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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "The Elusive Craft of Writing," Arnold Bennett delves deeply into the intricacies of the writing process, offering an astute analysis of literary technique and the nature of creativity. Bennett's prose is both engaging and instructional, blending practical advice with philosophical reflections on the art of writing. His work occupies a pivotal place in early 20th-century literature, a period characterized by experimentation and introspection, making it an essential read for both aspiring writers and seasoned authors seeking to refine their craft. The book is peppered with illustrative examples and candid insights that highlight the challenges and rewards inherent in the artistic journey. Arnold Bennett, a key figure in the English literary scene, was not only a novelist but also a critic and playwright, and his diverse experiences undoubtedly influenced his approach to writing. His own struggles and triumphs in the literary world inform much of the book's content, as Bennett provides practical guidance shaped by his lived experiences and keen observations. This background allows him to speak authentically about the writing process and its attendant difficulties, making the text both relatable and insightful. I highly recommend "The Elusive Craft of Writing" for anyone interested in the mechanics of storytelling and the philosophical underpinnings of writing. Bennett's timeless advice transcends his own era, offering valuable lessons for contemporary writers. This book serves as both a source of inspiration and a practical manual that encourages readers to embrace their own unique voices. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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The Elusive Craft of Writing
Table of Contents
Introduction
The central promise here is that writing is not magic but a set of learnable choices shaped by attention, discipline, and respect for the reader.
This book belongs to the tradition of nonfiction craft writing, offering practical counsel on how prose gets made and why it matters. Its author, Arnold Bennett, is known as an English novelist and essayist whose guidance on work, habit, and artistic purpose helped define early twentieth-century discussions of literary practice. Without courting mystique, the text stays close to the workshop: how to conceive, draft, revise, and persist. Readers will not find an ornamented treatise; rather, they encounter a candid exploration of methods that foregrounds lucidity, intention, and steady application over fashionable theory.
The experience it offers resembles a conversation with a seasoned mentor who favors plain speech and concrete observation. The voice is firm but humane, inviting novices and professionals alike to test their assumptions against the rigors of the page. Instead of grand formulas, the book emphasizes repeatable procedures, from planning to polish, and a mood that balances encouragement with accountability. Its pace is measured, its examples grounded in everyday practice, and its counsel calibrated to help writers build stamina, refine judgment, and keep faith with the slow, exacting nature of craft.
A few themes dominate. First, the tension between inspiration and discipline is treated not as a clash but as a partnership sustained by routine. Second, time is framed as the writer’s most negotiable material—how it is portioned often determines what gets written at all. Third, clarity is a virtue that arises from purpose: the stronger the aim, the cleaner the sentence. The book also considers observation as the seed of invention, revision as the crucible of truth, and form as a servant of meaning. Across these threads runs a steady insistence on reader-centered prose.
The relevance for contemporary readers is direct. In an era of distraction, the insistence on regular practice and deliberate attention cuts through noise. Against the myth of innate talent, the book argues for habits that anyone can cultivate: outlining, scheduling, testing language aloud, and measuring success by finished work. It speaks to ethical concerns as well, urging fidelity to experience, fairness in depiction, and modesty about what a page can claim to know. Professional standards anchor its outlook, reminding writers that reliability and craft are not enemies of originality but its conditions.
Readers can approach this volume as a companion for the long middle of writing, when enthusiasm must be translated into pages. It maps common pitfalls—vagueness, procrastination, shapeless structure—and proposes ways to counter them through small, repeatable acts. The advice does not browbeat; it invites self-diagnosis and incremental improvement. Whether you are drafting fiction, essays, or criticism, you will find guidance on cultivating judgment, aligning form with intention, and sustaining momentum without sacrificing care. The promised reward is modest but profound: a steadier practice and a clearer sense of what your sentences are trying to do.
Enter these pages prepared to test ideas in your own work, to revise boldly, and to treat routine as a friend. The book’s counsel is neither faddish nor austere; it is pragmatic, humane, and attentive to the realities of limited time and boundless ambition. If the craft of writing feels elusive, that is because it lives in choices made line by line, day by day. This introduction invites you to read with curiosity, work with patience, and judge by results. In that spirit, the journey ahead is demanding, but it is also deeply enabling—an apprenticeship you can renew each time you write.
