AN AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 1905, 25 May 1888, Page 28

AN AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR.

i FEARGUS HUME'S LITERARY CAREER AND HIS SUCCESSFUL NOVEL. , Feargus Hume is a barrister affiliated to the Supreme Court of New Zealand, and he is at present managing clerk to a firm of solicitors in Melbourne, Victoria. He is 22 years of age. He is of Scotch descent, and his parents hold a good social position in Dunedin. He was born at Dunedin, and educated there, and after passing his examination as a barrister — barrister and solicitor are synonymous terms in those colonies — he went to Melbourne and took up the work he ■is at present engaged in. He had no money and few friends, and had altogether his own career to make. That was about three years ago. Before that he had written a few verses, and, having strong dramatic tendencies, he sent them to Mr Clement Scott, managing editor of the Theatre. Clement Scott thought the verses good, and inserted them. Shortly afterwards Hume wrote a psychological story and sent it round to the Melbourne publishers. It was universally refused, and he placed it on one side. Then he wrote a farcical comedy called " The Bigamist," and placed that aside too. Then he started in with the " Mystery of a Hansom Cab." He offered it to all the Melbourne publishers without success ; then to the New South Wales publishers, and they all refused it contemptuously. He personally appealed to the managing director of the biggest publishing company in the Australian colonies, who told him that even if he took the financial risk and published the work himself, his firm would not I put their name to it ; that it was no use offering a book to the Australasian public that had not previously been submitted to the judgment of the English trade; that it was a colonial work written by a colonial, and therefore was not worth' putting a penny into. Hume offered to pay the whole cost if they would undertake the publishing, but they refused to have anything to do with it, and he had to take his MS. home with him, and bear his disappointment as best he could. Well, at that time I, who am an old Australian, had just returned to Melbourne from California, where I had been connected with Bancroft's, the biggest publishing firm on the Pacific slope. I was on the look-out for decent MS. to* get hold of, when a mutual friend said, " Why, there's Feargus Hume, an old chum of yours ; he has written a novel ; why not get him to let you read it ?" I did so. I commenced that MS. about 8 o'clock one evening, and could not put it down until I had finished it, about 7 the nexf morning. I decided there and then to publish it, and in October I published 5000 copies at Is — up to that time an unheard of edition as far as the colonies are concerned, most colonial editions being of 500 and 1000, 2000 being considered a very large number. I took all the financial risk. In November I published another edition of 5000, and in the February following an edition of 10,000. While these were being sold some copies appear to have reached England. A London publishing house instructed their agent by cable to offer me certain terms for the international copyright. At this time I had no intention of publishing in England, but this offer opened my eyes. The agent receded somewhat in his terms, and I broke off negotiations and offered the copyirght to another London publishing house of high repute, making the terms, as I thought, prohibitory. Within four days of the receipt of my letter they wrote back offering me 75 per cent, of what I asked. I refused it, got a few Melbourne capitalists to join me, brought the work over here to publish, and in this little pigstye of an office we have been doing, and are doing now, a business such as astonishes the London publishing trade. On 3rd December we published an edition of 50,000 ; early in January a further edition of 25,000; at the end of the month an edition of 50,000, of which we have only 7000 left ; and now there is another edition of 50,000 in the hands of the printers, who are working night and day. We can't supply the trade fast enough. Hume, who is' coming to England, is a' young fellow rather below the medium height, dark, and with an intelligent face.— J. W. Trischler, in the London Evening Post, 1