(By the way, I should like readers to realize this: that I try to make Borzoi Books as well as I know how. Then I base the price on what they cost to make. I do not fix the price first and then try to trim the quality so as to come within that price.)
Joseph Hergesheimer’s “San Cristobal de la Habana” is not fiction. It is about Havana—full of the colour he loves and of which he is a master—and Joe himself. It will please and interest his friends; it will probably enrage his enemies. But so engaging and candid a book will certainly be read. The first edition at any rate will be printed on Warren’s India Tint Olde Style paper and bound in half black cloth, with Chinese Orange board sides spattered with gold. Three fifty is the price and there will be a hundred numbered copies printed on Strathmore Laid paper, specially bound and autographed at seven-fifty.
I planned Mencken’s “Prejudices” to be an annual affair and the second series will be ready in October. It will be as provoking (and I hope and believe as popular) as its predecessor, though it will deal less with books and more with the ideas underlying them. The price will remain, for the moment anyway, two dollars.
“The Gate of Ivory” is Sidney L. Nyburg’s latest and by far his most ambitious novel. The scene is the Baltimore of not so many years ago, and the story of Eleanor Gwynn, irresponsible, but brimful of audacity and charm, and Allen Conway, is close enough to the facts of a famous Maryland scandal to start it fairly on the way to the success I think it deserves. Two twenty-five, but as is likely to be the case with many books, the price will have to go up with subsequent editions, as a considerable increase in binding costs is expected this fall as well as some increase in printing.
I have the greatest confidence in Floyd Dell. He’s a different fellow, though, and doesn’t seem to have anything like the same kind of confidence in himself. But anyway last year I got him to write “Were You Ever a Child?”—essays on education as charming as their title, and now—at long last—I have his first novel. “Moon-Calf” is a real book or I’m sadly mistaken. It’s by far the best first novel by an American that has ever been offered me. The scene is our Middle West, and the story—obviously autobiographical—shows the influence of H. G. Wells in a way that marks, I think, a new note in our literature. Anyway I recommend “Moon-Calf” to every reader who cares a damn for my opinion of a novel; I want the book to sell so that Floyd Dell may be amply encouraged to do its sequel (when you read it you’ll see it has to have one). Probable price two-fifty.
André Tridon’s “Psychoanalysis and Behavior” is rather more of a real book than his first. It has a more organic unity—reads easier and is all in all a more finished product. Incidentally—though Tridon told me once that he was going to rewrite his first book every year for a different publisher—“Psychoanalysis and Behavior” duplicates none of the material in “Psychoanalysis.” The price is two-fifty.
The Atlantic Monthly occupies a unique position among our magazines, and most publishers, I think, realize the recommendation that serialization in it carries to readers of books. I am particularly glad, therefore, to say that Mr. Sedgwick printed several instalments of “Letters of a Javanese Princess” by Raden Adjeng Kartini in his magazine, where they aroused a good deal of interest and discussion. The original manuscript was very long and contained much indifferent material, so under our direction the translator, Mrs. Symmers, cut it down and prepared a careful, informing, introduction about Kartini, who, by the way, was the youngest daughter of a Javanese regent and probably the first feminist of the Orient. Then at the suggestion of Mrs. Knopf, whose favourite book this is, I asked Louis Couperus, the great Dutch novelist, to write a special introduction for our edition. His pages, few, but wholly charming, are an interesting feature of the book. A square octavo: probable price, four dollars.
I have reason to believe that “The Foundations of Social Science,” by James Mickel Williams, is a book that one can justly term epoch-making. Anyway, the work represents almost ten years out of the author’s life—years spent teaching in a small college rather than a large one, because only there could he hope to have sufficient time to devote to it. The manuscript was read for the author, and offered me for publication by an authority in whom I have the very greatest confidence—Charles A. Beard, formerly Professor of Politics at Columbia University and now director of the Bureau of Municipal Research in New York. In his book Professor Williams explains the human element in the motives of respect for law and the causes of increasing disrespect; the economic and political attitudes of employers on the one hand and labour on the other; progressive and reactionary judicial attitudes, especially with respect to labour legislation; the causes of national feeling and international rivalry and the difficulties in establishing a League of Nations. Ought not such a work prove of value and interest to intelligent citizens today? It will be a large octavo running to over five hundred pages and the price will probably be six dollars.
Last year Mr. Mencken got for me, and I published in his The Free Lance Books, “Ventures in Common Sense,” by E. W. Howe, of Atchison, Kansas. Immediately afterwards most enthusiastic letters reached the author from the big editors in the country—such men as Edward Bok, late of The Ladies’ Home Journal, John M. Siddall of The American Magazine, Don C. Seitz of The New York World, as well as letters from the presidents of very large corporations telling of their admiration for Mr. Howe’s philosophy. It seemed to me then as it does now that whether or not you agree with him—and more than likely you will disagree—Mr. Howe should be more widely known, particularly in the East. His unique little monthly is read almost exclusively by the really important people of the country, but the average man or woman would find it highly entertaining. For “Ed” Howe is the Middle West and the plain American incarnate and in his new book, “The Anthology of Another Town,” he presents a panorama, really, of a typically middle western small town. The price is two dollars.
A very important event in the book world will be, I think, the publication of a translation of Knut Hamsun’s “Hunger.” It is difficult to say why Hamsun is not known, really widely known, in the United States. A translation of one of his books was published a few years ago. But those who know Hamsun in the original seem to agree that “Shallow Soil” was the worst possible novel to select for launching him in America. I have been told of the greatness of Hamsun for a full five years now and at last I am stirred to action. There can be no question whatever that he is far and away the leading Scandinavian writer of the day, and if one may judge from the acclaim with which “Growth of the Soil” has been received in England, one of the very greatest writers of our age. You can read about him in The Encyclopaedia Britannica and you will learn there that “Hunger” is the book that first made him famous—almost a generation ago. This competent translation was first published in England in 1899, but Edwin Bjorkman’s informing, useful introduction, was specially written for me.