Synopsis (Selection)
This book outlines Arnold Bennett’s view of writing as a practical craft governed by method, patience, and service to the reader. He begins by separating vague notions of inspiration from the repeated acts of workmanship that build a book. He defines the writer’s chief obligations: to be intelligible, to be interesting, and to respect the time of the audience. Bennett frames authorship as a dialogue with the public rather than a private indulgence, and he stresses that technique can be learned. The opening establishes aims, dispels mystique, and sets a course from general principles toward procedures a novice can adopt immediately.
From this foundation, Bennett turns to preparation, arguing that the writer’s materials are observation, reading, and reflection. He advises cultivating literary taste through systematic reading while also scrutinizing everyday life for detail. Notes, commonplace books, and patient accumulation of facts and impressions are recommended. He emphasizes choosing subjects that can sustain interest, aligning topic, temperament, and likely readership. The section concludes by linking preparation to responsibility: sound knowledge prevents cliché and vagueness, while disciplined curiosity sharpens selection. The message is that groundwork precedes fluency, and that habits of attention are the primary tools of a working author.
Design follows preparation. Bennett presents construction as the governing art, with proportion and unity as its watchwords. He describes deciding the scale of a work, fixing its central question, and arranging parts to serve that question. Outlines are proposed not as rigid plans but as guides that prevent waste. Beginnings must engage without confusion; middles must advance by necessity; endings must resolve the governing tension without contrivance. He introduces the idea of balance between narrative drive and moments of pause. The emphasis is on forethought, economy, and the steady subordination of episodes to the whole.
He then addresses character, treating it as the engine of narrative and credibility. Bennett argues for building people from motive and action rather than abstract description. He urges consistency of behavior, tempered by believable change under pressure. Dialogue is presented as a test of character truth, revealing attitude and intention while advancing the scene. Particulars—gesture, habit, setting—are to illuminate, not decorate. He warns against caricature and exhorts authors to distinguish between what they know and what the story requires the reader to know. Character, he asserts, must be legible and consequential within the designed structure.
Plot and scene technique receive detailed treatment. Bennett defines plot as the ordered revelation of consequence, with causality binding events. He outlines methods for generating tension through stakes, reversals, and the measured withholding of information, while rejecting coincidence as a primary device. Scenes should have a clear purpose, begin late, and end early, with transitions that preserve momentum. He discusses pacing through alternation of action and reflection, and the management of time via summary and expansion. Chapters, he notes, are units of effect, each contributing to the forward pull of the whole without exhausting the reader’s patience.
Style, for Bennett, is clarity in action. He counsels plainness over ornament, precision over vagueness, and rhythm that serves sense. Sentences should carry one intention at a time; paragraphs should manage emphasis and progression. He treats point of view as a structural choice, shaping access to information and tone. Description should be selective and functional, anchored in the needs of character and plot. He advises testing diction against the ear and the page, cutting redundancy, and avoiding mannerism. The chapter’s conclusion is that style emerges from purpose and restraint, not from eccentric flourish.
Process is presented as routine. Bennett recommends fixed hours, measurable tasks, and honest records of work done. Drafting is exploratory but bounded by the prior design; revision is a separate, unsentimental stage, devoted to cutting the inessential and strengthening transitions. He proposes reading aloud, seeking structural faults before sentence-level polish, and using delays between drafts to gain perspective. He addresses blockage as a planning issue more than a mood, urging return to outline and motive. The guidance is pragmatic: small, consistent efforts accumulate, and method protects momentum when enthusiasm ebbs.
Turning to publication, Bennett discusses the business environment. He outlines markets, including periodical serialization and book rights, and advises on submitting work professionally. He notes the roles of editors and agents, the handling of proofs, and the practicalities of contracts and royalties. Reviews are treated as part of the trade: useful when specific, distracting when general. He cautions against chasing fashion and against disdain for the public. Publicity should be factual and modest. Professionalism is defined by reliability, clarity in communication, and adherence to agreements as much as by artistic competence.
The book closes by reaffirming that writing’s difficulties are persistent but tractable. Bennett’s central conclusion is that craft is a set of choices disciplined by purpose and tested by readers’ needs. He encourages continual practice, steady enlargement of one’s reading and experience, and calm acceptance of revision as inherent to the work. Originality is framed as the byproduct of truthful attention rather than novelty-seeking. The final emphasis is on durability: sound methods make a career possible, not merely a single book. The craft remains elusive only when left to chance; under method, it becomes workable.
