Reade then novelized successfully "Christie Johnstone" from another of his unsuccessful plays. But he still remained faithful to his early love and would not regard himself as a novelist rather than dramatist until some years later.

It was by accident that he again turned to the novel. In 1855 a great sensation was holding England in the trial and conviction of the governor of Birmingham jail for cruelty to the prisoners in his custody. Reade was appalled by the revelations, made a study of prison conditions, and wrote "It Is Never Too Late to Mend."

It became popular, and the author kept steadily on at fiction of the same realistic type, having written several such books before his great work, "The Cloister and the Hearth," appeared in 1861. This book of course is of such extraordinary merit, often being classed as the finest piece of historical fiction in the English language, and second in any case only to "Henry Esmond," that it will make the author go down in literary history as a one-book man. - New York Sun.

-

in America to-day was developed. Doing without plot, he was reduced to the necessity of gaining his effects largely by truth in characterization. What a naive remark! As long as this bogy of technique exists how shall we develop a literature that is free, strong, interpretative, that has the courage to reflect life as it is? - Chicago RecordHerald.

Hint to Young Writers. - Do not repeat. Say whatever you have to say in the most forceful way you can devise and let that suffice. Do not say the same thing over and over again. Do not weary the reader by the recurrence of the same thought even though you vary the form. Constant reiteration of identical ideas, far from adding anything to their value, is liable to detract therefrom. Do not give the reader the impression that you are harping on one string. Authorities agree that excessive reaffirmation is a mark of a faulty style. Do not let yourself revert again and again to the same - Life. concept. Avoid repetition.

Novels Without Endings. In the English language there are at least six novels which have only a beginning. Like the grandfather's clock, "they stop short, never to go again," because the authors died before they could finish their works.

The most famous of these is "The Mystery of Edwin Drood," which some critics think would have been Dickens's masterpiece had he lived to finish it. But it still remains a mystery in spite of countless efforts to solve it.

Robert Louis Stevenson also left an unfinished novel upon which he was engaged when death ended his labors. The novel was entitled "St. Ives," but, happily, there was more to go upon than in the case of "Edwin Drood," and it is generally admitted that Sir Quilter Couch made one of the best attempts to finish another man's novel.

While everybody knows that Dickens left a novel unfinished, few know that his great rival. Thackeray, did the same.

The novelist had just started the Cornhill Magazine. of which the most prominent feature was a novel from the editor's pen,

entitled "Denis Duval," which he was writing month by month as the installments fell due. Suddenly he died and the serial was but half finished. Fortunately, however, the careful Thackeray had left full notes for the development of the story, which was finished by Frederick Greenwood.

Who has not read "Pride and Prejudice" and "Sense and Sensibility," the productions of a quiet little woman named Jane Austen? She died when she was in the midst of another masterpiece, entitled "The Watsons," which was found in her desk after her death.

What the world lost when Charlotte Brontë died, who can say? For one thing, it missed a nameless novel which the gifted author of "Jane Eyre" had started. But so little had she done on it that none of her successors in fiction has had the temerity to attempt even to finish it, and it is likely to remain an interesting fragment.

"My records show that during the present year I have sent you nineteen manuscripts at an expense of more than a dollar for stamps alone, yet they have all come back with persistent regularity. I would very much like to know just what kind of material you prefer, for I am poor, and if I keep on paying out money for stamps and never sell any of my articles I shall starve to death and die like a rat in a hole, and I know you do not want me to do that. Several years ago I succeeded in selling you an occasional article, and surely I have more ability now than I had then. I have tried very hard to do some good work for you this year, and yet it has not profited me a single penny. If you will tell me exactly what you want, I know I can do you some acceptable work. Certainly God does n't want me to starve.

There must be a living for me, the same as there is for you."

Also last week we received this letter:

"I know of nothing in all the world so calculated to develop the sublime quality of patience as becoming an author. Here I have been sending you manuscript after manuscript, which you have turned down with implacable regularity. Have you, indeed, no heart that I may touch? Some of the very things you have refused have been accepted by some of your contemporaries — great papers, too."

