Wrote a Book During Week-End

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 531, 7 December 1928, Page 14

Wrote a Book During Week-End

PROLIFIC EDGAR WALLACE Edgar Wallace’s income and tlie time he takes to write a book are topic of conversation in London. In an interview he gave the following confessions; — “For a good long time 1 worked for others,” he said. “It then occurred to me that it was time 1 started to earn something for myself. My first success, ‘The Ringer,’ was put on by the late Frank Curzou. He made £20,000. I made £6,000. After that I decided to form myself into a oneman company and be my own producer and business manager, with the help of my wife, who handles my money and signs my cheques.” Judging by the fact that he has three plays on in London at the moment, as well as three companies on tour, his system seems to be working pretty well. When all the companies are doing well at the same time he may make anything up to £3,000 or £4,000 a week —apart, of course, from nevels, short stories, journalism, and film production. * * * When something goes wrong, on the other hand, it is Mr. Wallace who pays. “People wonder how much I make,” he remarked. “I never hear them wondering how much I have to spend. Being my own backer I have to foot all bills out of my own pocket. Wages cost me £6OO a week at the Lyceum and £7OO at the Apollo, and the three touring companies bring the total to £2,100 a week. The last month’s hot spell has delighted a good many millions. My enjoyment has been tempered by the fact that it has cost me well over a thousand pounds a week. Written 9,000,000 Words Mr. Wallace is a modest man and not given to talking much about himself, but by questioning I extracted the following vital statistics (no figures guaranteed accurate after 24 hours). He has written: 140 novels (though he might have forgotten 10 or a dozen) ; Half a dozen plays (at least) Two hundred (or it might be four hundred) short stories; About 9,000,000 words. Mr. Wallace has just returned from holiday. “I am a lazy devil and haven’t done any work for four months,” he lamented. “Not even a play?” I asked. “Not one. But I have to deliver one in a week. I have a plot and must make a start soon.” I asked him which of his novels he had written in the shortest time j md which had taken him longest. “A firm of publishers asked me on j a Thursday for a novel of 70,000 words ] by noon on Monday,” he told me. , “Working 17 hours a day, dictating it all to a typist, with my wife doing tha corrections, I delivered ‘The Strange Countess’ on Monday morning.”