LITERARY TALENT

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 84, 9 April 1932, Page 17

LITERARY TALENT

JOURNALISM THE NURSE

Under the heading "Journalism and Literature," Mr. Ivor. Brown contributes an interesting article to the "Fortnightly Review." To budding writers it is replete with good advice. "Books by beginners are investments; there may be a wonderful stroke of luck with a first book 33 with a first play. The Book Society seizes on 'Hatter's Castle/, the world seized on 'Journey's End.' But these sublimities of fortune are one. in ten thousand.'?

Generally, the young unknown writer, if he has uo private income, cannot expect to pay his rent hy writing books. But "Journalism can pay the rent"; in the same breath Mr. Brown adds: "Far be it from me to incite a general rush to an overcrowded Meet Street." It is the nurse of literary talent, but, so, too, are the newspapers, magazines, and reviews whose pages are ever open to the aspiring writer.

The Poet Laureato once attended nightly in the office of the-"Manches-ter Guardian" to edit the miscellany column, and it is recorded ■ that when there was not enough copy from outside, he used to write a poem as a fillup, one of those poems which were afterwards published as "Salt Water Ballads," a volume whoso first edition valuo subsequently ran extremely high. Kipling's apprenticeship to journalism is too well known to need comment; Shaw lived by criticism until the world was ready for his creation; "Wells dc rived enormous help from the Fleet Street of his youth. -Barrie wrote leaders at Nottingham; and Bennett edited a woman's paper while he applied himself to the masters of French fiction, the better to bo the master of the English novel. There was a rumour that he had contributed a serial to "Chatterbox," that splendid journal of the nursery which some of us may remember with gratitude, but he denied it. J. B. Priestley could not afford to proceed straight to his major novels; lie had his brilliant journalistic interval. Of course, hundreds of authors have helped to keep the 'bailiff from tho door by taking in each other's washing in the form of reviewing.