THE PROFITS OF AUTHORS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XI, Issue 45, 7 March 1884, Page 18

THE PROFITS OF AUTHORS.

SOME interesting figures are given in Truth showing the earnings of a number of well-known ■writers. Disraeli, it is stated, made by his pen £30,000 ; Byron, £23,000 ; Lord Wacaulay received £20,000 on account of three-fourths net profits for his history. Thiers and Lamartine received nearly £20,000 each for their respective histories. Thackeray is Baid never to have received £5,000 for any of his novels. Sir Walter Scott was paid £110,000 for eleven novels of three volumes each and nine volumes of " T»les of my Landlord." For one novel he received £10,000, and between November, 1825, and Jane, 1827, he received £26,000 for literary work. Lord Lytton is said to have made £80,000 by his novels ; Dickens, it has been computed, ought to have been making £10,000 a year for the three years prior to the publication of " Nicholas Nickleby " ; and Trollope in twenty years made £70,000. The following sums are said to have been paid for ■ingle works ;— « Romola, 1 " George Eliot, £10,000 ;i" Waverley," Scott, £700 ; " Woodstock," Scott, £8,000 ; « Life of Napoleon," Scott, £18,000 ; •« Armadale," Wilkie Collins, £5,000 ; « LaUa Rookh," Thomas Moore, £3,000 ; « History o£ Rome," Goldsmith, £300 ; History of Greece," Goldsmith, £260 ; " History of England," Goldsmith, £600 ; " Vicar of Wakefield," Goldsmith, £60 ; " Decline and Fall," Gibbon, £10,000 ; " Lives of Poets," Johnson, £300 ; " Rasselas," Johnson, £100.