Last week also brought us several offerings from a writer who for many years has sent us regularly, every week and sometimes almost every day, several poems or stories, and not one of them has proved acceptable. This writer must have spent at least twenty dollars in stamps in sending these many manuscripts and including stamps for their return, and we have spent much more than twenty dollars' worth of our time in examining them. And all to no profit.

That item of an editor's time is never considered by these unlucky writers. They think they are ill treated because the editor does not accept from them what he does not need or want, and pay them for it into the bargain. They give him no word of thanks for taking the time, out of his busy day, to examine manuscripts that he is quite sure, before he reads them, he will not find available.

Suppose you were a commercial traveler, trying to sell goods to a retailer. You would count it a privilege to get access to the dealer or his buyer. You would not feel insulted if he said to you: "The goods you offer are not in our line," or "We are fully supplied, at present, with the kind of goods you offer." You would not think of coming back, day after day and week after week; and if you did, you would be turned out of doors. Yet the editor's doors are always cordially open to you, his time is at your disposal for a sufficient examination of your wares, and if he is obliged to return them you call him hard-hearted, and ask if he wants to let you starve !

Writing is a business, not unlike any other business. It is the writer's business to

bring to the editor what he cannot afford to send back. It is not the editor's business to train the writer, to give him bright subjects and teach him a bright style. The editor could n't do this, if he would. If an editor has brains enough to run a paper, he presumably has brains enough to know what he wants to put into that paper, and to take it when it comes to him; also to send back what he does not want to put into the paper, or what he has enough of. He is n't going to be browbeaten by any amount of talk about what his contemporaries have accepted, nor does he dare to buy manuscripts out of pity, or friendship, or for any reason except that they fit into the needs of his paper.

As for this particular paper, it has enough manuscripts accepted and paid for, in most departments, to fill it for two years without buying another line. The authors of these manuscripts have the right to see them in print before they die. We could get along finely if we did not read an offered manuscript for twenty-four months.

And yet we, like all other editors, are continually on the lookout for what is better than anything we have-brighter, wiser, more pointed, more informing, closer in touch with the times. There is always room for a short story of exceptional brilliancy and helpfulness, for a poem of real beauty and strength, for a brief essay of freshness and vivacity, for a descriptive article containing original observations and striking facts on a worthwhile subject. In the hope of finding these we are glad every week to wade through scores of manuscripts that are no better than we have on hand by the dozen, and usually nowhere near so good. Any writer that can furnish them is sure of a welcome; and one who finds out, by thorough trial, that he cannot furnish them, would better turn his energies into some more profitable channel.

- Amos R. Wells, in the Christian Endeavor World.

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS

[Readers who send to the publishers of the periodicals indexed for copies of the periodicals containing the articles mentioned in the following

reference list will confer a favor if they will mention THE WRITER.]

BOOK-PUBLISHING AND

ITS PRESENT TENDENCIES. George P. Brett. Atlantic for April. REALISM AND REALITY IN FICTION. William Lyon Phelps. Century for April.

ON THE Two KINDS OF REPORTERS. Simeon Strunsky. Open Letters, Century for April.

ARNOLD BENNETT'S BOOK ON THE UNITED STATES. W. D. Howells. Editor's Easy Chair, in Harper's Magazine for April.

ROMANCE. Editor's Study, Harper's Magazine for April.

LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. Scribner's for April.

THACKERAY AND FIELDING. Frederick S. Dickson. North American Review for April.

ON THE PRIVILEGE OF REALISTS. Helen Sard Hughes. North American Review for April. GOETHE AND THE CHEMISTS. Professor Roy Temple House. Popular Science Monthly for April. SHAKSPERE AS AN ECONOMIST. Professor Henry W. Farnam. Yale Review for April.

DANTE AS THE INSPIRER OF ITALIAN PATRIOTISM. William Roscoe Thayer. Yale Review for April. SHAKSPERE HIMSELF. Brander Matthews. Bookman for April.

