IT

T is yet a little early to summarize the book auction sales of the season of 19245, but the great sales in this country are over for the present, and from them some interesting facts may be gathered. Only a few really important sales have been held the past season, although there were many in which a few outstanding items brought remarkable prices. The number of the more common "collectors' books" which have come into the market has been so large that the prices of these have become fairly standardized, and a collector needs only to know the condition of a copy of the first edition of Westmacott's "English Spy", for instance, to estimate how much he ought to pay for it. In the great sales the prices do not appear to have been much affected by fashions in collecting. Dealers and collectors alike had said, previous to the William Harris Arnold sale, that nobody was collecting Tennyson, yet the prices at that sale made it apparent that somebody was, else James F. Drake would not have paid $2,000 for "Timbuctoo", $7,000 for "The True and the False, Four

Idylls of the King", and $9,000 for the only known copy of "The Victim" in octavo; or Dr. Rosenbach given $6,900 for "The Lover's Tale". Modern first editions seem to remain as popular as ever, and many record prices have been paid during the past season for books which are only a few years old, the authors of which are still living. In the Taylor sale E. H. Wells paid the record price of $430 for a copy of "Fan: The Story of a Young Girl's Life. By Henry Harford", this being the rare first edition published pseudonymously in 1892 and not known to be by William Henry Hudson until after his death. A presentation copy of Edwin Arlington Robinson's "The Torrent and The Night Before", 1896, brought $215, and a score of other prices of works by modern authors might be mentioned to show that there are plenty of collectors who believe that the men of today are destined to secure permanent fame.

All the existing original manuscripts of Jack London's novels have been bought for the Henry E. Huntington library at San Gabriel, California. These include all his best known works. Mrs. London, who disposed of them, believes that no other manuscripts by this author will ever come to light, since he destroyed all of his early work. Shortly after their marriage Mrs. London asked her husband, "Why not let me keep your manuscripts?" He was much amused, for he had considered them of no value, once they were in print. After that, everything he wrote was preserved. Mrs. London had received numerous offers for some of them from New York, England, and other places, but thought they ought to be kept in "Jack's home state".

XXXI

F. M. HOLLY

AUTHORS' REPRESENTATIVE
MOTION PICTURE AGENT

156 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
Rates and full information sent upon application

YOU ARE A WRITER. Don't you ever need help in

your

I am a literary adviser. For years I read for Macmillan, then for Doran, and then I became consulting specialist to them and to Holt, Stokes, Lippincott and others, for most of whom I have also done expert editing, helping authors to make their work saleable.

Send for my circular. I am closely in touch with the market for books, short stories, articles and

verses, and I have a special depart

ment for plays and motion-pictures.

The Writers' Workshop, Inc. 135 East 58 Street

New York City

Neil

Room 491, 500 Fifth Avenue

MANUSCRIPTS TYPED

$1.00 per Thousand Words FINGER AND PLANK

Morgantown

New York

Pennsylvania

XXXII

Hardy, Kipling, and Stevenson collections made by the novelist, George Barr McCutcheon. Mr. McCutcheon is an indefatigable collector; upon hearing of a unique item by one of these writers he has never rested until he ran it down and procured it or found that it was unprocurable. The McCutcheon sale abounded in new records for the writings of these authors. The first edition of Hardy's first book, "Desperate Remedies", London, 1871, with two autograph letters of the author, brought $2,100, and this first item of the sale seemed to set the pace for the competition which followed. "The Dynasts", in three volumes, the first of which was an autograph presentation copy from Hardy to Swinburne, brought the same price. Of the Kipling material the rarest item was a copy of "The Smith Administration", published at Allahabad by A. H. Wheeler and Company, 1891. Only six copies of this work are known, of which the four in this country were owned by Mr. McCutcheon, J. A. Spoor, C. T.

Crocker, and P. A. Valentine. This copy brought $4,100. On the flyleaf was this interesting note by E. W. Bulkeley, general manager of the Pioneer Press, relating to the suppression of this work:

Of this book an edition of 3,000 copies were printed and bound ready for sale for Messrs. Wheeler of Allahabad, but owing to a difference of opinion as to_copyrights between Rudyard Kipling and the Proprietors of the Pioneer and Civil & Military Gazette (in which the stories first appeared) the complete edition was cancelled and destroyed with the exception of three copies. E. W. Bulkeley, General Manager, Pioneer Press, Allahabad, 1894, Nov. 2.

Henceforth it may be that English authors visiting our shores for lecture purposes will be canny enough to bring along an armful of their own works, in limited editions and properly autographed, to be sold in the New York auction rooms at sales of modern first editions. The experience of James Stephens, who unexpectedly arrived at the American Art Galleries at the sale of the Chandler, Lambert, and other collections of "modern firsts", is enough to warrant them in doing so. On the evening of the very day in which he landed, Mr. Stephens saw his own works sold at prices far beyond those which they had ever reached at previous sales. first edition of "Insurrections", Dublin, brought $65, the former high price being $23; "The Crock of Gold", London, 1912, went for $100, the former high price being $40, and the "Twelve New Poems", Westminster, 1913, one of twelve copies on large paper, fetched $250, the record price for the ordinary edition being $5. For autographed copies of "Here Are Ladies", 1913, "Songs from the Clay", 1915 and "Reincarnations", 1918, prices of $50 and $55 were paid.