Historical Context
Arnold Bennett’s reflections on writing emerge from the milieu of late Victorian, Edwardian, and early interwar Britain, with vantage points in both provincial Staffordshire and metropolitan London. Born in 1867 in Hanley, in the Staffordshire Potteries, Bennett moved to London in the 1890s to work in publishing and journalism, and later lived in Paris from 1903 to 1913. His craft-minded prose bears the imprint of Fleet Street offices, circulating libraries, and the expanding press, alongside the industrious culture of the Potteries. The book’s implicit setting is therefore the early twentieth-century English print economy, where editors, agents, and readers shaped writing practices as decisively as aesthetic theory.
The industrial landscape of the Staffordshire Potteries formed a durable social frame for Bennett’s views on work, discipline, and clarity. The conurbation of six towns—Burslem, Tunstall, Hanley, Stoke-upon-Trent, Longton, and Fenton—was federated as Stoke-on-Trent in 1910. By the late nineteenth century, thousands of bottle ovens dominated its skyline, and pottery workers faced hazards such as lead poisoning, prompting Pottery Health Special Regulations in 1893 and 1898. Bennett’s lifelong attention to the routines of labor and the realities of class mobility derives from this setting. His guidance to writers mirrors the orderly, production-minded ethos of a region where time, method, and consistency governed output.
Mass literacy expanded dramatically in England and Wales between 1870 and 1918. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 established school boards; the 1880 Act made attendance compulsory; the 1891 Act provided free elementary schooling; and the 1902 Balfour Act reorganized schools under local education authorities. The 1918 Education Act raised the school-leaving age to 14 and widened provision. By 1900, literacy rates exceeded 95 percent, creating vast new audiences for newspapers, magazines, and affordable books. Bennett’s craft thinking is inseparable from this democratization: he writes for readers newly empowered by schooling and cheap print, advocating unambiguous prose and practical method to meet the expectations of an expanded, time-pressed public.
The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century press revolution reshaped authorship. George Newnes’s Tit-Bits (1881) and The Strand Magazine (1891), Alfred Harmsworth’s Daily Mail (1896) and Daily Mirror (1903), and C. Arthur Pearson’s Pearson’s Magazine (1896) exemplify a mass-market ecosystem built on brevity, serialization, and regular deadlines. The Net Book Agreement (1900) stabilized retail prices while periodicals multiplied venues for paid copy. Bennett worked in the mid-1890s for Newnes’s magazine Women, learning the rhythms of the office and the demands of a heterogeneous readership. The book’s emphasis on planning, word counts, and reader focus reflects a press world where clarity and punctuality were not ideals but commercial necessities.
Authorship professionalized through institutions that secured income and status. A. P. Watt pioneered literary agency in 1875; the Society of Authors (founded 1884, associated with Walter Besant) advised on contracts and rights; and the Copyright Act of 1911 consolidated protections across the United Kingdom. Fixed-price retailing under the 1900 Net Book Agreement protected publishers’ margins, while circulating libraries and periodicals mediated access to readers. Bennett’s methodical counsel aligns with this infrastructure: he treats writing as a vocation governed by contracts, schedules, and negotiation, encouraging writers to think in ledgers and deadlines as much as in ideas. The book mirrors a moment when literary labor became a regulated profession.
The First World War transformed communication into a strategic instrument. Britain’s War Propaganda Bureau, established at Wellington House in 1914 under C. F. G. Masterman, was followed by the Ministry of Information in 1917; Lord Beaverbrook led the latter in 1918. Bennett served as Director of British Propaganda in France in 1918, based in Paris, coordinating bulletins, pamphlets, and press relations aimed at sustaining morale and allied cohesion until the Armistice of 11 November 1918. The book’s preference for direct, verifiable, and audience-aware prose is indebted to this experience, where effectiveness depended on precision, economy, and the ability to reach diverse publics quickly.
The rise of organized campaigns for women’s rights reconfigured the reading public and the marketplace for instruction. The National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies formed in 1897 under Millicent Fawcett; the Women’s Social and Political Union followed in 1903 under Emmeline Pankhurst. The Representation of the People Act 1918 enfranchised many women over 30; the Equal Franchise Act 1928 extended the vote on the same terms as men; and the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 opened professions. Bennett’s mid-1890s editorial work for Women acquainted him with a large female audience. The book’s practical tone and respect for non-elite readers reflect a market newly shaped by women’s education, employment, and civic participation.
