Lapas attēli
PDF
ePub

is responsible for the Jack Lorimer series of juvenile books issued by L. C. Page & Co.

Effie Smith, who contributed the story, "A Son of Sorrow," to Putnam's Magazine for December, was born in the Tennessee mountains, and has always lived there, excepting for a few years spent at college and in teaching. She has had poems published in Putnam's, the Independent, the Christian Register, Zion's Herald, the Nashville Christian Advocate, and other periodicals. The story, "A Son of Sorrow," was suggested by an incident which occurred in her own munity, as was "The Tempting of Peter Stiles," published in Putnam's for last Feb

ruary.

66

com

Emerson Taylor, whose story, The Rescue of the Gods," appeared in Scribner's Magazine for December, was until recently an instructor in English and rhetoric at Yale University. He has contributed to the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's Magazine, the Reader, Ainslee's, and the Outlook, most of his work being along the lines of fiction. During the past two years he has contributed a series of stories of child life to the Ladies' Home Journal, and he will have a serial in that magazine during the coming year. He is the author of two novels, A Daughter of Dale," published by the Century Company in 1904, and "The Upper Hand," published by A. S. Barnes & Co. in 1906.

[ocr errors]

PERSONAL GOSSIP ABOUT AUTHORS.

Hayne. Paul H. Hayne adopted literature as a profession soon after leaving college, and pursued it to the end of his life, through evil and good fortune. . . . For many years the poet's delicate health prevented him from early rising, but soon after his frugal breakfast, that is about half-past eight, he mounted his mare, Maggy, and with dog and gun, spent several hours hunting small game. While riding he thought over the literary work upon which he was engaged, and committed his thoughts to paper upon returning to the house. He was a rapid writer, especially in prose. Before his health became

delicate he walked a great deal while reading, and if an idea struck him he wrote it down on the fly leaf of the book in hand. His habit was to write standing, until his strength failed him; then he sat down at his desk; but finally he was obliged to write in bed. Some of his best work was done under these unfavorable conditions. His popular Yorktown Centennial" lyric was composed after a severe hemorrhage, and he was far from well when he wrote the "International Cotton Exhibition" ode, a fine, scholarly production, full of imaginative power. Eugene L. Didier, in Spare Mo

ments.

[ocr errors]

Mitchell. To the writer as well as the reader of historical novels there is interest in the preface which Dr. S. Weir Mitchell has written to the new edition the nineteenth of his "Hugh Wynne." In this preface Dr. Mitchell tells his reader that since the appearance of the book twelve years ago it has been subjected to a considerable amount of criticism at the hands of local archaeologists and historians who are troubled over certain inaccuracies in names, dates, and localities occurring in the romance. These errors, Dr. Mitchell now informs his public, he has rectified in this edition largely because he finds that his novel is used in schools and colleges, where its occasional lapse from historical verity might injure its educational value. But Dr. Mitchell questions the need for absolute accuracy in details in the historical novel. 'How little the grossest errors in biography and history," he writes, "affect the opinions of the public concerning a novel long popular may be illustrated by the fact that one of my critics referred me to 'Henry Esmond" for an example of desirable accuracy. It was unfortunate choice, for in Esmond'

an

there is hardly a correct historical statement. The Duke of Hamilton described as about to marry Beatrix was the husband of a second living wife and the father of seven children- an example of contemplated literary bigamy which does not distress the happily ignorant, nor are they at all troubled by the many other and even more singular errors in statement, some of them plainly the result of carelessness. A novel, it seems, may sim

sadly as concerns historic facts and yet survive." That brings Dr. Mitchell to the broader question of the purpose of the historical novel is the latter to be judged as history or fiction? "The purpose of the novel," he says, "is, after all, to be acceptably interesting. If it be historical, the historic people should not be the constantly present heroes of the book. The novelist's proper use of them is to influence the fates of lesser people and to give the reader such sense of their reality as in the delineation of characters is rarely possible for the historian." New York Times Saturday Review. Warner. The extraordinary pains and patience with which the late Charles Dudley Warner did his literary work are shown in an account given by a writer in the New Amstel Magazine of the strenuous way in which Mr. Warner produced an obituary notice some years ago.

a

Professor Edward L. Youmans was close personal friend of Mr. Warner, and on that account, when Mrs. Youmans died, the editor of a daily paper asked Mr. Warner to write a sort of personal appreciation of her. This he consented to do.

