The Publishers' Weekly.

FOUNDED BY F. LEYPOLDT.

JULY 4, 1885.

PUBLISHERS are requested to furnish title-page proofs and advance information of books forthcoming, both for entry in the lists and for descriptive mention. An early copy of each book published should be forwarded, to insure correctness in the final entry.

The trade are invited to send "Communications" to the editor on any topic of interest to the trade, and as to which an interchange of opinion is desirable. Also, matter for "Notes and Queries" thankfully received.

"Every man is a debtor to his profession, from the which, as men do of course seek to receive countenance and profit, so ought they of duty to endeavor themselves by way of amends to be a help thereunto."-LORD BACON.

THE CAMPAIGN FOR INTERNATIONAL
COPYRIGHT.

personnel, and the newer Society of British Authors started out last year under the best auspices. American authors have now an Authors' Club in New York City, but this, unlike the English society, has confined itself to social relations. The American Copyright League, started in 1884, was organized with especial reference to obtaining international copyright, and enrolled several hundred sympathizers as members. Its Committee unfortunately planned inadequately for the work before it and has recently lost by resignation several of its leading members. It was unfortunate from the start in repelling the cooperation of many who had been active workers in the cause of international copyright previous to its organization, and in some respects it hindered rather than helped the cause it had at heart. The Authors' Readings, however, were most useful in calling general attention to its cause, and their proposed repetition at Washington will be still more serviceable, and it is understood that there is a disposition in the Committee to reorganize for effective work.

THE coming season presents a favorable opportunity for the establishment of international and the revision of domestic copyright, which Meantime, those who are interested in copyshould not be lost. The discussion of the sub- right from the publishing side, comprising a great ject has been ample. Mr. Solberg's bibliography proportion of copyright owners, have kept rather of copyright, printed from time to time in the inactive because of the feeling shown on the columns of this journal, contains in the neigh- part of authors last year. It has been a matter borhood of 2000 entries, and such publications as of pride with American publishers that their reDrone on Copyright, the best American author-lations with authors have been thoroughly friendity, Coppinger on Copyright, the leading Eng-ly and co-operative. We should be sorry to see lish authority, the Report (1878) of the British Copyright Commission, with its digest and great volume of evidence, and the contributions of Macleod and Putnam in the "Cyclopedia of Political Science," the last reprinted in a separate pamphlet, are of the highest value. These show that both in the British Empire and in the United States, the domestic law is a most perplexing muddle, while international copyright, so far as our country is concerned, does not exist. The difficulties in the way of progress are not so much in presumed opposition on the part of the public-for the American people are probably not unwilling to pay fairly for anything they want but in the lack of interest in this subject on the part of our legislators, and the resistance of a small proportion of those interested in the manufacture, rather than the publishing, of books, to changes which they consider threatening to their interests.

Within the past few years, the creators of literary property have made considerable progress in organizing to secure their rights in the property which they create. The International Literary Association, which had its origin in England, but which lacked the co-operation of leading English writers, has held several Conferences, at Madrid, Rome, Berne, and elsewhere, and has grown stronger, especially in its foreign

this changed. As a matter of fact, some of the most effective promoters of the cause of copyright reform have been found among publishers, as the names of Mr. George P. Putnam, and his son, Mr. G. H. Putnam, sufficiently suggest, while, as Mr. Curtis pointed out at the Authors' Readings, the movement for international copyright which has so far come nearest to success, was directly promoted by publishers. The opin ions cited in our issue of March 29, 1884, showed that not only do the great body of the trade favor international copyright, but that a numerical majority of those replying favored it without manufacturing conditions. So far as the Dorsheimer and Hawley bills got far enough on to develop opposition we are convinced that such opposition came rather from the trades employed by publishers than from publishers themselves.