As social and political critique, the book demystifies authorship in an age of hierarchy, insisting that skill arises from organized labor rather than inherited taste or class. It challenges the gatekeeping power of publishers, libraries, and elite salons by addressing the needs of factory hands, office clerks, and new women readers created by the Education Acts and suffrage victories. Its stress on contracts and fair pay echoes broader debates about labor rights, while its insistence on clarity registers a postwar distrust of bombast and manipulation. By treating writing as accountable work in a mass democracy, it quietly indicts the exclusions and pretensions of late Victorian and Edwardian culture.
The Elusive Craft of Writing
How to Become an Author
Chapter I The Literary Career
Divisions of literature.
In the year 1902 there were published 1743 volumes of fiction, 504 educational works, 480 historical and biographical works, 567 volumes of theology and sermons, 463 political and economical works, and 227 books of criticism and belles-lettres. These were the principal divisions of the grand army of 5839 new books issued during the year, and it will be seen that fiction is handsomely entitled to the first place. And the position of fiction is even loftier than appears from the above figures; for, with the exception of a few school-books which enjoy a popularity far exceeding all other popularities, and a few theological works, no class of book can claim as high a circulation per volume as the novel. More writers are engaged in fiction than in any other branch of literature, and their remuneration is better and perhaps surer than can be obtained in other literary markets. In esteem, influence, renown, and notoriety the novelists are also paramount.
Therefore in the present volume it will be proper for me to deal chiefly with the art and craft of fiction. For practical purposes I shall simply cut the whole of literature into two parts, fictional and non-fictional; and under the latter head I shall perforce crowd together the sublime and reverend muses of poetry, history, biography, theology, economy—everything, in short, that is not prose-fiction, save only plays; having regard to the extraordinary financial and artistic condition of the British stage and the British playwright at the dawn of the twentieth century, I propose to discuss the great “How” of the drama in a separate chapter unrelated to the general scheme of the book. As for journalism, though a journalist is not usually held to rank as an author, it is a. fact that very many, if not most, authors begin by being journalists. Accordingly I shall begin with the subject of journalism.
Two Branches of Journalism: The Mechanical.
There are two branches of journalism, and it is necessary to distinguish sharply between them. They may be called the literary branch and the mechanical branch. To take the latter first, it is mainly the concern of reporters, of all sorts, and of sub-editors. It is that part of the executive side of journalism which can be carried out with the least expenditure of original brain-power. It consists in reporting —parliament, fashionable weddings, cricket-matches, company meetings, fat-stock shows; and in work of a sub-editorial character—proof-correcting, marshalling and co-ordinating the various items of an issue, cutting or lengthening articles according to need, modifying the tone of articles to coincide with the policy of the paper, and generally seeing that the editor and his brilliant original contributors do not, in the carelessness of genius, make fools of themselves. The sub-editor and the reporter, by reason of highly-developed natural qualifications, sometimes reach a wonderful degree of capacity for their duties, and the sub-editorial chair is often occupied by an individual who obviously has not the slightest intention of remaining in it. But, as a rule, the sub-editor and the reporter are mild and minor personages. Any man of average intelligence can learn how to report verbatim, how to write correct English, how to make incorrect English correct, how to describe neatly and tersely. Sub-editors and reporters are not born; they become so because their fathers or uncles were sub-editors or reporters, or by some other accident, not because instinct irresistibly carries them into the career; they would probably have succeeded equally well in another calling. They enter an office early, by a chance influence or by heredity, and they reach a status similar to that of a solicitor’s managing-clerk. Fame is not for them, though occasionally they achieve a limited renown in professional circles.[1q] Their ultimate prospects are not glorious. Nor is their fiscal reward ever likely to be immense. In the provinces you may see the sub-editor or reporter of fifty who has reared a family on three pounds a week and will never earn three pounds ten. In London the very best mechanical posts yield as much as four hundred a year, and infrequently more; but the average salary of a thorough expert would decidedly not exceed two hundred and fifty, while the work performed is laborious, exacting, responsible, and often extremely inconvenient. Consider the case of the sub-editor of an evening paper, who must breakfast at 6 a.m. winter and summer, and of the sub-editor of a morning paper, who never gets to bed before three in the morning. Relatively, a clerk in a good house is better paid than a sub-editor or a reporter.
