Literature and Life | Page 6

all--who would print a
wholly inferior thing for the sake of an inferior class of readers, though
they may sometimes decline a good thing because for one reason or
another, they believe it would not be liked. Still, even this does not
often happen; they would rather chance the good thing they doubted of

than underrate their readers' judgment.
The young author who wins recognition in a first-class magazine has
achieved a double success, first, with the editor, and then with the best
reading public. Many factitious and fallacious literary reputations have
been made through books, but very few have been made through the
magazines, which are not only the best means of living, but of outliving,
with the author; they are both bread and fame to him. If I insist a little
upon the high office which this modern form of publication fulfils in
the literary world, it is because I am impatient of the antiquated and
ignorant prejudice which classes the magazines as ephemeral. They are
ephemeral in form, but in substance they are not ephemeral, and what is
best in them awaits its resurrection in the book, which, as the first form,
is so often a lasting death. An interesting proof of the value of the
magazine to literature is the fact that a good novel will often have wider
acceptance as a book from having been a magazine serial.
V.
Under the 'regime' of the great literary periodicals the prosperity of
literary men would be much greater than it actually is if the magazines
were altogether literary. But they are not, and this is one reason why
literature is still the hungriest of the professions. Two-thirds of the
magazines are made up of material which, however excellent, is
without literary quality. Very probably this is because even the highest
class of readers, who are the magazine readers, have small love of pure
literature, which seems to have been growing less and less in all classes.
I say seems, because there are really no means of ascertaining the fact,
and it may be that the editors are mistaken in making their periodicals
two-thirds popular science, politics, economics, and the timely topics
which I will call contemporanics. But, however that may be, their
efforts in this direction have narrowed the field of literary industry, and
darkened the hope of literary prosperity kindled by the unexampled
prosperity of their periodicals. They pay very well indeed for literature;
they pay from five or six dollars a thousand words for the work of the
unknown writer to a hundred and fifty dollars a thousand words for that
of the most famous, or the most popular, if there is a difference

between fame and popularity; but they do not, altogether, want enough
literature to justify the best business talent in devoting itself to
belles-lettres, to fiction, or poetry, or humorous sketches of travel, or
light essays; business talent can do far better in dry goods, groceries,
drugs, stocks, real estate, railroads, and the like. I do not think there is
any danger of a ruinous competition from it in the field which, though
narrow, seems so rich to us poor fellows, whose business talent is small,
at the best.
The most of the material contributed to the magazines is the subject of
agreement between the editor and the author; it is either suggested by
the author or is the fruit of some suggestion from the editor; in any case
the price is stipulated beforehand, and it is no longer the custom for a
well-known contributor to leave the payment to the justice or the
generosity of the publisher; that was never a fair thing to either, nor
ever a wise thing. Usually, the price is so much a thousand words, a
truly odious method of computing literary value, and one well
calculated to make the author feel keenly the hatefulness of selling his
art at all. It is as if a painter sold his picture at so much a square inch, or
a sculptor bargained away a group of statuary by the pound. But it is a
custom that you cannot always successfully quarrel with, and most
writers gladly consent to it, if only the price a thousand words is large
enough. The sale to the editor means the sale of the serial rights only,
but if the publisher of the magazine is also a publisher of books, the
republication of the material is supposed to be his right, unless there is
an understanding to the contrary; the terms for this are another affair.
Formerly something more could be got for the author by the
simultaneous appearance of his work in an English magazine; but now
the great American magazines, which pay far higher prices than any
others in the world, have a circulation