The Man of Letters as a Man of Business | Page 6

fully recognized
authors who live in this way, but the much larger number of clever
people who are as yet known chiefly to the editors, and who may never
make themselves a public, but who do well a kind of acceptable work.
These are the sort who do not get reprinted from the periodicals; but the
better recognized authors do get reprinted, and then their serial work in
its completed form appeals to the readers who say they do not read
serials. The multitude of these is not great, and if an author rested his
hopes upon their favor he would be a much more embittered man than
he now generally is. But he understands perfectly well that his reward
is in the serial and not in the book; the return from that he may count as
so much money found in the road--a few hundreds, a very few
thousands, at the most.
V.
I doubt, indeed, whether the earnings of literary men are absolutely as
great as they were earlier in the century, in any of the English-speaking
countries; relatively they are nothing like as great. Scott had forty
thousand dollars for "Woodstock," which was not a very large novel,
and was by no means one of his best; and forty thousand dollars had at
least the purchasing powers of sixty thousand then. Moore had three
thousand guineas for "Lalla Rookh," but what publisher would be rash
enough to pay twenty-five thousand dollars for the masterpiece of a
minor poet now? The book, except in very rare instances, makes
nothing like the return to the author that the magazine makes, and there
are but two or three authors who find their account in that form of
publication. Those who do, those who sell the most widely in book
form, are often not at all desired by editors; with difficulty they get a
serial accepted by any principal magazine. On the other hand, there are

authors whose books, compared with those of the popular favorites, do
not sell, and yet they are eagerly sought for by editors; they are paid the
highest prices, and nothing that they offer is refused. These are literary
artists; and it ought to be plain from what I am saying that in
belles-lettres, at least, most of the best literature now first sees the light
in the magazines, and most of the second best appears first in book
form. The old-fashioned people who flatter themselves upon their
distinction in not reading magazine fiction, or magazine poetry, make a
great mistake, and simply class themselves with the public whose taste
is so crude that they cannot enjoy the best. Of course this is true mainly,
if not merely, of belles-lettres; history, science, politics, metaphysics, in
spite of the many excellent articles and papers in these sorts upon what
used to be called various emergent occasions, are still to be found at
their best in books. The most monumental example of literature, at
once light and good, which has first reached the public in book form is
in the different publications of Mark Twain; but Mr. Clemens has of
late turned to the magazines too, and now takes their mint mark before
he passes into general circulation. All this may change again, but at
present the magazines--we have no longer any reviews--form the most
direct approach to that part of our reading public which likes the
highest things in literary art. Their readers, if we may judge from the
quality of the literature they get, are more refined than the book readers
in our community; and their taste has no doubt been cultivated by that
of the disciplined and experienced editors. So far as I have known these
they are men of aesthetic conscience, and of generous sympathy. They
have their preferences in the different kinds, and they have their theory
of what kind will be most acceptable to their readers; but they exercise
their selective function with the wish to give them the best things they
can. I do not know one of them--and it has been my good fortune to
know them nearly 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.
New writers often suppose themselves rejected because they are
unknown; but the unknown man of force and quality is of all others the

man whom the editor welcomes to his page. He knows that there is
always a danger that the reigning favorite may fail to please; that at any
rate, in the order of