I shall have nothing more to say about this branch of journalism. Its duties are largely of an official kind and in the nature of routine, and are almost always studied practically in an office. A useful and trustworthy manual of them is Mr. John B. Mackie’s Modem Journalism: a Handbook of Instruction and Counsel for the Young Journalist, published by Crosby, Lockwood & Son, price half-a-crown.
The Literary Branch.
I come now to the higher branch of journalism, that which is connected, more or less remotely, with literature. This branch merges with the lower branch in the person of the “descriptive-reporter,” who may be a genius with the wages of an ambassador, like the late G. W. Steevens, or a mere hack who describes the Lord Mayor’s procession and writes “stalwart emissaries of the law” when he means policemen. It includes, besides the aristocracy of descriptive reporting, reviewers, dramatic and other critics, financial experts, fashion-writers, paragraphists, miscellaneous contributors regular and irregular, assorted leader-writers, assistant editors, and editors; I believe that newspaper proprietors also like to fancy themselves journalists. Very few ornaments of the creative branch of journalism become so by deliberate intention from the beginning. The average creative journalist enters his profession by “drifting” into it; the verb “to drift” is always used in this connection; the natural and proper assumption is that he was swept away on the flood of a powerful instinct. He makes a timid start by what is called “freelancing,” that is, sending an unsolicited contribution to a paper in the hope that it will be accepted and paid for. He continues to shoot out unsolicited contributions in all directions until one is at length taken; then he thinks his fortune is made. In due course he gradually establishes a connection with one or more papers; perhaps he writes a book. On a day he suddenly perceives that an editor actually respects and relies on him; he is asked to “come into the office” sometimes, to do “things,” and at last he gets the offer of an appointment. Lo! he is a full-fledged journalist; yet the intermediate stages leading from his first amateurish aspiring to his achieved position have been so slight, vague, and uncertain, that he can explain them neither to himself nor to others. He has "drifted into journalism.” And let me say here that he has done the right thing. It is always better to enter a newspaper office from towards the top than from towards the bottom. It is, in my opinion, an error of tactics for a youth with a marked bent towards journalism, to join a staff at an early age as a proof-reader, reporter, or assistant sub-editor; he is apt to sink into a groove, to be obsessed by the routine instead of the romance of journalism, and to lose intellectual elasticity.
The creative branch of journalism is proportionately no better paid than the mechanical branch. The highest journalistic post in the kingdom is reputed to be worth three thousand a year, an income at which scores of lawyers, grocers, bishops, music-hall artistes, and novelists would turn up their noses. A thousand a year is a handsome salary for the editor of a first-class organ; some editors of first-class organs receive much less, few receive more. (The London County Council employs eleven officers at a salary of over a thousand a year each, and five at a thousand each.) An assistant editor is worth something less than half an editor, while an advertisement manager is worth an editor and an assistant editor added together. A leader-writer may receive from four hundred to a thousand a year. No man can earn an adequate livelihood as a book-reviewer or a dramatic or musical critic, pure and simple; but a few women by much industry contrive to flourish by fashion - writing alone. The life of a man without a regular appointment who exists as a freelance may be adventurous, but it is scarcely worth living. The rate of pay for journalistic contributions varies from seven and sixpence to two guineas per thousand words; the average is probably under a pound; not a dozen men in London get more than two guineas a thousand for unsigned irregular contributions. A journalist at once brilliant, reliable, industrious, and enterprising, may be absolutely sure of a reasonably good income, provided he keeps clear of editorships and does not identify himself too prominently with any single paper. If he commits either of these indiscretions, his welfare largely depends on the unwillingness of his proprietor to sell his paper. A change of proprietorship usually means a change of editors and of prominent contributors, and there are few more pathetic sights in Fleet Street than the Famous Journalist dismissed through no fault of his own.
