, warehousemen, and porters. The younger ones, apprentices to cabinet work, upholstery, or pianomakers, printers' layers-on, and labourers of all kinds. There were a few shop assistants-but not many of these. The women were mostly workgirls, of the average Hoxton type, who, to the number of seventy, greeted the author of "The Children of Gibeon". -one concert night—with a shrill Melenda" cheer! Tie-makers, feathercurlers, box-makers, dressmakers, tailoressespale anæmic lasses, earning, on an average, 10s. to 128. per week. One of them, representative of many, told me when she first came that Miss Braddon was the only author she had ever heard of. I gave her Miss Braddon until she tired of that food-and then, as an experiment, presented "Adam Bede." The result was astonishing. She was back in less than a week, all smiles. "I say, let's 'ave another of his books. I ain't ever read as good a tale before!" In the end, she said that "The Mill on the Floss " was her favourite Another girl told me that, until she joined the Lib'ery," she always bought a penny novelette every week. She had never done so since. 66 It may be said that the library was, after all, a very small affair. Undoubtedly. But I hold that in view of its quiet natural growth; the absence of artificial stimulus; and, above all, the entire freedom of its members to fill its shelves with almost any kind of literature they chose― the record I have given has a very important bearing on the future of the distribution of literature in a cheap form. Depend upon it, the writers of the Penny Dreadful and the Shilling Shocker hold their own simply from the cheapness of their wares. Place good works within the reach of men and women who rarely have more than sixpence or a shilling to spare for a luxury, and the circulation of the works of those who write good English: who can depict real life: draw real characters: and who have thoughts and ideas worthy of expression-will utterly swamp and crowd out the noisome trash which flaunts in the little East-end book-shop windows to-day. Their circulation will rise from thousands to hundreds of thousands: from hundreds of thousands to millions. Brother authors-take courage! the "popular taste" is sound to the core. ARTHUR PATERSON. 1 Dr. Beattie Crozier (Philosophical Researches), £50. Rev. Canon Daniel Evans (Writings on Welsh Literature), £100. are 66 Rev. J. Cunningham Geikie, D.D., £50. II. LITERATURE BY CONNECTION. Miss Janet Mary Oliphant (niece of Mrs. Mrs. Palmer (widow of the late Professor Two daughters of the late Dr. Leonhard III. MUSIC. THE Science, or Art, and therefore no right to appear in this list. The widow of one Colonial Governor and the four daughters of another. NOTES AND NEWS. HE Academy, I rejoice to see, quotes Mr. Thring's opinions on the publishers' draft agreements. It expresses, further, its regret at two statements made by myself. The first is to the effect that the British Public does not care two straws about the publisher. Well, I am sorry to advance an opinion or to make any assertion which is not as plain as an axiom. At the same time it is most true and certain that the public cares not one brass farthing for any publisher: that is to say, it looks at the book and the author, and cares no more who is the publisher than it cares to find out who is the papermaker. The bookseller cares because he The other statement is concerned with the question of risk. I first, before making this statement, carefully separated encyclopædias, great dictionaries, and works of a colossal kind. This separation was cut off the passage quoted by the Academy, so that I was made to talk nonsense. I thought the Bogey of Risk was laid. Let us try again. In general literature namely, essays, history, biography, belles lettres, poetry, novels-there are hundreds of writers whose works carry no risk whatever, that is to say, they are certain to circulate enough to pay the cost of production with a margin of profit. That is the first fact. If a publisher takes an author who is not among this company he incurs risk-but he does this voluntarily. And very few publishers do. That is the second fact. Next, what is the risk, where any is incurred? The world, which fancies itself very clever, replies triumphantly, "Why, the cost of production, of course. Am I a fool?" Not a fool, but ignorant. The risk is the difference between the cost of production and the first subscription. Some houses send round a traveller to subscribe the book before it is printed. This gives them some idea of its chances. Thus, a book is subscribed-say-250 in town. That means a beginning, perhaps, with the country trade as well, of 500-never mind the figures, any other Taking our old friend, the 6s. book which has will do just as well to illustrate the method. cost, say, £80-we have, say, a first subscription of £87, which is more than the book costs to produce. If there is a subscription of 400 copies, the risk is the difference between £80, the cost, and £70, the subscription, or £10. That is an immense risk, is it not? The Harmsworth Magazine may be taken as an indication of the increased (the widely-increased) demand for literature of a kind. While our shilling and half-crown magazines are crawling along