Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]

THE BAR-LOCK' TYPE-WRITER

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

THE Subscription is One Guinea annually, payable on the Ist of January of each year. The sum of Ten Guineas for life membership entitles the subscriber to full membership of the Society.

Authors of published works alone are eligible for membership.

Those who desire to assist the Society but are not authors are admitted as Associates, on the same subscription, but have no voice in the government of the Society.

Cheques and Postal Orders should be crossed "The Imperial Bank, Limited, Westminster Branch."

Those who wish to be proposed as members may send their names at any time to the Secretary at the Society's Offices, when they will receive a form for the enumeration of their works. Subscriptions entered after the 1st of October will cover the next year.

The Secretary may be personally consulted between the hours of I p.m. and 5, except on Saturdays. It is preferable that an appointment should be made by letter.

The Author, the Organ of the Society, can be procured through all newsagents, or from the publisher, A. P. Watt, 2, Paternoster Square, E.C.

A copy will be sent free to any member of the Society for one twelvemonth, dating from May, 1889. It is hoped, however, that most members will subscribe to the paper. The yearly subscription is 6s. 6d., including postage, which may be sent to the Secretary, 4, Portugal Street, W.C.

With regard to the reading of MSS. for young writers, the fee for this service is one guinea. MSS. will be read and reported upon for others than members, but members cannot have their works read for nothing.

In all cases where an opinion is desired upon a manuscript, the author should send with it a table of contents. written scenario is also of very great assistance.

A type

It must be understood that such a reader's report, however favourable, does not assist the author towards publication.

WARNINGS.

READERS of the Author are earnestly desired to make the following warnings as widely known as possible. They are based on the experience of six years' work upon the dangers to which literary property is exposed :

:

(1) NEVER to sign any agreement of which the alleged cost of production forms an integral part, unless an opportunity of proving the correctness of the figures is given them.

(2) NEVER to enter into any correspondence with publishers, especially with advertising publishers, who are not recommended by experienced friends, or by this Society.

(3) NEVER, on any account whatever, to bind themselves down for future work to any one firm of publishers. (4) NEVER to accept any proposal of royalty without consultation with the Society, or, at least, ascertaining exactly what the agreement gives to the author and what to the publisher.

(5) NEVER to accept any offer of money for MSS., without previously taking advice of the Society.

(6) NEVER to accept any pecuniary risk or responsibility without advice.

(7) NEVER, when a MS. has been refused by respectable houses, to pay others, whatever promises they may put forward, for the production of the work. (8) NEVER to sign away American or foreign rights. Keep them. Refuse to sign an agreement containing a clause which reserves them for the publisher. If the publisher insists, take away the MS. and offer it

to another.

[blocks in formation]

VOL. I.

X

Τ'

NOTES AND NEWS.

HE International Copyright Act has not passed the United States Senate after all. So that we have had all our congratulations over American honesty for nothing. Also all our outcry over the deadly injury the Bill was going to inflict upon the British printer for nothing. Why did it fail to pass? My own ignorant belief is that the Senate made a discovery. They learned that the Bill would not inflict any injury on any Briton at all, but quite the reverse. They, therefore, in their well-established friendship to this country, resolved not to pass the Bill. An American friend tells me that their action was

probably due to bribery. Fancy our own feelings if Lord Monkswell's Bill should be defeated through the bribery of his brother Peers!

[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors][ocr errors][merged small][ocr errors]

More than one-third of those who have voted for the House were ladies; more than five-sixths of those who have voted for a Club were men. The ladies who voted for a Club did not raise a word against the admission of men, but many of the men, speaking for a club, urged strongly upon us the necessity of excluding the ladies.

The reasons for giving the preference to the House were in each case almost the same: that such a place would give an opportunity for quiet work not enjoyed at home. Many seemed to believe that a Club could be started successfully later on, using the organization and machinery already in employ for the management of the House. Those who have voted in favour of the Club have all been actuated by the idea that anything which promotes good fellowship and unity between authors must, if able to work at all, work for good. What next? The next thing is to form a Committee, to draw up the constitution of the club, and to leave the Committee to take all the steps necessary. This will be done as quickly as possible, and I hope that by next month we shall be able to announce that the Club is actually in a fair way to be started. One rule will be rigid. No one will be admitted who is not author of some book or a professional journalist.

[blocks in formation]

"EXECUTIVE MANSION, WASHINGTON,
"January 19th, 1891.

"The death of George Bancroft, which occurred in the City of Washington on Saturday, January 17, at 3.40 o'clock p.m., removes from among the living one of the most distinguished Americans. As an expression of the public loss and sorrow, the flags of all the executive departments at Washington, and of the public buildings in the cities through which the funeral party is to pass, will be placed at half-mast to-morrow, and until the body shall rest in the State that gave him to his country of this eminent statesman, scholar and historian

and to the world."