On the whole, it cannot be made too clear that journalism is never a gold-mine except for newspaper proprietors, and not always for them. The journalist sells his brains in a weak market Other things being equal, he receives decidedly less than he would receive in any pursuit save those of the graphic arts, sculpture, and music. He must console himself by meditating upon the romance, the publicity, and the influential character of his profession. Whether these intangible things are a sufficient consolation to the able, conscientious man who gives his best for, say, three or four hundred a year and the prospect of a precarious old age, is a question happily beyond the scope of my treatise.
Fiction.
I have made no mention of the natural gifts of universal curiosity, alertness, inextinguishable verve, and vivacious style which are necessary to success in creative journalism, because the aspirant will speedily discover by results whether or not he possesses them. If he fails in the earlier efforts of freelancing, he will learn thereby that he is not a born journalist, and the “drifting” process will automatically cease. For the same reason I need not enter upon an academic discussion of the qualifications proper to a novelist. In practice, nobody plunges blindly into the career of fiction. Long before the would-be novelist has reached the point at which to turn back means ignominious disaster, he will have ascertained with some exactness the exchange value of his qualifications, and will have set his course accordingly. There is the rare case of the beginner who achieves popularity by his first book. This apparently fortunate person will be courted by publishers and flattered by critics, and in the ecstasy of a facile triumph he may be tempted to abandon a sure livelihood “in order to devote himself entirely to fiction.” One sees the phrase occasionally in literary gossip. The temptation should be resisted at all costs. A slowly-built reputation as a, novelist is nearly indestructible; neither time nor decay of talent nor sheer carelessness will quite kill it; your Mudie subscriber, once well won, is the most faithful adherent in the world. But the reputation that springs up like a mushroom is apt to fade like a mushroom; modern instances might easily be cited, and will occur to the student of publishers’ lists. Moreover, it is unquestionable that many writers can produce one striking book and no more. Therefore the beginner in fiction should not allow himself to be dazzled by the success of a first book. The success of a seventh book is a sufficient assurance for the future, but the success of a first book should be followed by the success of two others before the author ventures, in Scott’s phrase, to use fiction as a crutch and not merely as a stick.
Speaking broadly, fiction is a lucrative profession; it cannot compare with stock-broking, or brewing, or practice at the parliamentary bar, but it is tolerably lucrative. Never before, despite the abolition of the three-volume novel, did so many average painstaking novelists earn such respectable incomes as at the present day. And the rewards of the really successful novelist seem to increase year by year. A common course is to begin with short stories for magazines and weeklies. These vary in length from two to six thousand words, and the payment, for unknown authors, varies from half a guinea to three guineas per thousand. The leading English magazines willingly pay fifteen guineas for a five-thousand-word story. But to make a living out of short stories alone is impossible in England. I believe it may be accomplished in America, where at least one magazine is prepared to pay forty dollars per thousand words irrespective of the author’s reputation.
The production of sensational serials is remunerative up to a certain point The halfpenny dailies and the popular penny weeklies will pay from ten shillings to thirty shillings per thousand words; and the newspaper syndicates, who buy to sell again to a number of clients simultaneously, sometimes go as far as two pounds per thousand for an author who has little reputation but who suits them. Thus a man may make a hundred pounds by working hard for a month, with the chance of an extra fifty pounds for book-rights afterwards. A writer who makes a name as a sensational serialist does not often get beyond three pounds per thousand, though the syndicates may be more generous, rising to five or six pounds per thousand. I should doubt whether even the most popular of sensational serialists can obtain more than six pounds per thousand. In this particular market a reputation is less valuable than elsewhere. And it must also be remembered that the sale of sensational serials in book form is seldom remarkable.
The mild domestic novelist who plods steadily along, and whose work is suitable for serial issue, is in a better position than the mere sensation-monger. She—it is often a “she”—may get from three to six pounds per thousand for serial rights as her reputation waxes, and her book-rights may be anything from two hundred to a thousand pounds. I can state with certainty that it is not unusual for a novelist who has never really had an undubitable success, but who has built up a sort of furtive half-reputation, to make a thousand pounds out of a novel, first and last. Such a person can write two novels a year with ease. I have more than once been astonished at the sums received by novelists whom, both in an artistic and a commercial sense, I had regarded as nobodies. I know an instance of a particularly mild and modest novelist who was selling the book-rights of her novels outright for three hundred pounds apiece. One day it occurred to her to demand double that sum, and to her immense surprise the publisher immediately accepted the suggestion. I should estimate that this author can comfortably write a book in three months.