with a circulation for the most part of a few thousands, this threepenny rival, splendidly illustrated and quite as well written as many of the dearer ones, steps straight into a circulation reckoned by hundreds of thousands. This is a great fact which should lead people who are not publishers, and are only interested in the advance of culture, to reflect a little. Those gentlemen, especially, who, from the commanding pinnacle of the club smoking-room, look round upon man kind and report that what they read is "truck" or "slush," should look at the success of this magazine and others nearly as cheap. The next great fact which concerns us from another point of view is the cheapness of production. Make every allowance that can be made for improved machinery for working a lot of magazines and papers together: for cheapness of paper: for a great mass of advertisements: and yet the mystery remains how the paper can be produced at so small a cost. The third great fact is more important still. It is that cheap and good magazines will be followed by cheap and good literature. We talk about books at 6s., and 10s. 6d., and so forth. We are, it seems to me, on the verge of the greatest revolution that the history of Literature has ever seen. Ever since I began to investigate and to understand the machinery and the spread of literature, I have become more and more convinced that the present system of providing dear books in small numbers, though it must continue with certain books, will be a small and an insignificant thing compared with the literature offered to the world at prices which seem impossible. Already popular books are brought out at sixpence and sold by the hundred thousand. They are all old books of which the copyrights belong to publishers. Why should they not be new books? (see p. 62). They must be offered for sale by newsvendors, at the stores, as well as the booksellers: the difficulty is that of distribution and advertisement. This difficulty will be got over by the three new firms who have taken possession of the outside mass; when it is got over by them other publishers will follow. From the author's point of view it should be far better to appeal to the general public than to the limited public. It is objected that he would have to "write down to them. Not at all. The cheap books already offered to them, and eagerly taken up, at low prices, are not books "written down" to anybody. Let us see how a cheap book would affect the author. Take a popular author whose last book had a circulation of 12,000 copies for which he received a royalty of Is. 3d. a copy, or £750. The same book issued at 6d. with a royalty for himself of 1d. would give him £750 by a sale of 144,000. But we are going to the millions. If 600,000 copies were taken he would make £3125. Decidedly it would be to to the advantage of the author if only that question of distribution were settled. I mentioned last month the remarkable fact that the Committee of the House of Lords on Copyright had commenced their proceedings by calling before them a publisher: then a second publisher: then a third, and so on: and that there seemed no sign at all that this illustrious body had ever heard that there was such a thing as an author, or had any idea at all that copyright was created by the author and was actually his own property. In this ignorance they were allowed to remain by the publishers, who all gave evidence on the tacit assumption-which none of the noble lords questioned that copyright was their own in the nature of things: their own property by right. A day or two after the paragraph appeared I found a summons lying on my table calling upon me to attend and give evidence that day at half-past two. It was then three, so that I could not go. It is hardly, I think, polite or considerate to call upon a man to give evidence on a most complicated and important subject at a minute's notice. Moreover, I am not myself a lawyer: I have never felt called upon to study copyright law: I hate law and law books: and I am not therefore competent to give evidence. We have had two subcommittees on copyright, but I have not been a member of either. In fact, the branch of the Society's work which has occupied all the time that I could afford to give, is that of the administration of literary property, not that of copyright law. Mr. Thring has attended the Committee, representing our sub-committee, and, I hope, has enabled the Committee to understand that copyright really does concern authors: that they are capable of comprehending the question : and that the opinion of the lawyers and scholars forming our sub-committee is quite as well worth hearing as that of the publishers, who speak as if copyright was their right. A correspondent sends me a paragraph calling attention, with some show of indignation, to the fact that if anyone posts a book to the United States of America there is an import duty of one-fourth its value, and that the duty must be paid before the book is delivered. It seems a pity that the law is so, but since that is the law there is no use in being angry. Free trade in books does not exist in this country: for instance, it is illegal to expose Tauchnitz books for sale. Shall we begin by altering our own