He was left alone from ten A. M. until halfpast twelve, when he went to lunch. Returning at two o'clock, he worked without interruption until four o'clock, when he turned over to the editor what he had written. Yet the work was not complete. Warner read the first proof, and in succession three revised sheets.

Mr.

Each time he made change after change in phraseology, seeking out the one right word, while even in the nicety of paragraphing he seemed to make clearer what he desired to express. Nor did the close revision end with the marking of the last proof. After the paper had gone to press and the first sheets had been brought up to the composing room for an O. K., Mr. Warner looked wistfully at the editor, and observed:

"Would you object to lifting the form? I see a sentence in the last paragraph that might be somewhat changed. She was too good, you know, to have a slovenly tribute paid to her."

[blocks in formation]

How "Ben Bolt" Was Written. Du Maurier made a fortune out of "Trilby." Thomas Dunn English never received a cent from "Ben Bolt."

The circumstances in which the lines were written, and which were related to me by the author's daughter, Miss Alice English, who often heard them from her father, seem to take us far back in American literature; for Dr. English personally knew Edgar Allan Poe and many of the other early American writers. During the summer of 1843 he was visiting in New York, where he became acquainted with N. P. Willis, who with George P. Morris recently had revived the New York Mirror. Willis asked English to contribute a sea poem, explaining, however, that the paper was run on very small capital, and that its editors would be greatly obliged to him

if he would let them have the poem just for the love of the thing. That was not an unusual request to be made by editors of American periodicals in those days. At all events, English consented, then went home and forgot all about his promise until reminded of it by a letter from Willis.

He had the manuscript of a sea poem, which, however, he had discarded as not up to the mark, but which played its part, nevertheless, in the composition of "Ben Bolt." When he sat down at his desk to write something new for the Mirror, it seemed as if the mantle of Dibdin were reluctant to fall upon him, and the poem of the sea was not forthcoming. By one of those curious reflex actions of the mind, he drifted into reminiscences of his boyhood, and almost before he knew it he had written the line:

"Don't you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt?" The poem consists of five stanzas of eight lines each, but not until the last line is there the slightest hint as to its hero's walk in life, when suddenly he is apostrophized as "Ben Bolt of the salt sea gale," a line that gives considerable "lift" to the whole and adds a touch of vigor to what was simply a sentimental ballad. It looks as if Dr. English had bethought himself at the finish that Willis had asked for a sea poem, and, in order to comply with the request, had introduced the line at the end of five stanzas in which the sea was conspicuous by its absence. The curiously interesting fact is, however, that when he was half way through the last stanza his inspiration absolutely gave out. He "got stuck," as the more commonplace saying is, when he chanced to think of the discarded sea poem, and simply copied the last four lines of it on to what he had written, making them the last four lines of "Ben Bolt," which was duly published in the New York Mirror of September 2, 1843, with a few commendatory words (by way of compensation) from the editors, and signed with the author's initials, "T. D. E."-Gustav Kobbé, in the New York Herald.

[ocr errors][merged small]

desk, with, on top of it, an extension full of pigeon-holes, - about forty of them. He took it into his head one day to do away with that desk and install in its place a broad table containing a few drawers. He asked me if I would not like the desk and the set of pigeon-holes on top, and I jumped at the chance. The desk had a few more compartments than the one I had been using, and there were about forty additional pigeonholes. I was enraptured, as Mr. Baer knew I would be.

Since that time, I assure you, those pigeonholes have been full. What has slipped into them no one but an editor can realize, because no one but an editor knows the vast variety of stuff that an editor has an opportunity to accumulate is compelled to accumulate, almost. Indeed, an editor's life is a running fight against the on-rushing waves of written and printed paper. Letters, manuscripts, papers, clippings, programmes, cards, proofs, memoranda, schedules, engravings, books the flood is endless and insistent.