The

D

U BOSE HEYWARD, with his wife, Dorothy, is spending the summer at the MacDowell Colony, Peterboro, New Hampshire. There he is at work on a new novel to follow, next year, the publication of "Porgy" this autumn. A new long poem of his on Negro life will soon appear in "The American Mercury". RUTH GUTHRIE HARDING is the wife of a prominent lawyer. She lives in Englewood, New Jersey. A poet and essayist who learned her craft under Mr. Bierce, she was finally persuaded after years of silence to write of this curiously withdrawn figure in American letters. HAL BORLAND is the author of "Rocky Mountain Tepee Tales", and of several short stories. He is a former cowboy, now living in New York City with his wife, and determined to write instead of throwing the lariat.

GRANT OVERTON, fiction editor of "Collier's", has appeared in these columns with such frequency that it is difficult to think of nice praiseworthy anecdotes about him. follows current fiction more religiously than any other man we know, and writes a lot besides. KENNETH LAUB, of the Detroit "News", styles himself as a loyal European of American nativity. Born in Washington, D. C.; contributes generously to the support of a fond family of a wife and three children; would rather win the national amateur golf championship than the Nobel Prize for Literature; and considers his chances of winning either remote. LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE, of Baltimore, Maryland, is one of America's best known and most loved poets. Her years of school teaching have given her a gentleness rather than astringency, and she is one of the gayest and wisest of our literary folk. ANNE CARROLL MOORE says that York City is the best place in the world to spend the summer and has carried out her

belief this year. She is at work on a book on George Washington, and her department in the "Herald-Tribune", "The Three Owls", continues to please.

MERIDA WILDE is a teacher in the middle west who has paragraphs accepted for a column in a local newspaper, and who takes hiking and camping trips with her car for diversion. CARL LAMSON CARMER is a professor of English in the University of Alabama. He was graduated from Hamilton College in the same class as John V. A. Weaver, and has taught at various colleges. For the past three years he has been conducting an interesting course in the writing of verse at Alabama, and those who have observed it tell us that the results are excellent.

ELIOT FITCH BARTLETT is the small son of a mother who finds time amid her domestic duties for the writing of poetry. ARNOLD PATRICK postcards us from Algiers that he has interviewed several foreign his writing is so poor that we can't make out whether it is poets or potentates. RUTH LAMBERT JONES of Haverhill, Massachusetts, reports that her chief interest during the summer months has been tinkering with her car. DR. JUNE E. DOWNEY is an eminent psychologist. She attained a great reputation with her "Will Temperament Test", when it was published, and has recently been selected by the National Research Council to do an important piece of investigation. ELIZABETH LEITZBACH is a short story writer who has only recently turned to poetry. LOUIS BROMFIELD, author of "The Green Bay Tree", and of a new novel, will probably spend next year in Europe, where all successful young American authors go.

MABLE HOLMES PARSONS, of Portland, Oregon, has worked with the American Indians for years, and numbers many of them

XVIII

in Saginaw, Michigan, and is a member of the English faculty of the University of Oregon (Portland Centre). She has written short stories and verse for various magazines, and last summer went to England to work upon a most interesting book of an archæological nature. GRACE Z. BROWN, who says that she prefers to be known as a resident of Coronado, Colorado, was for a time editor of the Woman's Page of the Akron, Ohio, "Times". She is the author of a published one act play of entertaining qualities called "The Society Editor". She writes that she will wear her hair bobbed if she lives to be ninety, and says further: "My observation has taught me that a man's love for radio is comparable only to that of a freshman under domination of his first love."

LAWRENCE LEE, who has deserted Virginia for New York City, has published verse in various periodicals and is on the staff of a local magazine. WILLIAM ROSE BENET is associate editor of "The Saturday Review", and, with occasional ventures in poetry, is

devoting his time now to the writing of a children's book. JOSEPH COLLINS, author of "Taking the Literary Pulse", has recently sailed for London, after completing the manuscript of his "The Doctor Looks at Biography". WINIFRED KATZIN, a young Russian girl living in America, was the translator of the plays of Lenormand, recently published, one of which, "The Failures", was given in New York by the Theatre Guild.

LOUIS UNTERMEYER, the American poetry critic and poet, after a year in Germany, is devoting himself entirely to his writing and editing. He is living in New York City and is about to see published a revised and enlarged edition of his "Modern British Poetry". GAMALIEL BRADFORD will have a new book, "Wives", on the autumn lists. He is at work in his home at Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, on a full length biography of great importance. T. R. COWARD, squash champion and litterateur, is, at present writing, a New York representative for the Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Because good printing so largely depends upon the quality of the electrotypes, we operate our own electrotype plant.

This is your assurance of consistent good quality; but one step in our efforts to eliminate waste,