The fifth printing of this Directory-which is constantly being revised and enlarged-began in THE WRITER for January, 1928. The information for it, showing the manuscript requirements of the various publications listed, is gathered directly from the editors of the periodicals. An asterisk preceding the name of a periodical indicates that the information has had the editor's "OK." Items not so marked are as accurate as they can be made, but editorial "O.K." on proof submitted was not received before printing.

Before submitting manuscripts to any publication it is advisable to secure a sample copy.

(Continued from September WRITER)

*BOZART (B-M), Box 67, Station E, Atlanta, Ga. $2.00; 40c. Ernest Hartsock, editor.

A bi-monthly poetry magazine, using only verse of literary merit, but without limitation as to form or subject matter. Shorter poems preferred; limit in length, 100 lines. No payment except in prizes, which are announced from time to time in the magazine.

*BREEDER'S GAZETTE (M), 817 Exchange Ave., Union Stock Yards, Chicago, Ill. 3 yrs., $1.00; 10c. Samuel R. Guard, editor.

All material supplied by staff or by regular correspondents.

*BREEZY STORIES (M), C. H. Young Publishing Co., Inc., 709 Sixth Ave., New York. $2.00; 20c. Cashel Pomeroy, editor.

Prefers the "sex" story, told in the third person, preferably with an American setting - terse, close-knit, dramatic material, rather than studies of character, temperament, neuroses, etc. Uses short stories, novelettes, a little poetry, humorous verse, and an occasional playlet. Sets length limit for short stories at 7,000 words, and for novelettes at 20,000 words, and pays at the rate of one cent a word on acceptance.

*BRIDLE AND GOLFER (M), 324 Penobscot Building, Detroit, Mich. $3.00; 30c. Warren D. Devine, associate editor.

Devoted to golf, polo, horses, dogs, society, fashions, motor cars, music, theatre, books, art, humor, and finance. Uses short stories, feature articles, short skits, and poetry.

BRIEF STORIES (M), 584 Drexel Bldg., Philadelphia, Penn.

Discontinued.

*BRITISH AMERICAN (W), 542 South Dearborn St., Chicago, Ill. $2.00; 5c. James C. McNally, editor.

Uses general articles of British-American interest, poetry, humorous verse, and jokes, but no fiction. Articles should be crisp and informative, advocating closer relations between English-speaking nations. Buys few photo

graphs, and does not pay for manuscripts at present.

*BROOKLYN LIFE (W), 66 Court St., Brooklyn, N. Y. $6.00; 15c. G. Herbert Henshaw, editor.

Does not buy unsolicited manuscripts. Buys photographs of Brooklyn and Long Island objects of interest. Pays monthly. BUDDY-BOOK (M), 93 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, Mass. $1.50; 15c. Dorothy Bushnell, editor.

A publication for small children, using short stories and poems, setting length limit at 1,000 words, and paying on publication.

*BUILDING AGE AND NATIONAL BUILDER (M), 243 West 39th St., New York. $2.00; 35c. Ernest McCullough, editor.

Uses inspirational articles on how a builder achieved success, etc., setting length limit at 2,500 words; buys technical matter relating to building construction, and photographs of anything in the building line, mechanics at work, and similar subjects. Prints no fiction, and pays one week after publication.

*BUILDING MATERIAL MERCHANT (M), 139 North Clark St., Chicago, Ill. G. E. Henry, editor.

A magazine for building-material dealers, in the market for merchandising articles of interest to such dealers. Uses short stories relating directly to the field of the dealer, showing how definite problems are solved, etc. Sets length limit at 1,200 words, buys department matter concerning advertising methods, sales methods, warehouses, equipment, etc., and pays three fourths of a cent to a cent and a half a word on publication.

*BULLETIN OF BIBLIOGRAPHY AND DRAMATIC INDEX (3 times a year), 83 Francis St., Boston, Mass. $3.00; $1.00. Frederick W. Faxon, editor.

Uses such original bibliographical and other material as seems of value to libraries. Bibliographies or articles suitable for publication are desired. Does not pay for manuscripts. BULLETIN OF PHARMACY (M), Box 484, Detroit, Mich.