There is now reason to believe that " a long pull, a strong pull, and a pull all together," will make it possible to obtain some measure of international copyright during the sessions of the Forty-ninth Congress, and perhaps to obtain a better domestic law, and we propose that the PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY shall do its part. This journal has from its beginning heartily advocated copyright reform, and its efforts for international copyright have met with an increasing response from the trade it represents. In the treatment of this subject, the pres

cept by written or printed words, without increase of postage.

Provision is also made for the establishment

ent writer had always the cordial support and earnest co-operation of Frederick Leypoldt. The opinions of authors, called out by this journal of a system of special delivery of letters immein 1879, were a most useful feature of the dis-diately upon their receipt at the post-offices, but cussions of that time, and we shall this year print, nearer to the opening of the session of Congress, the remarks of authors appended to the memorial which we have undertaken to send in fac-simile to members of Congress at their homes, and which has already received the signatures of nearly a hundred and fifty American writers of books.

the Postmaster-General has not yet given the matter his personal consideration. It is possible that the system will be tested in one or more of the larger cities next autumn, and its extension will depend upon the result of the experiment.

edge of the reduction in newspaper rates to be made by Congress during the last weeks of the session. In the opinion of the financial officers government at least $1,000,000 during the next of the department, this legislation will cost the fiscal year, and will swell the excess of expenditures over receipts to $6,000,000."

It is expected that the revenues of the PostOffice Department will be seriously affected by the new legislation. Associated Press despatches say: "From the reduction in the newspaper rate a large deficit is expected to result. The deficit Despite the abundance of discussion, there is for the year just expiring is roughly estimated at still much lack of understanding of this matter, $4,000,000, and the estimate for the new fiscal and we propose, therefore, in opening the twenty-estimate, however, was prepared without knowlyear contemplated a deficit of $4,826,000. This eighth volume of the PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY, to present from time to time a series of papers on copyright and the defects of the present provisions for it, which while contributing, it may be, little that is new to the discussion, will serve a useful present purpose, especially in awakening some interest on the part of members of Congress. The articles will be based on the inherent right of authors to property which they create, with relation to its practical limitation in time and space and by the registration necessary for protection, and their tenor will be in favor of an international copyright law extending the protection of copyright to foreign authors, but accepting such limitations as may be necessary to obviate the opposition which is otherwise to be feared. These papers we propose to publish, on completion, in a volume which will include also Mr. Solberg's valuable bibliography of the subject.

It has been a great mistake on the part of the promoters of international copyright to underestimate the work to be done in preparing the way for successful legislation. It is a work of enlightenment more than anything else, but that is no small matter. Success is within reach, if the right means for success are taken.

CHANGES IN THE RATES OF POSTAGE. Os the first of July the following important changes in the rates of postage took effect:

First: The weight-limit of all single-rate letters is increased from one half of ounce each or fraction thereof to one ounce each or fraction thereof. The same increase of weight is allowed for drop letters, whether mailed at stations where there is a free delivery, or where carrier service is not established.

Second: All newspapers sent from the office of publication, including sample copies, or when sent from a news agency to actual subscribers thereto, or to other news agents, are entitled to transmission at the rate of one cent per pound or fraction thereof, the postage to be prepaid. This is a reduction of one half from existing

rates.

Third: Any article in a newspaper or other publication may be marked for observation ex