JOHN BURROUGHS. With frontispiece portrait. Charles S. Olcott. Home Progress for April. LOUISA ALCOTT'S GREAT FRIEND AND NEIGHBOR (R. W. Emerson). Ariadne Gilbert. St. Nicholas for April.

ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE. With portraits. A. St. John Adcock. Strand for April.

JOAQUIN MILLER. With portrait. American Review of Reviews for April.

LITERATURE A FINE ART. R. A. Scott-James. English Review for April.

LAFCADIO HEARN: A FRENCH ESTIMATE. Michael Monahan. Forum for March.

THE MODEL OF THE LEATHER STOCKING TALES. James Routh. Modern Language Notes for March. MISCELLANEOUS NOTES ON POE. Killis Campbell. Modern Language Notes for March.

THE SHORT STORY" WRITER. Maud Doubell. Author (London) for March.

SHAKSPERE DOCUMENTS. Dr. Paul Carus. Open Court for March.

THE LEFT-HANDED BACON. Nathan Haskell Dole. Open Court for March.

GEORGE MEREDITH: FREETHINKER.

English Review for March.

G. W. Foote.

J. M. SYNGE. Lady Gregory. English Review for March.

THE DAILY NEWSPAPER. Louis Wiley. National Printer-Journalist for March.

WHEN I WAS A REPORTER. (By a civil engineer.) National Printer-Journalist for March.

THE CREATOR OF "SOMEWHERE ELSE" (Avery Hopgood). With portrait. Bennett Chapple. National Magazine for March.

TOLSTOY. Francis Gribble. Eastern and Western Review for February.

AMERICAN CARICATURE. Bellman for March 1. LADY GREGORY. With portrait. Bellman for March 8.

TENNYSON'S SUCCESSOR (Alfred Noyes). Nathan Haskell Doie. Bellman for March 15.

ALFRED NOYES. With portrait. Bellman for March 15.

THE AUTHOR OF ALICE ("Lewis Carroll "). With portrait. Randolph Edgar. Bellman for March 22. THE POVERTY OF POETS. Richard Burton. Bellman for March 29.

JOAQUIN MILLER. Outlook for March 1. THE WORK OF A WAR CORRESPONDENT. for March 29.

NEWS AND NOTES.

Outlook

Walter H. Page, editor of the World's Work, has accepted the ambassadorship to the Court of St. James, London.

"Mary Antin" is the wife of A. W. Graban, a Columbia University professor.

The Houghton Mifflin Co. has published John Muir's autobiography, "My Boyhood and Youth," which covers the naturalist's childhood in Scotland and his early years and struggles for education in Western America.

The fourth and fifth volumes of John Bigelow's reminiscences are coming out this spring.

A third volume of Horace Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden" is coming from the press of Mitchell Kennerly.

Mitchell Kennerly announces a character study of Joseph Pulitzer by Alleyne Ireland.

Professor Max Eastman of Columbia Unisersity deals with Enjoyment of Poetry" in a book just issued by the Scribners.

Smith & Elder are to publish a new life of Jane Austen, based on the memoir by J. E. Austen-Leigh, the letters published by Lord Brabourne, and other family documents, some of them never before published. The book is written by two members of Jane Austen's family, W. Austen-Leigh and R. Austen-Leigh.

"Henrik Ibsen: Poet, Mystic, and Moralist," by Henry Rose, is announced by Fifield of London.

Mr. Escott's book "Anthony Trollope: His Work, Associates, and Originals," will be awaited with interest.

The joint house of Routledge & Sons and Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. is to publish "A Tennyson Concordance" by Arthur E. Baker, covering Tennyson's poetical and dramatic works, and containing approximately 150,000 references or quota

tions.

66

Harry Snell, the Labor Socialist candidate for Huddersfield, has been selected to prepare the authorized life story of W. T. Stead. Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers is the title of a comprehensive survey made by Elizabeth Christine Cook and issued in the Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature.