laws? We could then call upon the States to alter theirs. One of the things which the Society could and should do would be to bring about the reconsideration of the Resolutions which constituted the Civil Pension List. All that is wanted is the abolition of a single clause allowing the pensions to be bestowed upon persons outside the field of Literature, Science, and Art “who may be worthy of Her Majesty's bounty." The grant is not large, not more than £1200 a year, and is by no means sufficient to meet the cases deserving of relief which are brought before the First Lord of the Treasury. No one wants to prevent outsiders from getting the help they want, one only desires to bind the Government to keep this fund entirely for the persons for whom it was founded. At present there is nothing to prevent the list from being filled up with "persons worthy of Her Majesty's bounty." It is, for instance, a common practice to place widows and daughters of colonial governors on the list. In that of the current year (see p. 64) there are the four daughters of one colonial governor and the widow of another. Cannot the Colonies, between them, create a pension list for the widows and daughters of their governors? And is it quite impossible for the governor of a colony to save a little money after twenty years of work on a salary ranging from £2000 to £10,000? In another column appears one more letter on the great and crying grievance of keeping MSS. offered to editors. For my own part I have always desired to recognise to the utmost the difficulties of an editor's position: the necessary keeping back of articles and papers already accepted. But there are limits. In the case before us the editor kept articles offered him for two years, fourteen months, eight months, and three months! There can be no possible excuse for such treatment of a contributor. What remedy is there? One, and one only. Writers will do nothing for themselves: they are so eager to be accepted, especially at the outset, that they will submit to anything and take any price that is offered. If, then, a contributor intimates that the MS. must be accepted and paid for within a certain time, he will probably have it returned unless the writer's name and the subject make it an important offer. The only remedy, therefore, is that the editors who do these things shall be known. If the writer of the letter will send me the correspondence in the case I will publish his name and the name of the paper. Of course there is another remedy, but it seems hardly worth while to mention it. I mean that editors should obey the simple rules of courtesy and good breeding. I have always found them, as regards myself, both courteous and kindly. But the letters which we have published in The Author show that there are many editors, especially of the smaller fry of magazines, who are neither one nor the other. WALTER BESANT. VOL. IX. "I AFTER MANY DAYS. A TRUE INCIDENT. AM very sorry, Miss Carlisle; but I am afraid I cannot use that last story of yours. It is altogether too depressing. The public does not want sad stories. Life is sad enough as it is. No one likes to dwell on such incidents as you describe in-let me see, what do you call it ?- Dead Violets'? Why the very title is morbid! Dead violets delight no one; what we want is fair, fresh, sweetsmelling flowers." The speaker's looks accorded with his words. He was a man advanced in life, with hair tinged with grey and a forehead which showed more than a tendency to baldness; but he had as bright, open, and cheery a countenance as ever beamed from an editor's chair. He bore himself with the easy yet kindly dignity which denotes a prosperous career. "I am very sorry," the girl's lips trembled as she spoke, and it was all she could do to hold back the starting tears; "I will try to do better next time." She was young, but her face had a worn and weary look. There was the suggestion of a happier past in her somewhat shabby, though perfectly neat, mourning attire. She had the appearance of one to whom dead violets might mean more than freshly gathered roses. The editor was not unconscious of the pathos of her expression, nor the tremor of her voice; but he was above all things a man of business, and he knew that melancholy stories did not pay. "That's right," he said, "let it be something cheerful, ending with the music of marriage bells. That is what our readers like. I am really afraid I must send that MS. back to you." 66 Very well-if it must be so." She acquiesced without a murmur, bade him good morning, and went on her way. He was sorry for her; but he was far from guessing how deep a wound he had inflicted. Edith Carlisle went down the long flight of stairs from the editorial sanctum, passed into the Strand, and was lost in the stream of human life ever flowing along its pavements. Of all the units that composed that stream, not one perhaps carried a heavier heart than hers. It was of the irony of life that the editor should bid her write a story which "ended with the music of marriage bells" just when her own lone story had come to a disastrous termination. The sudden and unlooked-for death of her father had wrought a pitiful change in the circumstances of Edith Carlisle's life. It left her H |