DOI article:
Waugh, Arthur: The auction room of letters
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.27805#0262
258 The Auction Room of Letters
moral which these few pages will do their best to indicate. For
the situation, which one is first inclined to laugh away as ridicu-
lous, has its serious side as well, and it is a question whether the
time has not arrived when we should take the literary auctioneer at
his own valuation, and write him off the books.
The first thing that strikes one, I suppose, is the consideration
of how immensely things have changed in the last few years to
make such utterance as that which opens this paper possible.
Except for a few dingy and detached houses here and there, houses
which seem to break out in the centre of our trim red-brick lines
of villadom—like ghosts to trouble joy—except for these (and they
are few), Grub Street is no more. We all remember, or our
fathers at least have declared unto us, the old-world vision of the
publisher. He was a Colossus, set up at the receipt of custom,
under whose huge legs the wretched authors, petty men, peeped
about, striving to rivet his attention with humble tributes of care-
fully copied manuscript. For such as he regarded there remained
hard terms and an invidious reputation. To-day all this is changed.
It is now the author (have we not received it on his own authority r)
who mounts into the rostrum, hammer in hand, and having at his
side a bundle of type-writing, distributes to the struggling middle-
men a printed synopsis of the material on offer, and proceeds to
start the bidding with a wholesome reserve price. Then the
publishers continue one against the other, pitting royalty against
royalty, advance against advance, till down comes the hammer and
off go the copy and the profits. Nor, mark you, is the auctioneer
contented yet; the open market, he says, is still not open enough
for his desires. It seems that these men of business do not know
the secrets of their own beggarly trade (have we not this, too, on
the authority of the author ?). They are the victims of a miser-
able niggardliness which forbids them to bid to the value of the
material
moral which these few pages will do their best to indicate. For
the situation, which one is first inclined to laugh away as ridicu-
lous, has its serious side as well, and it is a question whether the
time has not arrived when we should take the literary auctioneer at
his own valuation, and write him off the books.
The first thing that strikes one, I suppose, is the consideration
of how immensely things have changed in the last few years to
make such utterance as that which opens this paper possible.
Except for a few dingy and detached houses here and there, houses
which seem to break out in the centre of our trim red-brick lines
of villadom—like ghosts to trouble joy—except for these (and they
are few), Grub Street is no more. We all remember, or our
fathers at least have declared unto us, the old-world vision of the
publisher. He was a Colossus, set up at the receipt of custom,
under whose huge legs the wretched authors, petty men, peeped
about, striving to rivet his attention with humble tributes of care-
fully copied manuscript. For such as he regarded there remained
hard terms and an invidious reputation. To-day all this is changed.
It is now the author (have we not received it on his own authority r)
who mounts into the rostrum, hammer in hand, and having at his
side a bundle of type-writing, distributes to the struggling middle-
men a printed synopsis of the material on offer, and proceeds to
start the bidding with a wholesome reserve price. Then the
publishers continue one against the other, pitting royalty against
royalty, advance against advance, till down comes the hammer and
off go the copy and the profits. Nor, mark you, is the auctioneer
contented yet; the open market, he says, is still not open enough
for his desires. It seems that these men of business do not know
the secrets of their own beggarly trade (have we not this, too, on
the authority of the author ?). They are the victims of a miser-
able niggardliness which forbids them to bid to the value of the
material