E. P. DUTTON & CO.'S NEW STORE.

E. P. DUTTON & Co. have taken possession of their new quarters, at No. 31 West Twentythird Street, a few doors below their old store, and are getting to rights as rapidly as possible. We think we are safe in saying that, when the finishing touches have been put on, this will be the largest and handsomest book-store in New third Street, and extends back two hundred feet York. It has a frontage of fifty feet on Twentyto Twenty-fourth Street, where there is also an entrance. At the Twenty-third Street front are handsome show windows on either side of the wide entrance. The main floor is divided by a central ceiling girder and a row of columns, subdivided by double cross girders and side columns or pilasters, which give the appearance of greater width in proportion to length. The columns, bronze, covered with elaborate relief work, supPort a ceiling broken by arches of light pink, with borders of green and gold in intricate patterns. The walls, of a deep salmon color, are decorated with filigree work in elaborate designs, and form a background, on the east side, to the unbroken line of shelving in cherry, richly carved and embellished, with projecting bays fitted with niches for busts. Between the arches set in the ceiling at regular intervals are bronze faces representing conventional suns, with radiating wavy points of light. From the mouths of these faces hang elaborate fixtures of brass, covered with filigree and repoussé work of antique design. To the left are the offices of the firm, the desks of the cashier and bookkeeper, and an elegant parlor for the use of visitors. The most striking feature of the latter is a Queen Anne fireplace, by Conover, of wrought iron and brass, ten feet wide and eighteen feet high, covered with intricate carving and relief work of a quaint pattern, with a fire-place large enough for full-length logs of wood. This parlor is elegantly furnished. The polished oak floor is partially covered by a choice Persian rug, while luxurious divans and easy chairs provide every comfort to the reader. The centre of the floor of the store is taken up with tables full of books and show cases, arranged so that ample aisles are left to pass from east to

west. This store will undoubtedly be one of the sights of the city-for some time, at any rateand will be well worth a visit. It does the enterprise, not to say the artistic taste, of this house all credit.

CHEAP BOOKMAKING.

BY ALEXANDER C. MCCLURG.
From The Dial for May.

IT is trite to say that in most of our houses the furnishing of the table, the painting of the walls, the carpeting of the floors, and the decorating of the furniture put to shame the books in the library. The books may be many, but they are generally common and poorly made. All this is very bad in an age which boasts of its enlightenment-even of its culture; but when we come to reform it, is the task easy? Assuredly not. Go into the book-stores, and wherewithal shall a man be satisfied? Where shall he find the well-made and comely books? He will not have searched far before concluding that in no branch of modern manufacturing are the ideas of beauty and fitness so totally ignored as in the making of books. A large part of our books are execrably made; many of them are monstrosities, and the demon which has ruined them is not far to seek. It is the same demon of Cheapness which has had such a baleful influence in other directions. Thick, stiff, and common paper, old and worn type, and printing which would disgrace a country newspaper, with showy and tasteless bindings, are the rule among them.

The lack of an international copyright is doubtless at the root of this as of many greater evils. What we do not pay for, we take no pleasure in adorning. We are satisfied to make a big book at a little price, and we are afraid some one else will put the same unowned matter into a bigger book at a littler price. He will pay a cent or two a pound less for paper with plenty of wood and clay in it, and will produce another monstrosity which the dry-goods stores will commend to a credulous people-" the bookstores charge one hundred dollars; we sell it for ninety-nine cents." What shocking cruelties and barbarities have been committed in the name of cheapness on the innocent works of Scott and Dickens, of Thackeray and Macaulay! The unprotected classic is the fairest game.

Such books, if we will have them, will not, like everything else that is good, be very cheap, but they need not be really dear. To insure them, we must have a public, fit and not too few, who like decency in their books as well as in their other surroundings. They will know what a good book is, will have a pride in having such on their shelves, and will be willing to pay for them. They will not be willing to give up the good for the bad because the bad is a little the cheaper. They will conclude they want few books, perhaps, but they want those few well made. Then, too, we must have publishers who have conscience and a high ideal-who will sit down to design a book as they would to design any other beautiful thing. They will take much care and trouble to consider the matter which they want to put into the book, and to adjust it to the proper form. They will be willing to pay for good, intelligent, and workmanlike type-setting and careful press-work, and for paper which is not cheap because it is made mostly of clay and straw. Gradually this extra care and this slightly increased cost will give us books which the careful few, at least, will be glad to buy and to read. Where these books are not illustrated, they will be mainly small books and thin books, because the paper will be thin, and fine, and flexible, although not transparent. The type will be large enough and clear, but there will be When the books much matter in little bulk. must be made in octavo size, they will partake of the form and shapeliness of the forty-four volumes of the Oxford Classics, or the eighteen volumes of the "Retrospective Review models of shapeliness and symmetry.

