Literary Byways

by William Andrews

The foregoing are respectable figures, but they appear small when compared with the amounts paid to Lord Macaulay. On one occasion he had handed to him a cheque for £20,000, representing three-fourths of the net profits of his “History of England.” A short time since, the following statement went the rounds of the newspaper press, respecting Mr. Justin McCarthy’s popular work, the “History of Our Own Times.” The book was offered to a well-known publishing firm, who agreed to purchase it for £600. On finding that the author was a Home Ruler, however, this firm asked to be allowed to withdraw from the contract. Mr. McCarthy, who was greatly annoyed at the suggestion that he might mutilate history to suit his own private or political views, then went to Messrs. Chatto and Windus, who at once agreed to publish the work for him on a basis of mutual profits. In the interval, the other firm reconsidered the situation, and asked to be allowed to revive the lapsed contract, but were too late, as the book had been placed in the hands of the second firm. The work won a flattering reception, and the author has, up to the present time, received several thousand pounds as his share of the profits.

In 1897 passed away Dr. Brewer, the compiler of a “Guide to Science,” and other popular books. Shortly before his death, he told an interviewer that he offered the copyright of his “Guide to Science” to Mr. Thomas Jarrold for £50, but he declined the venture, saving he would pay a royalty of one penny in the shilling for every copy sold. It went through two editions in ten months, and then it was agreed to call 8,000 an edition, the royalty to be given half-yearly, but any number less than 1,000 to stand over to the next return. The largest half-yearly royalty was 19,000 copies (Midsummer, 1836). In 1842, Dr. Brewer offered Mr. Jarrold £2,000 for his half-share, which he declined. Soon after this, Messrs. Longman and Co. offered Dr. Brewer £300 per year for life for the copyright. He offered Mr. Jarrold £4,000 for his share, but he replied that he would not accept double that sum, in fact that he would not part with it at all.

According to a careful estimate, Charles Dickens received £10,000 a year from his works for five years, and died worth nearly £100,000. He made every penny from his writings and readings. We need scarcely repeat the well-known facts that “he not only lived in a very liberal style for over thirty years, keeping up a considerable establishment, and often travelling without regard to cost, but he brought up a large and expensive family.”

Thackeray did not make large sums by his books, when we consider his undoubted genius and the high place he holds amongst the greatest authors. It is said that he never made more than £5,000 out of any of his novels. He received large sums for his lectures; indeed, the platform yielded him better returns than the publishers.

Eighty thousand pounds is the amount of Bulwer Lytton’s earnings as a novelist. The remuneration he received, when his books first appeared, did not reach large figures, the sums usually ranging from £600 to £1,000, although his books were in great favour with lovers of fiction. When a collected edition of his novels was issued, the publishers paid liberally for the copyrights. The sale of Lytton’s novels is very large; about 80,000 copies of the sixpenny edition, and some thousands of the three-shillings-and-sixpenny edition, are sold every year.

The Earl of Beaconsfield, it is said, received the largest amount ever paid in this country for a single novel. His last work, “Endymion,” was sold for £12,000. He only produced one other successful story, and that was “Lothair.” It is stated, on good authority, that these two novels have together brought more than double the sums realised for his other books, although inferior to some of his former writings. In his later years the public paid for the novelty of reading stories by a statesman, and not for the merits of his works. Some of his novels have recently been brought out in a shilling edition, but they have already lost the allurements of fiction, and are only read by students of politics, or persons curious as to the character of the author.

Wilkie Collins was paid for “Armadale” £5,000. Mr. James Payn recently received £1,000 for the rights of running one of his novels in the pages of a sixpenny magazine. This author tells rather a good story about the mode of payment for his novels. “It was,” says Mr. Payn, “the custom with a very respectable firm of publishers, with whom I did business, to pay my cheques to the names of my immortal works, instead of to myself: and since it suited their convenience to do so, I never complained of it, though it sometimes put me in rather a false position when I presented my demands in person, as, for example, in the case of the ‘Family Scapegrace.’ When I came for the proceeds of ‘Found Dead,’ it was too much for the sense of professional propriety of the banker’s clerk, who gravely observed: ‘It is very fortunate, Sir, that this cheque is not payable to order, or it would have to be signed by your executors.’” Said Dickens, to whom Payn related the incident, “I should not like to have much money at a bank which keeps so clever a clerk as that.”

Anthony Trollope worked hard to gain a footing in the literary world. His earlier manuscripts were frequently rejected. He tried to induce managers of theatres to accept his plays, but not one was ever produced. The first year’s labour with the pen, and a very hard year’s work too, only yielded £12. The next year the sum was still small, only amounting to £20, yet he did not despair. At last, the happy time came, and it was taken at the flood. It was in 1855 that he scored with “The Warden.” From that time he was a man of mark; his works were in demand, and with ease he earned £1,000 a year, which soon increased to £2,000 and £3,000, and at the time of his death to about £4,000. The amounts paid for a few of his books are as follows: In 1850 was issued “La Vendée,” and for it he got £20; twelve years later he was paid, for “Orley Farm,” £3,135; in 1864 was published “Can You Forgive Her?” for which he received £3,525; and in the same year was issued “The Small House at Allington,” for which he was paid £3,000. Amongst his other novels for which he received large sums may be mentioned “The Last Chronicles of Barset,” £3,000; “Phineas Finn,” £3,200; “He knew He was Right,” £3,200. The last two were published in 1869. He was paid £3,000 for “The Way We Live Now.” “More than nine-tenths of my literary work,” writes Trollope, “has been done in the last twenty years, and during twelve of those years I followed another profession. I have never been a slave to this work, giving due time, if not more than due time, to the amusement I have loved. But I have been constant—and constancy of labour will conquer all difficulties.” In twenty years he made by writing nearly £70,000. We cannot place Trollope in a high position amongst the greatest novelists, yet the monetary results of his literary labours must be regarded as extremely satisfactory.

Large sums of money were made by George Eliot, but we must not forget that she had some weary years to wait for the days of prosperity, and that the story of her life contains many records of disappointment after brave struggles. We read of her living in humble apartments in London; to earn a little money, which she much needed when she went to Switzerland in 1849, she tried to sell her books and globes. It was not until she was forty years of age that she established a reputation by the publication of “Adam Bede.” She received in cash down, for the first sale of her book, some £40,000, or about £2,000 a year. George Eliot had a great objection to her novels appearing in serial form, and she sacrificed much money by not first publishing them in the magazines. Ouida had for a long time the same objection to her stories being published piecemeal in newspapers and periodicals. She now appears to have got over her prejudice in this matter, and consents to write for newspaper readers. It is generally believed amongst literary and journalistic men, that she is not a brilliant success as a newspaper novelist, yet Ouida’s income as an author must be very great. The reader of the weekly paper in which fiction forms a feature is not educated up to her standard; authors like those engaged on the Family Herald and similar journals are much more popular.

It is pleasing to state that Mr. John Ruskin has made large sums with his books, but not so much, we think, as his merits entitle him to receive.