The Book Sold There At
A Dollar, Or A Dollar And A Quarter, Quite Equals Our Ordinary Five
Shilling Volume.
Nevertheless, English books are preferred, almost
as strongly as are French bonnets.
Of books absolutely printed and
produced in England, the supply in the States is of course small.
They must necessarily be costly, and as regards new books, are
always subjected to the rivalry of a cheaper American copy. But of
the reprinted works of English authors the supply is unlimited, and
the sale very great. Almost everything is reprinted: certainly
everything which can be said to attain any home popularity. I do
not know how far English authors may be aware of the fact; but it is
undoubtedly a fact that their influence as authors is greater on the
other side of the Atlantic than on this one. It is there that they
have their most numerous school of pupils. It is there that they
are recognized as teachers by hundreds of thousands. It is of these
thirty millions that they should think, at any rate in part, when
they discuss within their own hearts that question which all authors
do discuss, whether that which they write shall in itself be good or
bad, be true or false. A writer in England may not, perhaps, think
very much of this with reference to some trifle of which his English
publisher proposes to sell some seven or eight hundred copies. But
he begins to feel that he should have thought of it when he learns
that twenty or thirty thousand copies of the same have been
scattered through the length and breadth of the United States.
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