PROLIFIC NOVELISTS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17343, 16 July 1924, Page 8

PROLIFIC NOVELISTS.

BARING GOULD'S 100 BOOKS. Sabine Baring-Gould, who died only a few weeks before his ninetieth birthday, wrote just over 100 books. it was, perhaps, because he lived so long that lie wrote so many, but probably the fact that he wrote on a number of subjects helped him. It is difficult to think that anyone could write books of one class to the number of 100 Ralph H. Bretlierton, in the London l£ Evening News’’). Second thoughts suggest that an exception ought to be mane in favour of fiction. The late L. T. Meade, who gave us girls’ stories, certainly wrote well over a hundred books, and Mr G. R. Burgin claims, I think, seventy books to 'late, and is still going strong. Undoubtedly many writers of fiction are prolific. But all novelists do not turn books cut at a furious rate. The established writer is, as a rule, content with a book a- year. Some make the interval longer. Sir Hall Caine lets about three yeai-g go by between his books, the last of which was his twelfth. Thackeray gave us only about half a dozen full-sized novels. He died young, it is true, at fifty-one. but had h i lived to a good old age he would probably have done no more than double the number of his big books. When he died at fifty-nine Dickens who started work young, had not written a score of novels. Borrow, though he lived to a great age, produced only five books. Yet, had writing been easy with him he might have been very prolific, because of his interest in legend, topography and pilology, all great sources of inspiration. Scott, Trollope, Reade, and others of the old writers all seem to us to have been very ready with the pen, but their output, in number of books, was not startlingly great. It must be remembered, however, that books, and particularly novels, were longer in the nineteenth century than they are today. A hundred novels as long as “Vanity Fair” or “David Copperfield ” could not be written in the longest life-time, however busy it might be. But even in an age of short books it is an achievement to write 100. It betokens not only great industry, but also—to the envy of the majority of writers —ease in the actual work of writing, and a real love of it.