The Secretary of the Navy also ordered that the Navy Department be draped in mourning for thirty days, and that all business be suspended therein on the day of the funeral; and, in the Senate, Mr. Hoar moved that the adjournment be till 12 o'clock on Tuesday, in order to give Senators who desired to attend the funeral an opportunity to do so. He said that Mr. Bancroft's name had been honoured by the Senate in a way in which no other name had been, by special permission that he should be admitted to the floor of the Senate at all times. The motion was adopted.

Of course we do the thing just as well in this country, though people forget and grumble. Looking back to the Times of December 26th, 1863, for instance, I read

"The following order has been issued by command of the Queen :

"The death of William Makepeace Thackeray, which occurred on the 24th, removes from among the living one of the most distinguished Englishmen. His name will for ever be associated with the nineteenth century as that of its noblest novelist. This great man, cut off at the early age of 52, was about to be raised to the highest honours of the Peerage as Duke of Kensington Gardens. His daughters are authorized to receive the rank and courtesy title of a Duke's daughter. As an expression of the public loss and sorrow the flags of all the Executive Departments at London, and of the public buildings, will be placed at half-mast to-morrow until the funeral is over.'

"All the Departments will be draped in mourning for thirty days, and business will be suspended on the day of the funeral.' In both Houses a

resolution was unanimously adopted to adjourn over the day of the funeral."

It is pleasant to be able to prove, though people have such short memories, that this country is not behind America in the recognition of her great men. We may remind our readers also of the Court and general mourning ordered throughout the country on the lamented death of Carlyle, and of the honours which were heaped upon Robert Browning, alive and dead. And we must not forget the extraordinary care always taken by the First Lord of the Treasury, whether it be Mr. W. H. Smith or Mr. W. E. Gladstone, not to allow any outsider to have any share in the grant annually made for Literature, Science and Art. Here, indeed, we do claim superiority over our cousins, for they have no Civil List, while we grant £1,200 a year to those whose work advances humanity, and we never, never, never suffer one penny of this to be jobbed away on any consideration whatever.

Is verse in danger? The question was asked by Mr. Edmund Gosse in the Forum for January. This American magazine, which always contains some articles of suggestion or instruction, is published in this country by Mr. Edward Arnold, of Warwick Lane. The question is asked and answered, and it ought to cause other answers and yet others, because no question is more important in its bearings in the future of literature. "Sculptors, singers, painters must always exist; but need we have poets any longer since the world has discovered how to say all it wants to say in prose? Will anyone who has anything of importance to communicate be likely, in the future, to express it through the medium of metrical language?" The writer points to the reprinting and the reviving of the dead and gone poets as an illustration that poetry may have done its work. Pope succeeded so well because his predecessors were already forgotten; but we no longer allow the dead to lie in their graves. We drag them out and clothe them with new print, and paper, and bindings rich and rare. "How," asks the writer, "in this great throng of resuscitated souls is the modern poet to exist?" Well, I do not think that the resuscitated souls have much to do with the threatened decay in poetry. As a fact, we have not a single poet under forty. This is very serious, but the same thing might have been said before the advent of Wordsworth, while Mr. Gosse himself evidently feels that it is impossible for the world to be carried on without new poetry.

VOL. I.

He indicates the kinds of verse which may be expected. "Poetry, if it exists at all, will deal, and probably to a greater degree than ever before, with those more frail and ephemeral shades of emotion which prose scarcely ventures to describe

And

The most realistic novel, the closest psychological analysis in prose, does no more than skim the surface of the soul; verse has the privilege of descending into its depths. In the future, lyrical poetry will probably grow less musical and less conventional at the risk of being less popular. It will interpret that prose does not suggest.' further on he predicts that the verse of the future will be essentially democratic. It will, perhaps, present short and highly finished studies in narrative like those of Coppée. It may abandon the extreme refinement of its extreme mechanism. It will seek to give pleasure less by the manner than by the matter. "But," he concludes, "whatever the issue may be we may be confident that the art will retain that poignant charm over undeveloped minds, and that exquisite fascination which for so many successive generations have made poetry the wisest and the fairest prose of youth."

Poetry will not willingly be allowed to die in the States. This conclusion is drawn, perhaps hastily, from the encouragement offered to poets by the Charles E. Hires Co., Philadelphia. They offer a prize of $50 cash for the best poem on their Beer, their Root Beer. It is not stated that English poets are excluded from this interesting competition. We await the result, the immortal result, the Eulogy of Root Beer, with impatience.