And pigeon-holes are so convenient for it! At the end of a long, hard day, with a desk still discouragingly littered with all sorts of abominable stuff, and with your stenographer, however willing, yet needing to go home, a happy thought takes possession of you - the pigeon-holes! You rapidly classify that mass. Unanswered letters pop into one pigeon-hole, unread manuscripts into another, memoranda of articles to write into a third, memoranda of articles to ask for into a fourth, and so on.

There is so much virtue in classification. The pigeon-holes absorb it all with so much alacrity. Your desk looks so clean and neat when you are through. You shut it up with satisfaction. And you open it the next morning with equal satisfaction. It is bare of all reproaching litter. No tasks awaiting you stare you in the face. Your mind accommodatingly passes by the fact that they are hidden away in the pigeon-holes. You enter upon the day with a light heart.

Once this pigeon-hole trick is learned it is easily repeated, till it soon grows into the pigeon-hole habit. The pigeon-holes become

crammed. Before long they will hold no more. Then it is the turn of the drawers, and they, also, are crowded. Then some fine day you wake up to the fact that the entire desk is full of postponed duties. In dismay you haul out the contents of a pigeon-hole. With growing dismay you examine it, and discover accusing dates upon the letters, and note the memoranda that should long ago have been attended to. Oh, the day of reckoning comes to every culprit of the pigeonhole! Well for him if he grits his teeth, sets himself to clearing out those traps for sloth, and, after they are cleared out, resolutely shuts the roll-front down over them and throws the key out of the window!

That is what I intend to do. No more pigeon-holes for me! No more pigeonholes in my desk or, if I retain them, they shall be used not for tasks, but for tools. And, more than that, no more pigeon-holes in my mind. For it is as easy to pigeon-hole a duty in the mind as a letter in the desk. Amos R. Wells, in the Christian Endeavor World.

Literary Questions. Frank A. Munsey and Lord Northcliffe (formerly Alfred Harnsworth) recently discussed present-day literary questions together, and what they said is reported by the New York Herald. Among other things, Lord Northcliffe said: "Dictation and the typewriter and the literary agent, with his contracts, are entirely destroying imaginative work. I consider that the literary agents are killing good authorship. Their forcing method

causes

writers to sell work as fast as they can write it. It ties many of them up with more contracts than they can ever fill. You can raise asparagus under a frame, but it has an insipid taste.

"There are practically no 'first-raters' today in either England or America, but there are plenty of what I call 'first-class secondraters.' They do very useful service, and the average of such work is much higher to-day than it was fifty years ago. But genius is killed."

Mr. Munsey said: "In classifying the elements of fiction according to commercial

value, I rank pathos first, love second, adventure third, humor fourth. You can manufacture love plots and adventure, and, to an extent, humor, but you can't manufacture pathos; it must come of itself.

"As for the book business, the trouble with it lies with the authors and the agents. The book business is all wrong. The normal price of a book ought to be fifty cents, and not $1.50.

"Fifteen or twenty years ago the author put himself in the hands of a good publisher and stayed with him for life. His publishers built up a business round him, and paid him the standard royalty of ten per cent. Both publishers and authors did well.

[blocks in formation]
[ocr errors]

"With such large royalties - amounting on a $1.50 book to forty or forty-five cents a copy the publisher gets no satisfactory return, for he must sell the $1.50 book to the dealer for about eighty cents. The whole thing is wrong.

"Men of to-day don't put the thought, the candle-light into their work. They are too eager to live well and buy well. I would n't turn things back. This is all a part of human development. We'll square the new things to us and ourselves to the new things, but at present the authors are too much interested in fine houses and automobiles."

[blocks in formation]

of Words." Rules for Capitalization and Punctuation fill nearly thirty pages, and then come exercises in Composition, and rules and examples of Correspondence, some of the examples being very amusing, as well as instructive. Next come forty-two lessons in Spelling and thirty pages of Etymology, and the book ends with a list of Homonyms, or words having the same sound as other words, but differing in meaning. There are few educated persons who cannot learn something from the book.