Combined with Western Druggist, 536 So. Clark St., Chicago, Ill., to form Drug Bulletin, with issue for June, 1928.

*BURTEN'S FOLLIES (M), 1841 Broadway, New York.

Discontinued.

BUSINESS, Burroughs Adding Machine Co., Detroit, Mich.

Discontinued.

AN AUTHORS'

Volume 40

T

HIS term is generally applied to the works which transport us from everyday reality to regions of myth or of fancy, to the romantic past, or imaginary countries which have never existed. The realistic school has until so recently been the only school to which the critics gave serious attention that fanciful literature, in general, has been under a cloud. Even this phrase, "literature of escape," carries with it a faintly disgraceful echo, as if the escape were not quite honorable and the literature, therefore, were rather less than worthy of notice.

Number 10

which look toward other horizons. If we would clearly see how such a point of view may mislead an individual author, we have but to compare the earlier novels of Mr. Sinclair Lewis with "Elmer Gantry." "Babbitt" was chiefly praised for its accurate portrayal of conditions and people. What the critics should have noticed was the imaginative heightening which brought reality into focus, composed it, as it were. Consciously or unconsciously, Mr. Lewis was thus encouraged to lean more and more on mere photography, and "Elmer Gantry," which is as plausible as the facts in a newspaper, is yet so unillumined by the imagination that it seems false, distorted, even impossible. Not an incident in it but might easily be true. The people, however, are drawn entirely from the surface. The understanding of humanity, that projection of the author's self into others' selves by means of the imagination, is wholly lacking. Had the critics remarked earlier (as they are now remarking too late) that Mr. Lewis's talent for realism was established and that he had best beware of superficiality, his

Of course, it all depends on what the author is fleeing. If he is attempting a flight from the essential truths of human nature, peopling his tales with impossible beings, then, as members of the human race, we may complain that we are not interested. But many modern critics go beyond this justifiable reproach. They insist so often that a novel, a play, or a poem reflect the actual conditions of this age and this country, praising those of photographic quality, and condemning as without significance the books

career might have taken a different and a better-turn.

Observation gives us the surface of things; imagination penetrates them. Very often, in the history of the world, an artist finds himself displeased with the surface of things, and, aware that the underlying meaning must be the same in all ages and countries, he chooses a different surface from the one he beholds around him. It was once contended that great tragedy must be written around great figures; that kings and queens were the most appropriate personages for that form of art. Such limitation is unnecessary, but we easily see the purpose of it. The kings and queens are subject to all the human emotions and at the same time present a sufficiently exalted exterior to heighten our interest and sharpen our feelings for their doom. The contrast between their splendid trappings and their unhappy destiny brings into relief all the emotional values of the tragedy. Writers are seldom courtiers, and they must, therefore, rely on their imagination for the portrayal of royalty. The human being beneath the cloth of gold they have observed every moment of their lives.

The "escape," then, is generally into an unusual setting. It may also be into some setting which, through all the mutations of history, remains unchanged.

Sophocles long ago

Heard it by the Aegean

wrote Matthew Arnold of the sounds of ocean. And Keats, writing of the nightingale's song, says of it

No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown; Perhaps the self-same song that found a path Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,

She stood in tears amid the alien corn. . . .

to contrast the changes of a single life with the immutable background against which man moves and has his being? The flight into nature is for him the most natural of all paths, yet the average reviewers of today call on the poet to attempt a feat wholly uncongenial to his character: the song of skyscrapers, jazz bands, dynamos, and politics. If he fails to conform and from the modern city flies to the timeless country, he is promptly accused of a surrender, of a flight from the material that confronts him. The enduring phenomena are frowned upon as the outworn machinery of poetry. Can you imagine a hill which is out of date, a sea out of fashion? Yet so they are, if the reviewers are to be believed. Of course, we need not believe them.

The novelist and dramatist have been brought to task even more rigorously for any deviation from photography. I use the past tense, because of late there has been a return of imaginative and even fantastic prose. Possibly we shall see a reversal of rôles for a while, and as the poets stampede into realism the tellers of tales will satisfy our need for places remote from the streets whereon we pace away our days.