There has been a little controversy in the Illustrated London News concerning the proposed Authors' Club. It consisted of two short papers, which may be read by the curious in that excellent journal. It has now been supplemented by an account of the New York Authors' Club, of which I venture to reprint a portion :

"When I first mounted the stairs, I heard the comforting rattle of plates and cutlery, and found the hungry authors rapidly disposing of a substantial meal. The operation was so thorough and convincing that when an athletic friend of mine, with a far-famed appetite, came bounding in an hour late, one glance sufficed to prove to him that Mother Hubbard's historic cupboard was not more completely bare than the American authors' board. During the evening I had an opportunity of observing some notable members of the club. I was most anxious to see the American humourist in undress, so to speak, to find out how much of

X 2

him was natural and how much professional, and whether the habit of producing everlasting fun had left in him any deep furrows of care. Some of the best-known humourists in America are rarely heard of on this side of the ocean. They write chiefly in the newspapers. They take care that the news of the day shall not distress you too sorely. The American citizen might learn from his morning sheet that some awful disaster had happened to the nation, but he would be soothed, if not consoled, by a piece of sprightly humour in the next column. It is this agreeable dispensation, I think, which keeps most Americans alive amid the rush and the turmoil and the extravagant nervous pressure of their existence. One of the most distinguished of these newspaper humourists is the gentleman who calls himself Bill Nye. I had often laughed to the point of suffocation over his writings, and I could not help picturing him as a small man with a large comical head and a perpetual twinkle in a particularly knowing eye, and a conversational manner perhaps a little too obtrusively merry for the repose which distinguishes the library of the Athenæum Club. I felt extremely apologetic when I found that Bill Nye was a tall man, perfectly bald, with a quiet pensive smile and a pleasant unaffected speech, which might have led the stranger to put him down as a genial professor who had written a good deal for encyclopædias.

"What struck me chiefly was that, with the exception of an excellent man who favoured me in a corner and at some length with his theory of international copyright, nobody talked about hobbies. There were no literary arguments. The prophetic sketch in these columns of the people who would bore one another in an Authors' Club has no counterpart in my remembrances of these American authors. They were not pedantic, prosy, or eager to carry the talk about shop over their particular little counters. I think there is, on the whole, an easier current of life in American clubs of all kinds than in our own. There is certainly a more genial intercourse and a greater disposition to entertain the stranger. I have in my mind now one of the best storytellers I ever met—an engineer, a painter, a writer, a traveller in many lands. If these lines should catch his vision, I hope he will take them as an assurance that I still cherish those anecdotes of Colonel Carter, of Cartersville, which he used to tell me with infinite humour, and which I see he has moulded into admirably artistic form in Harper's Magazine. I cannot imagine any association of authors animated by a better esprit de corps than I found in this New York club, or freer from those angles of the literary character which some of us seem to dread. Perhaps I shall com

mend the American authors all the more strongly to some English writers when I say that a very wealthy man was once blackballed at the Authors' Club in New York, because it was held to be no place for millionaires."

A correspondent sends the following suggestion. He may be wrong-if so, one would be glad to learn what the advertiser really did intend by his proposal to act as an intermediary where none is wanted::

"In the January number of the Author, you appear to be somewhat puzzled about the following advertisement :

'AUTHORS.-Introductions to publishers and editors, by journalist of standing; commission only on MS. sold; exceptional chance.-H. D. F., Office.'

"I know nothing of the source of the advertise ment, but to me it is, on the face of it, clearly a dodge of the bogus publisher to get hold of the names and addresses of amateur authors.

The

"A member of your Society who answered it, you say, received no reply. Had a score of your members answered it, they would not probably have received a single reply among them. object-or rather the immediate object-of the advertiser has been attained when he has secured the names and addresses of a large number of persons who have literary aspirations, and these persons at a later date-when they have forgotten all about the above advertisement-will, in all probability, be bombarded with prospectuses of an amateur magazine, or an amateur literary society, or polite invitations to send in their 'MSS.' of novels, tales, poems, and travels' to a bogus publisher, who speaks of dazzling things in the shape of fame and fortune to be won.

"However did they get hold of my address?' wonders the literary novice when he receives such a document, and, perchance, vaguely begins to think that he must be getting known in literary circles. I fancy I have made it clear how both his name and address are procured. Whatever else the bogus publisher is, he is not a fool, and he well knows the value (wholly spurious, of course) that the amateur author attaches to introductions to publishers and editors.'"

A question asked by Mr. James Baker at the meeting of January 15th, raises a difficult and interesting point. He asked how far literary "notes," which frequently embody matters of lasting value, are to be protected by the new Copy

« AnteriorContinuar »