SMALL BEGINNINGS TO GREAT CAREERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2356, 20 April 1899, Page 55

SMALL BEGINNINGS TO GREAT CAREERS.

STRIKING CONTRASTS BETWEEN THEN AND NOW. It is not a dozen years since Mr Kipling was an obscure Indian journalist whose most brilliant articles were barely scanned and cast aside, and whose income was measured by a few pounds a month. His first modest, paper-covered book of verses was a drug in the market at two shillings a co^"-. To-day a corcv of this despised fledgeling fetches £12, or 120 times its original cost ; and from a few pounds a month its author has risen to almost as many thousands a year. Hall Came spent many years in ill-paid provincial journalism before he came to London as secretary to Dante Rossetti an-1 incidentally found a fortune. His first literary work brought him little of either money or fame ; and it is no exaggeration to say that his novel, " The Christian," has already brought .him 50 times as much as his first four published books together. His income has risen from hundreds to as many thousands within a dozen years. Mr Zangwill tells a good story of the magic which time works. In his obscure days as a teacher in the Jews' Free School he wrote some verses and timidly sent them to the editor of an American magazine. They were promptly returned. Some years later, when Fame had come his way, the' same editor cabled to him for a poem. Mr Zongwill promptly dispatched the rejected verses of his boyhood, which were printed to a flourish of trumpets and paid for almost with bags of gold. The ill-paid teacher of the eighties is the feted, brilliant author of the nineties, with an income running far into four figures.

A few years Avrought as great a change in the fortunes of Mr Rider Haggard. His first book, " Cetywayo and His White Neighbours " cost him £50 to publish, in addition to all his labour; and his second book, " Dawn," ultimately brought £30 into his coffers. In " King Solomon's Mines " he found his vein of gold, ano*#is first year's loss of £50 has been converted into a yearly income of a hundred times as much. Just a dozen years ago Mr Gunter, a little-known and worse-paid American playwright, was taking the manuscript of " Mr Barnes, of New -York," from one publishing house to another, rejection meeting him everywhere, until in very despair he published the book at his own expense. The sequel is known to the world ; Mr Gunter's next novel brought him £10,000 within a year, and the rejected novel was the foundation of a fortune. To-day Mr Gunter has a palatial house in New York and large estates, and is sole owner of a big publishing business.

The same story is told of John Habberton, an American journalist, and his now world-known book, "Helen's Babies." The MSS. was received everywhere with contempt and even derision. The only appreciation it received was' from a girl subreader, who vowed it was the most amusing book she had ever read ; and through her insistence it was ultimately published as a very risk}' experiment. Its fame was immediate, and its author's fortune insured.

Miss Marie Corelli's " Romance of Two Worlds " was scorned by publishers ; and yet its success, when published, was immediate and phenomenal. Miss Corelli's income from her books is now much over £5000 a year, and it is said that she^receives a larger royalty — 15 per cent, of the gross receipt*- — for acting rights than any living author. Mr Conan Doyle's first year of writing barely averaged 10s a week. Within five years liis income had leaped to thousands a year, and he can command hundreds of pounds for a short story, and thousands for a complete novel.

Madame Sarah Grand has revolutionised her fortunes within the brief space of six years. In the early nineties she was an unknown writer in a West End boarding house, toiling hard for labourer's wages. To-day each new book is appraised in thousands of pounds, and the obscure boarder is now a literary and social lion.