The Really Successful Novelist.
The novelist who once really gets himself talked about, or, in other words, sells at least ten thousand copies of a book, and who is capable of living up to his reputation, soon finds that he is on a bed of roses. For serial rights in England and America he may get fifteen pounds per thousand, making twelve hundred pounds for an eighty-thousand-word novel. For book-rights he will be paid at the rate of about seventy-five pounds per thousand copies of the circulation; so that if his book sells ten thousand copies in England and five thousand copies in America, he receives eleven hundred and twenty-five pounds. Baron Tauchnitz will give from twenty-five to fifty pounds for the continental rights, and the colonial rights are worth something. The grand total for the book will thus be quite two thousand four hundred pounds. This novelist will probably produce three novels in two years. Magazines will pay sixty pounds apiece and upwards for his short stories, and from time to time the stories will be collected and issued in a volume which is good for a few hundred pounds. By writing a hundred and fifty thousand words a year he will make an annual income of three thousand five hundred pounds. His habit will be to write a thousand words a day three days a week, and on each working day he will earn about twenty-five pounds. All which is highly agreeable—but then the man is highly exceptional.
The case of the novelist who has a vogue of the most popular kind, that is to say, whose books reach a circulation of from fifty to a hundred thousand copies, is even more opulent, luxurious, and lofty. The sale of a hundred thousand copies of a six-shilling novel means that the author receives upwards of seven thousand five hundred pounds. The value of the serial rights of a book by such an author is extremely high in many cases, though sometimes it is nothing. There are ten authors in England who can count on receiving at least four thousand pounds for any long novel they choose to write, and there are several who have made, and may again make, twenty thousand pounds from a single book, which is at the rate of about four shillings a word. And seeing that any author who knows his craft can easily —despite statements to the contrary in illustrated interviews and other grandiose manifestations of bombast—compose three thousand words of his very best in a week, the pecuniary rewards of the first-class “boom” should satisfy the most avaricious and exacting.
The Sagacious Mediocrity.
But the average mediocre novelist, too good to excite a mob to admiration, and not good enough to be taken seriously by persons of taste, can have only a polite interest in the foregoing statistics. It remains for me to assure the average mediocre novelist in posse, that, if he minds his task, produces regularly, perseveres in one vein, judiciously compromises between his own ideals and the desires of the public, and conscientiously puts his best workmanship into all he does, he may safely rely on a reasonable return in coin. There are scores of mediocrities who make upwards of five hundred a year from fiction by labour that cannot be called fatiguing, writers who never accomplish anything worthy of the name of art, but who fulfil a harmless and perhaps useful function in our effete civilisation. The novelist, even the mediocrity, works under felicitous conditions. He is tied to no place and no times. He probably writes for three hours a day, five days a week, nine months in the year. He can produce his tale beneath an Italian sky as easily as in the groves of Brixton or Hampstead. No man is his master, and he is dependent on nobody’s goodwill and on nobody’s whim. Only three things can seriously hurt him: a grave failure of health, a European war, and a prolonged strike of bookbinders. The efflux of time will serve but to solidify his reputation, if he uses it well; his income will rise for years, and will remain stable for more years, and though ultimately it must fall it will not fall as fast as once it rose. On the other hand, the novelist who will not study his readers, who presumes on their obtuseness to offer them less than his best, and who lacks stedfastness, may confidently anticipate a decreasing income, no matter what his powers.
Non-Fictional Writing.
The well-known division of authors into those who want to write because they have something to say, and those who merely want to write, is peculiarly applicable to the non-fictional field. To the former class belong the authors of the best histories, biographies, travel books, theological books, and scientific, critical, and technical treatises. The latter class is composed of a heterogeneous crowd of compilers, rearrangers, and general literary middlemen anxious to turn an honest penny. The former class seldom needs advice of an expert nature, for the troubling consciousness of a "message” almost invariably connotes the ability to deliver that message with all needful lucidity and conviction; no one is so sure of achieving the aims of the literary craftsman as the man who has something to say and wishes to say it simply and have done with it. The latter class needs direction, for it has none of its own; and its principal desire is to make money, whereas with the former class the financial side of the work is usually secondary. Many great works of fiction have been accomplished because the authors wanted money, and wanted it badly and in large quantities, but this can be said of extremely few great non-fictional works.
