BOOKS AND BACKS.
The proposal to revive the old "yellow back" cover for novels, partly in the interest of economy in production, partly to attract the purchaser by the lure of colour, has caused no little stir in the literary world. In order to clarify opinion on the subject Mr. Punch has been at pains to secure the following expressions of their views from some of the leading authors of both sexes:—
Mr. J.M. Keynes, C.B., the author of the most sensational book of the hour, contributed some interesting observations on the economics of the dye industry and their bearing on the question. These we are reluctantly obliged to omit. We may note however his general conclusion that the impact on the public mind of a book often varies in an inverse ratio with the attractiveness of its appearance or its title. At the same time he admits that if he had called his momentous work The Terrible Treaty, and if it had been bound in a rainbow cover with a Cubist design, its circulation might have been even greater than it actually is. But then, as he candidly owns, "as a Cambridge man, I may be inclined to attach an undue importance to 'Backs.'"
Mr. Frederic Harrison writes: "Matt. Arnold once chaffed me for keeping a guillotine in my back-garden. But my real colour was never sea-green in politics any more than it is yellow in literature or journalism. Yet I have a great tenderness for the old yellow-backs of fifty years ago. Yellow Books are another story. The yellow-backs may have sometimes affronted the eye, but for the most part they were dove-like in their outlook. Now 'red ruin and the breaking-up of laws' flaunt themselves in the soberest livery. I do not often drop into verse, but this inversion of the old order has suggested these lines, which you may care to print:—
"'In an age mid-Victorian and mellow,
Ere the current of life ran askew,
The backs of our novels were yellow,
Their hearts were of Quaker-like hue;
But now, when extravagant lovers
Their hectic emotions parade,