BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE

Southland Times, Issue 24106, 20 April 1940, Page 15

BOOKS FOR THE PEOPLE

Publishers’ Experiments In Other Days

[By

ROBERT LYND in the News Chronicle]

Books, like whisky and cigarettes, have gone up in price. A bottle of whisky has gone up from 12/6 to 14/3, a packet of 20 cigarettes from a shilling to 1/2, and a novel of ordinary length from 7/6 to 8/3. John Ruskin would have approved of this. He did not, I think, like either whisky or tobacco, and he maintained that the more you paid for a book, the more highly you were likely to value it. At least, when he was asked why he, who was so eager to catch the ear of the working-classes, did not publish his books at lower prices, he declared that a good book was a thing in buying which the reader ought to make some sacrifice in order to show his appreciation of its worth. I am not sure that Ruskin was right. I first read the Waverley novels in a sixpenny edition—net price, 4|d each —and I could .not have enjoyed them more if I had gone without food to find the money for them. Those were days in which you could buy most of the mid-Victorian English novelists for 41d —Dickens, Reade and Kingsley. You could also buy a complete Shakespeare for a shilling, and Sir Thomas Browne’s “Religio Medici” and Swift’s “Battle of the Books” (in Cassell’s Popular Library) for 3d. BETTER EDITIONS I agree with Ruskin up to this point —that, though hundreds of thousands of us revelled in the masterpieces of literature in cheap paper-backed editions, we felt a strange discontent till we possessed them in a more permanent form. If we liked “Guy Mannering” at 4Jd, that was all the more reason for spending 2/6 or 3/6 on a clothcovered edition of the book that could be, as all the best books ought to be, read again and again.

Cheap books, indeed, merely whetted the appetite for dearer books. Paper-backed masterpieces disappeared like old magazines, but the same books in cloth remained possessions for ever. I cannot, I am afraid, boast of ever having made any great sacrifices in order to buy books. I cannot, for example, emulate Mr J. B. Priestley, who has told how as a youth he used to save his lunch money and buy longed-for volumes in Everyman’s Library with the savings. Thousands of the young, I am sure, have done the same. The most that I can say for myself, however, is that, till I began to smoke, I spent all the money I had on books and other reading matter rather than on anything else.

Not that I entirely adjured confectionery and other aids to a placid existence; but I would have given all the cakes in the world for a new Stevenson or Kipling. Those were our gods, and not bad gods either. What a Utopia of book buying that would now seem, with 6/- novels selling in the shops at 4/6 each! It is true that the three-volume novel was still being published at a guinea and a-half, but that went almost entirely to the libraries. The book buyer - had to wait till the library subscribers had had their fill before he could buy the latest Hardy in a one-volume 4/6 edition. Even so,

it was something to get Hardy so cheap. If “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” were published today it would probably cost 9/6.

THE WIDER PUBLIC It was Hall Caine, I think, who, realizing that a great new book-buying public had. appeared, first decided to break away from the custom of publishing new novels in three expensive volumes and to put his books within reach of the ordinary reader from, the beginning. It was, if I remember right, the 6/- “Manxman” with which he created this revolution in publishing. Marie Corelli followed suit with “Barabbas,” and the • three-volume novel was soon dead.

The boldest attempt to make the ever-growing reading public buy books instead of borrowing them from libraries came some years later—about 1910 or so—when Messrs Nelson issued a series of new novels by famous authors at 2/- each. The high quality of these novels may be estimated from the fact that Messrs Nelson’s list included Mr Wells’s “Mr Polly,” Mr Belloc’s “The Girondist,” Mr E. C. Bentley's “Trent’s Last Case,” and books by Anthony Hope, “Q,” and the then Mr John Buchan.

Had it not been for the war we might still be buying the masterpieces of contemporary fiction for 2/- a volume. No doubt, since the book-reading public is increasing every year, the publishers are still thinking of a means of transforming a reading public into a buying public. It has been suggested that it would be worth while to experiment with publishing books in paper backs as they do in France. It would be possible, obviously, to publish new books in two editions —a clothbound edition for sale to the libraries and a cheaper paper-bound edition for sale in the book shops. It is a question, however, whether the British public, which likes something solid looking both in its books and .in its food, would pay the necessary price for paper-backed novels. It certainly buys the Penguins in enormous quantities, but a Penguin costs only sixpence. A new novel by Sir Hugh Walpole, even in a paper back, would cost a good many hundred per cent, more than that.

I have no doubt, however, that whatever the price of books, we shall go on buying them as soon as we have recovered from the first shock of wartime taxation. When one has got into the habit of reading one cannot easily do without them, and a library book is never the same as a book of our own. There is this to be said, too, that books are still among the cheapest of refreshments, and that a good book can be returned to again and again, like the widow’s unfailing barrel of meal. Literature—like the other arts, music, painting and architecture—was badly hit by the outbreak of the war, but how surprisingly generous has been the output of it since!

What the effect of the extra ninepence or so on the price of every book will be we cannot foretell. There are probably masses of confirmed book buyers in the country for whom an extra ninepence has no terrors. If you are easily terrified in money matters, however, look at your income-tax demand and you will realize that ninepence is no more than a fleabite!