* * * * *

Still, I am not depressed about the general cause of serious literature.
Serious literature is kept alive by a few authors who, not owning
motor-cars nor entertaining parties to dinner at the Carlton, find it
possible and agreeable to maintain life and decency on the money paid down
by very small bands of truly bookish readers. And these readers are not
likely to deprive themselves completely of literature for ever in order to
possess a collection of royal photographs. The injury to serious
literature is slight and purely temporary.

* * * * *

[_31 Dec. '08_]

A melancholy Christmas, it seems! According to "a well-known member of the
trade," the business is once again--the second time this year--about to
crumble into ruins. This well-known member of the trade, who discreetly
refrains from signing his name, writes to the _Athenaeum_ in answer to Mr.
E.H. Cooper's letter about the disastrous influence of royal books on the
publishing season. According to him, Mr. Cooper is all wrong. The end of
profitable publishing is being brought about, not by their Majesties, but
once more by the authors and their agents. It appears that too many books
are published. Authors and their agents have evidently some miraculous
method of forcing publishers to publish books which they do not want to
publish. I am not a member of the trade, but I should have thought that
few things could be easier than not to publish a book. Presumably the
agent stands over the publisher with a contract in one hand and a revolver
in the other, and, after a glance at the revolver, the publisher signs
without glancing at the contract. Secondly, it appears, authors and their
agents habitually compel the publisher to pay too much, so that he
habitually publishes at a loss. (Novels, that is.) I should love to know
how the trick is done, but "a well-known member of the trade" does not go
into details. He merely states the broad fact. Thirdly, the sevenpenny
reprint of the popular novel is ruining the already ruined six-shilling
novel. It is comforting to perceive that this wickedness on the part of
the sevenpenny reprint cannot indefinitely continue. For when there are no
six-shilling novels to reprint, obviously there can be no sevenpenny
reprints of them. There is justice in England yet; but a well-known member
of the trade has not noticed that the sevenpenny novel, in killing its own
fa