Let us have cheap books for those who must use cheap books; but as we have the palace car for those who are willing to pay for it, so let us have really good editions of all our best authors for those who can and will buy them. That such editions will come, and come soon, there are unmistakable indications. Many people are beginning to see that they are unreasonably asked to put up with trash-that in some cases they have asked for a book and been given a monstrosity. They are beginning to seek and treasure the really fine old editions, not because they are rare, or because their copy is a sixteenth of an inch taller than any other copy Here you will find the big-known to exist, but because they are beautiful gish book, with thick and dingy paper, and bad printing and binding-such as will fill out your shelves at a few cents a volume. Better the "Franklin Squares" and the "Seasides" than the pirates' twelve-mos.

Like many bad things, these are so bad they may lead to reform. We can no longer help seeing the difference between a badly-made and a well-made book, and improvement must follow. We are beginning to look about industriously for the beautiful editions of the poets made half a century ago by Pickering, and for the lovely editions which Moxon made of Lamb and Coleridge and Wordsworth. But, unfortunately, there are more of us looking for them than there are copies of the books, and this makes them high in price, and puts them out of the reach of most of us. Still, there are enough of these books left to tell us what a good book isto show us how moderate the size should be, what the proportions of the page, how clear and well-arranged the type, how thin and flexible the paper; in short, how comely and light and readable the volume should be made.

more beautiful and more readable, and perhaps more correct, than any modern edition they can get. In short, the taste for good books is growing, although it may be more slowly than the taste for other good and beautiful things.

NOTES ON AUTHORS.

MR. ANDREW LANG has, it is said, given up the study of savages for a time, and is writing a novel.

MR. B. L. FARJEON has completed a new novel, to be entitled "The Sacred Nugget." It is to be published this month.

IT is said that S. Stepniak, the author of "Under the Tzars," is Prof. Dragomanof, formerly of the University of Kiev.

MRS. HENRY WARD BEECHER, it is reported, is engaged upon a book, the title of which is to be "Early Marriages and Long Engagements.' GENERAL GRANT has now substantially pleted the work on his memoirs, having ex

com

hausted the vast amount of memoranda and data

that he had on hand.

LITERARY AND TRADE NOTES. JOHN WILEY & SONS will publish John Rus

MR. STEDMAN'S great compilation of the lit-kin's autobiography. erature of America is well advanced. Mr. Stedman, his son, and Miss Hutchinson are hard at work on the last volumes.

ADMIRAL PORTER expects to complete his "History of the Navy During the Civil War" next autumn. About one third of the manuscript is in the hands of the Sherman Publishing Co., Philadelphia.

MRS. EMILY PFEIFFER has sold to Messrs. Field & Tuer, of the Leadenhall Press, the MS. of her American travels, which will appear in the early autumn, simultaneously in London and New York, under the title of "Flying Leaves from East and West."

M. PAUL BLOUET, better konwn by his pseudonym of Max O'Rell, we learn from the London Athenæum, has resigned his mastership at St. Paul's School. His forthcoming book will contain a study of the best sides of the English and the French characters, and a good many recollections of his English school experiences." MR. ARCHIBALD FORBES, who has witnessed stirring incidents on the continents of Europe, Africa, America, and Australia, is preparing a work giving his personal impressions and experiences, which will be called "Souvenirs of some Continents." This work will consist partly of papers already published and partly of new

matter.

JOURNALISTIC NOTES.

MR. HENRY IRVING'S article on acting appears in the July number of The English Illustrated Magazine.

BETWEEN thirty and forty of Mr. James Russell Lowell's nearest friends and warmest admirers occupy the opening pages of the Literary World for June 27, with collected words of welcome, in prose and verse. It is a brilliant greeting. Following it are several editorial articles on Lowell, a woodcut of the poet, and a bibliography of his writings.

