Of all the books I have written, none have attracted more attention than Who’s Who.
Various biographical dictionaries of living persons were in existence before the new Who’s Who appeared in 1897—Men of the Time, People of the Period, and so on. But none of them were annual, and none of them were published at a popular price. I myself had attempted to get a cheap annual biographical dictionary published, before A. & C. Black came to me with their proposal about Who’s Who. I put the idea into the hands of a literary agent for sale. It was very much on the lines of Who’s Who, but not on so ambitious a scale, and I thought that Sell, who has a Press directory, might be likely to buy it. No one did buy it, and when I told an interviewer, who came to get “copy” out of me about Who’s Who, about it, that agent was wrong-headed enough to think that I was trying to libel him, instead of trying to claim originality for my idea.
However that may be, Adam Black, one day, when I was talking to him about my novel, A Japanese Marriage, which A. & C. Black had published, produced a copy of the old Who’s Who, an insignificant pocket-peerage, of which he had just purchased the rights, and asked if I could make anything of it for the firm. Having made a synopsis of my own idea for that literary agent to sell, I had it cut and dry, and it was settled that I should do the book as soon as the agreement could be drawn up. As events proved, it was drawn up too hurriedly, for I signed it without insisting on the clause which has gone into all my other agreements of the same kind—that, in case the publishers wished to be released from the agreement because the book was not as successful as they hoped, the book should become my property. I do not say that the Blacks would have consented to the insertion of this clause, but it is certain that I ought never to have signed it without, because I put into it ideas, whose originality and value has abundantly been proved since. It was agreed that I should edit it for three years certain, but that if the book was not successful by then the agreement should terminate. At the end of the three years, they determined that the book was not a success, and terminated the agreement. At the time that I wrote this book there was no one in London with the same knowledge as I had as to who should be included in the book, because my three years’ work in New York papers had made me take up biographical journalism—a profession which did not exist in London till I brought it over from America, and which never took permanent root in England. In fact, it very soon withered out of existence.
It is an odd fact that this book in its dried pippin form, which went on for about half a century before it was expanded, never struck the world as having a specially good title, till Adam Black recognised its value, though now its title is regarded as a stroke of genius.
“But how are you going to get the information?” he asked, when I had detailed my formula for the biographies, much the same as that which is used for Who’s Who now, with the exception of the details about telephones and motors, which were not part of English everyday life in 1897, and a few other points which I ought to have thought of.
“I shall make the people themselves give it.”
“But will they ever do it?”
“I think so, if we give them proper forms to fill up, and get a well-known peer and a well-known commoner to fill up their forms as specimens before we send the others out.”
“You’ll have to tell them that you’re going to use their biographies as specimens. I wish nothing to be done of which anybody could complain.”
In the matter of the special stationery provided for the purpose, the firm were extraordinarily liberal. They only studied attractiveness, just as they had special type cast for setting up the book because none of the small types offered to us were sufficiently beautiful. The selection of the long blue envelopes, opening at the side, has an almost public interest. Adam Black requested that we should leave the matter of envelopes over until the following week, when he was to meet Lord Rosebery on the yacht of his brother-in-law, George Coates. When Lord Rosebery was asked what kind of envelope he should treat with most respect in opening his correspondence, Lord Rosebery pronounced in favour of this particular form of long blue envelope, because it was used by the Cabinet for their communications. So we adopted it, and the first persons in official circles who received it may have experienced a strange flutter of expectation, because we did not in those days, I think, have the envelopes stamped Who’s Who, lest they should defeat their object of being taken for Cabinet communications.