Winthrop Ames of Boston, formerly director of the New Theatre in New York, and now manager of the Little Theatre, New York, has announced a prize of $10,000 for the best play by an American author submitted before August 15. No limitations as to the type of play are imposed, except that it must be of a length to make a full evening's entertainment, and must not be a translation, adaptation, or musical comedy.

The Ladies' Home Journal offers $1,250 in five prizes for the best articles offered before July I on "Why I Wanted My Wife to Be My Wife." No manuscript should exceed 3.000 words, and no manuscripts will be returned.

Two prizes of $100 each are offered by the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, one to be awarded for the best argument against woman suffrage, not more than 500 words in length, submitted by a city girl or woman, and the other for the best argument submitted by a country girl or woman. The arguments should be sent to the "Essay Committee" of the national association, at 35 West Thirty-ninth street, New York city.

The London Bookman in its February number announces a twenty-one-guinea prize poem competition, and promises to print in a special supplement a large selection of the pieces sent in by competitors.

Manuscripts offered in competition for the $10,000 prize to be awarded at the convention of the National Federation of Music Clubs to be held in Los Angeles in 1915, for the best opera by an American composer, should be sent before June 1, 1914, to Mrs. Jason Walker, Memphis, Tennessee, who will transmit them anonymously to the judges.

The new editor of The Smart Set, Willard Huntington Wright, declares that a great number of manuscripts submitted to magazines are rejected because of the timid and puritanical policies of those magazines, and that he is after the best stories which are being written to-day, and is willing to publish them, no matter what their themes. "We want every efficient author in America to know," he says, "that if he has a story which he feels he must write, no matter what the theme may be, it will find an outlet, provided that story is a sincere and commendable piece of work; and manuscripts will be read and passed upon promptly, payment being made weekly for all accepted material."

The Southern Woman's Magazine (Nashville) is a new monthly, published by a stock company, of which Robert L. Burch, editor of the Merchant and Manufacturer, and for years identified with publishing, is the head.

The publishers of Modern Priscilla have bought the Home Needlework Magazine from the Florence Publishing Company, Florence, Mass. Home Needlework will be continued as an individual publication.

The monthly magazine Every Where, founded in 1894 by Will Carleton, who was editor of the magazine until his death last December, has made an assignment. The liabilities will not exceed $3,000, and the nominal assets are about the same, mostly in copyrights.

Uncle Remus's Magazine has gone into the hands of a receiver.

Mary Roberts Rinehart says that her novels, short stories, and plays have brought her more than $200,000 in royalties in the last seven years.

The Metropolitan advertises that it paid Richard Harding Davis $1,500 for his short story"The Miracle of Las Palmas," published complete in the April number.

The Committee on Research Institute is collecting information about bibliographical material and indexes kept in manuscript by libraries and individuals. Any who have such material in their possession or know of the whereabouts of any are requested to communicate with the chairman of the committee, Aksel G. S. Josephson, care of the John Crerar Library, Chicago.

In the March Bookman (New York) Algernon Tassin has the first of a series of articles dealing with the problem of how to write and make a living.

The Book News Monthly for March is an A. S. M. Hutchinson number. It includes an "appreciation" by Norma Bright Carson of Mrs. Belloc Lowndes, a brother of Hilaire Belloc.

William W. Ellsworth has been elected president of the Century Company, to succeed the late Frank H. Scott. Ira H. Brainerd has been elected vice-president, and. Douglas Z. Doty, liberary adviser to the company, secretary.

His

The estate of Frank H. Scott, late president of the Century Company, is valued at $36.015, of which $11,263 is life insurance. His library was appraised at $175. holdings in the company, with which he had been connected for forty-two years, consisted of twenty-nine shares of a value of $14,500.

Joaquin Miller left no will. His real estate in the Sierras is valued at $75,000.

Jane Marsh Parker died at Los Angeles March 13, aged seventy-six.

William Hale White ("Mark Rutherford") died in England March 15, aged eighty-four.

Charles Wells Moulton died in Buffalo, N. Y., March 17, aged fifty-three.

Rev. Dr. Joseph Newton Hallock died at Flatbush, N. Y., March 24, aged seventy

nine.