Decidedly there is such a need, and it is emphatic in an age as mechanical and materialistic as ours. A woman- an intelligent woman, I may add- -exclaimed as she finished a recent novel which skillfully mirrored dreary lives in sordid surroundings: "Why should I pay two dollars to read this book when I have spent my lifetime and most of my money avoiding exactly the things it describes?" Any smart journalist could laugh away such an opinion with a single epigram, but for all that it is not lacking in common

sense.

Lastly, we often discover that the writers who are intent on reflecting the exact conditions around them become so absorbed in this task that they have neither energy nor inspiration left for an interpretation of these conditions. Truly, although they are realists in the common sense of the term, they are

The seas, the mountains, the forest, the winds, these things have not changed in all the history of man. What more natural territory, then, for the poet, whose instinct is always

Such a Daphne would concede nothing even to a publisher.

"Dallas!" she cut in. "That is contrary to all your principles!"

"Just a minute, just a minute, my dear!" her husband protested. One knew why these two found life varied and interesting after thirty-odd years of marriage. "I'm not advising anybody to sell his soul or even to say anything he does not think."

I confess I breathed a bit easier.

"A writer who makes a business of writing," he explained, "must make four kinds of concessions-to his theme, to himself, to his public, and to his publishers. As to theme, if you want to be heard by your time, you must keep abreast of your time. You must meet each new age with its new topics as it comes along. John Burroughs, for instance, could not publish today an essay of the sort he used to write. He was unconscious of the vanishing wild life of this country of which I must take note if I want to keep on writing nature essays. What I used to do won't do at all today. So far, then, as he himself is concerned, an author can't stand pat on what he once thought, and write about that forever. He must yield to changing times, changing conditions.

"He has to yield, too, to public and publisher, the two being intertwined. That is only sensible. I don't expect the public of the Atlantic, and therefore the publisher, to be interested in the kind of material I treat for St. Nicholas or Our Dumb Animals or even another adult magazine like Harper's. Some people protest because they say the stories in a magazine like the Saturday Evening Post are standardized. They have to be- for an audience of millions. An editor once said very truly that he could take a certain story if he was publishing for a homogeneous audience of ten thousand, but not if he were publishing for a million. I have to adapt my material, the length, the phase of it I treat, to the magazine for which I am writing. For example, I'm doing a monthly article for Our Dumb Animals. It must be a certain length,

too short for a chapter of my next book. Therefore, I write three related articles for three numbers, which can easily be connected to form a chapter of the book."

"What is the next book to be?" I asked.

"The very next one is a 'Boys' Life of Burroughs' which the Century Company is publishing this fall, but the next after that is to be called at least so I think now - "The Seven Faces of Fear.""

The title was puzzling. Was it to be a nature book?

"Oh yes," Professor Sharp assured me. "It's about wildness- the most nearly extinct wild thing in America! There's an illustration of what I mean by adaptation. With the growth of cities, the open spaces are disappearing from this country. If I am to continue as a nature writer, I must be aware of that change and write about it. I never could write short stories!"

I wanted to say, "What about 'Turtle Eggs for Agassiz,' which is more thrilling than any short story I ever read, and what about another line that series of educational articles beginning with 'Patrons of Democracy' in the Atlantic, which started one of the liveliest discussions that magazine has ever known?"

But I was interviewing Professor Sharp for the writers who read THE WRITER and there were other questions they would like answered. Here was some one who had written more than a dozen volumes showing the closest observation of nature: "The Face of the Fields," "Where Rolls the Oregon," "The Hills of Hingham," "The Spirit of the Hive,” and many others and yet at the same time he had been teaching not only the undergraduates of Boston University, but everybody within commuting distance of Boston who was beginning to write or even wanting to. Here, if anywhere, could be found an answer to that eternal question of how to write and live at the same time.

So I asked once more whether it is better to stick at a job until one has saved enough money to be free to write, or whether a job and writing can be successfully combined.