W. H. H. BORDERLAND STUDIES. Volume II. By George M. Gould, M. D. 311 pp. Cloth. Philadelphia: P. Blakiston's Son & Co. 1908.

[ocr errors]

This

The first volume of Dr. Gould's "Borderland Studies was published in 1896. second volume reprints essays, addresses, and lectures, most of which have long been out of print. Writers will be more particularly attracted by the papers on "Style," and "History and Psychology in Words," and "Some Ethical Questions," which are reprinted from the little volume - no longer in print "Suggestions to Medical Writers," published in 1900, but Dr. Gould is always interesting, even to those who disagree with his strongly-expressed opinions, and the whole book is worth attention.

THE FRIENDLY CRAFT. A collection of American letters. Edited by Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Ph.D., professor of English in Smith College. 364 pp. Cloth, $1.25. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1908.

The idea of "The Friendly Craft" - the collection in a single volume of interesting and suggestive letters and extracts from letters written by Americans of note is excellent, and it has been admirably carried out. As the compiler says: "The reflection of a bit of by-gone life, an odd or whimsical view of a situation, a swift and unconscious revelation of character, often merely the happy or individual turn of a phrase, these and causes as slight have governed choice,"

and the choice in almost every case will be approved by a multitude of readers. Incidentally the letters in the book give, by implication and direct suggestion, some practical hints about letter-writing that all who indulge in the gentle art of correspondence would do well to read.

LITERARY ARTICLES IN PERIODICALS.

[For the convenience of readers THE WRITER Will send a copy of any magazine mentioned in the following reference list on receipt of the amount given in parenthesis following the name- the amount being in each case the price of the periodical with three cents postage added. Unless a price is given, the periodical must be ordered from the publication

office. Readers who send to the publishers of the periodicals indexed for copies containing the articles mentioned in the list will confer a favor if they will mention THE WRITER when they write. ]

THE NEW LITERATURE. "B. P." Atlantic (38 c.) for January.

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON. Barrett Wendell. Atlantic (38 c.) for January.

POE AND MRS. WHITMAN. Professor James A. Harrison and Charlotte F. Dailey. Century (38 c.) for January.

THE SHORT STORY. Editor's Study, Harper's Magazine (38 c.) for January.

THE ELIZABETHANS AND MR. SWINBURNE. F. V. Keys. North American Review (38 c.) for January. EDGAR ALLAN POE. From an English point of view. With portrait. Norman Douglas. Putnam's Magazine (28 c.) for January.

POE AS A CRITIC. Sherwin Cody. Putnam's Magazine (28 c.) for January.

BALZAC IN BRITTANY. Illustrated. W. H. Helm. Putnam's Magazine (28 c.) for January.

ISRAEL ZANGWILL. Clarence Rook. Putnam's Magazine (28 c.) for January.

SOME RARE GLIMPSES OF STEVENSON. Bailey Millard. Bookman ( 28 c.) or January.

E. A. POE AND SECRET WRITING. Firmin Dredd. Bookman (28 c.) for January.

E. A. POE IN SOCIETY. Eugene L. Didier. Bookman (28 c.) for January.

Brander

THE PLAYWRIGHT AND HIS PLAYERS. Matthews. Scribner's (28 c.) for January. POE. W. C. Brownell. Scribner's (28 c.) for January.

THE CAREER OF HERBERT SPENCER. Professor Lester F. Ward. Popular Science Monthly (33 c.) for January.

POETRY AND SCIENCE IN THE CASE OF CHARLES DARWIN. Edward Bradford Titchener. Popular Science Monthly (33 c.) for January.

THE CRISIS OF THE NOVEL IN FRANCE. Albert Schinz. Forum (28 c.) for January.

A FORGOTTEN AMERICAN POET (Frederick Goddard Tuckerman). Walter Prichard Eaton. Forum (28 c.) for January.

THE LAST GREAT BIOGRAPHY. Whistler personified by Joseph and Elizabeth Robins Pennell. Harrison S. Morris. Lippincott's (28 c.) for January. POE. George L. Knapp. Lippincott's (28 c.) for January.

[blocks in formation]
« iepriekšējāTurpināt »