THE June number of Le Livre, after two poems on Victor Hugo and a vignette of the poet, gives an article on "The Great English Publishers,' by M. Ernest Chesneau. First among them the writer naturally places his own publishers, Messrs. Cassell & Co.; next come Messrs. Chatto & Windus; the third house is that of Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, and the fourth is-at present-unsettled. THE Contemporary Review for June (Leonard Scott Pub. Co.) presents contents of timely interest under the headings of The Procedure of the House of Commons," by L. L. Dillwyn, M.P.; The Muse of History," by Augustine Birrell; "The Urgent Needs of the Volunteer Force," by C. E. Howard Vincent; "Trade Depression and Low Prices," by Robert Giffin; 'Socialism and Atheism," by Rev. M. Kaufmann; "Peasant Proprietors in Ireland," by Sir Rowland Blennerhassett; "Contemporary Life and Thought in the United States," by Prof. C. K. Adams; "Origin of the Higher Animals," by Prof. W. L. Parker; Canon Riddon's Theory of the Episcopale," by Edwin Hatch, D.D., and "Shakespeare-and-Stratford-on-AvonCommon-Fields," by J. S. Stuart-Glennie.

66

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS have in press a new novel by Mr. Arlo Bates, entitled "A Wheel of Fire.'

CHARLES H. WHITING has in press a new and interesting novel, by H. G. Cramer, entitled "A Household Myth."

MACMILLAN & Co. have in press a new edition of W. Pater's most interesting book. Marius, the Epicurean." It will be issued uniform with the Eversley edition of Kingsley's works.

LITTLE, BROWN & Co. have published a handcalm and Wolfe," by Francis Parkman, limited to some large paper edition (royal 8vo.) of "Montseventy-five copies; also " The United States Digest for 1884,” being volume 15 of the new series, by George Fred Williams and Isaac F. Paul, of the Boston bar.

THE Base-ball nines of the employés of Harper & Bros. and of Funk & Wagnalls had a tilt on the "diamond field," on the 20th ult., at Prospect Park, Brooklyn. For the seven innings the score stood as follows: Harper & Bros.. 2 I I 2 3 O Funk & Wagnalls. 4 O 3 2 4 3-16 The secretary of the Funk & Wagnalls nine asks us to say that they will accept challenges from any house in the trade.

2-11

SCRIBNER & WELFORD have nearly ready for publication a superb limited edition of the Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, Governor of Nottingham." The work will be issued in two octavo volumes, illustrated with ten new etched portraits. There will be many new notes by Mr. C. H. Frith, who has edited the present edition. But five hundred copies are printed, only two hundred of which are to come to America. Copies will be ready for distribution early during the present month.

HENRY ALTEMUS (Philadelphia Bible Warehouse) is receiving from London many new and original designs for his quarto Bibles, which will be ready for the fall trade. The new styles will be run principally on their Bibles printed from plates made in London, and which were cast from clear, open pica type. These Bibles contain upward of twenty-thousand notes, critical and explanatory, selected by the Rev. Walter McGilvray, D.D., of Aberdeen. They also announce that they have an unusually large assortment of original London antique styles.

FUNK & WAGNALLS have in press the first two volumes of "The People's Bible," a series of "expositions of such portions of Scripture, beginning with Genesis, as are of obvious and immediate importance to a growth in Divine wisdom," by Dr. Joseph Parker, of London, which will be completed in twenty-five volumes; "Sweet Cicely," a new novel, by "Josiah Allen's Wife," (Marietta Holly,) a continuation of the famous Josiah Allen's Wife's series; "Sermons in Song,' a volume of sermons, by Rev. Charles F. Robinson, D.D., author of " Spiritual Songs for the Sanctuary," etc.; a new edition of "The Pastor's Hand-book," a manual for use of ministers, containing forms, usages, and helpful data and tables, for ready reference, by W. W. Everts, D.D.; and "Society; its Peculi arities, Practices, and Problems," a series of discourses on social topics, by Geo. C. Lorimer, D.D.