PROFITS OF THE PEN.

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

PROFITS OF THE PEN.

FORTUNES MADE BY FICTION WRITERS.

Mrs Florence Barclay, who wrote f l Tike Rosary ” when she was well past forty, and had up to then been the comparatively poor wife of a rector, left the very substantial fortune of £35,749, all made in a few years (says a liondon paper). Strangely enough, she nearly missed her chance, being disappointed by the rejection of the book by London publishers. However, she offered it in America, and it sold 200,OIK) copies the first year.

That wonderfully prolific novelist. Charles Garvice, who coniessed to having written a novel in a fortnight, ami as many as sixteen in the course of one year, was ante to keep several houses going, live the life of a country gentleman, and leave -over £<o,ooo. E. \\ . fiornung, the creator of that immensely popular gentleman criminal “Raffles,” who appeared both inside the pages of a novel and also on the stage, managed to leave £12,000, yet that once popular novelist who signed herself “ Helen Mathers ” left under a thousand pounds when she died.

She considered that she threw' away £20,000 by parting with her first and most popular book for £3l in 1875. In twenty-five years it ran through a hundred editions ,and was translated into many languages, but the authoress got nothing more for her pains 1 One might have thought that that prime favourite, O. Henry, would have left quite a comfortable fortune, instead of the very small one of £50,000, for his books had great sales and he wrote a large number. It must bo remembered that he travelled a. great deal, picking up local colour, and that lie was the sole owner of an eighty-ton schooner!

That other thrill-writer, George Manville Fenn, although ho had a big family, left the much larger fortune of £15,000.

Scott probably made a quarter of a million sterling by his pen. and Mark Twain fifty thousand more than that. Dumas certainly made a million francs and died penniless. In the whole history of literature there is no more magnificent spendthrift than the great Alexandre Dumas. It was his lordly habit to have a bowl full of silver and gold and notes standing on the mantelpiece. When his friends came to borrow', as they often, did, the romancer waved his hand towards the bowl and bade them help themselves, and ho was known to light his cigar with a twenty-franc note !

The late Jack London was not in the least interested if an editor offered less than £l5O for a short story running to eight pages of the magazine, with illustrations! Tf such men as W. W . Jacobs, E. Phillips Oppenheim and P. G. TVodeliouse were to write one story a month, their income-tax would still be considerable.