Cheap Books and Cheap Editions THE publication of the 200th
volmne of that versatile and comprehensive series 'known as " The Travellers' Library ", is, in its way, a milestone igthe progress of the Cheap- Edition: It might also, no doubt (to vary the metaphor) be regarded as a fresh shaft in the armoury of those insatiable archers, who are forever launching their volleys against the citadel of the highly-priced book. But, as a matter of fact, the problems of the Cheap Book and the Cheap Edition are entirely different, although multitudes continue to confuse them.
When the general buying public protests that books are too dear, its complaint is always addressed to new books, and the complaint is so universal that - even -authors, -whose very existence depends upon the Maintenance of the published price, are almost persuaded to sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. Certainly they have cause enough to be sceptical of their publishers' custom, for every candid friend reiterates the same argument. " My dear_ friend," he protests to the author ; " I am- simply dying to read your new book, but I cannot possibly afford to • buy it.- Ten-and-sixpence, you know—in these hard- times ! Well, really . . . I ask you." Small wonder that the author posts off to his publisher, and is voluble in remonstrance. If that book had been published at half a crown, he .declares, it would have sold at. least twenty thousand. The publisher sighs, but for sheer diplo- macy keeps his counsel. He knows very well that these generous assurances are all in the beaten way of friendship : they mean just nothing at all. The eloquent friend has no intention of buying any boOk whose quality is as yet unproven, He is not a book-buyer, at the best of times.. He is just a book-borrower. When next he visits the shop --of his • local cash-chemist, and has bought his tin of carbolic tooth-powder, he will perhaps step into the library department at the back, and inquire if his friend's book is available on the shelves. Hearing that it is " in such great demand " that all the copies are " out," he will feel that he has done his duty, and will catch his homeward{ oinnibils at the corner with a Clear con- science. The " general reader " has become so spoilt by .the opportunities of borrowing that he buys nothing, except the book that he feels he cannot do without. That is the whole difference between the Cheap Book and the Cheap Edition.
Any book-lover who can look back upon 40 or 50 years of book-buying will recall many much-acclaimed enterprises, launched with the estimable intention of making new books cheap. One after another they have blossomed and wilted. The popular Press, glowing under the stimulus of ebullient double-column advertisements, has welcomed each new venture as a "revolution in publishing." Six months later the " revolution " is a handful of grey ashes. The publisher has lost his money ; the author is disgruntled ; the public con- tinues borrowing his new book, published at the old price, and still available on the old terms. The only low-priced books, out of which authors and publishers alike can make a living, are those which have already proved the mettle of their pasture, and vindicated their right to survive the feverish traffic of the circulating library. And these are the books which constitute the material of the cheap edition, for which, during the last five-and-twenty years, there has arisen a new, an eager, and a continually-increasing body of purchasers. Their number, and the prevailing wisdom of their taste and choice, form the most encouraging feature of the bustling book-market of today.
In this respect, it is not difficult to trace a very notable change since the years of the Great War. In the far-off days of peace and plenty, which some of us recall so fondly, the cheap edition, excepting always the popular reprint of the English classics, was only too apt to be " cheap " in much more than an economic sense. All honour where honour is due ; and to Professor Henry Morley and the publishers of Cassell's " National Library " many a poor scholar of 50 years ago owed a deep debt of gratitude. Still no one could pretend that those admirable three-pennyworths, good as their print and paper were, could be regarded as anything but classbooks. The idea of a library, however modest, seemed to demand something comelier and more companionable in format ; and the void was filled by " The World's Classics " of Mr. Grant Richards, an adventurous spirit with moments of inspired vision, and by the late J. M. Dent, who launched, under the guidance of that devoted bookman, Mr. Ernest Rhys, the "Everyman's Library," which still remains the on. rivalled model of the cheap edition, a treasure to hand and eye, But these were old books, not new ; and the War created a fresh public for contemporary literature, whose appetite appeared at first insatiable. This was the birthday of the modern cheap edition, which has since survived, in an inevit- ably restricted form, simply because the reading habit, oott formed, is not easily abandoned. There is less money to spend today ; anct the circulating library is once more the main provider of literary entertainment. But there are some books that even the hastiest reader yearns to keep at his (or her) " bed's head," and these are the constituents of the successful cheap edition.
The National Book Council has issued a catalogue of copy. right books published in cheap pocket -editions, which shows very clearly the way of the wind. All these series are post- War ventures ; and it is noticeable that they are all snail and compact books. Small houses and flats have little space for bookshelves, and the new reading public despises the pre- tence of surrounding itself with books " which no gentleman's library should be without," but which, as a matter of fact, scarcely any " gentleman " (even in the most Pickwickian sense of the word) ever troubles to read. The new cheap edition presents a handy volume, well printed and neatly bound—a book that will slip into the side-pocket. It must also (if it is to succeed) consist of books that the reader will imperatively desire to slip into the side-pocket—good books of well-proved and lasting charm. The success of the cheap edition is, in fact, the triumph of selection and sincerity.
Even a cursory survey of the Book Coupeil's catalogue indicates the marked improvement in taste by which the crowded harvest of popular successes is threshed out. Since the publishers' selection must needs be controlled by the public's demand, it is clear that a vast regiment of " best sellers " never survives- the parade-ground- of-the circulating library. The survivors are nearly all stuff of quality. You will find complete editions of Kipling, Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, Henry James, Aldous Huxley, D. H. Lawrence, Conan Doyle, Anthony Hope, A. E. W. Mason, W. J. Locke, and Henry Seton Merriman. But it is in the field of pure litera- ture that the judgement of the new book-buyer is most effectually vindicated. In Macmillan's " Caravan Library " you may purchase, for 3s. 6d. a volume, Matthew Arnold's Essays in Criticism, Seeley's .Expansion of England, John Morley On Compromise, and the collected works of Tennyson and Walter Pater. Bean's " Cabinet " and " Essex " Libraries will furnish you with Mark Rutherford, W. B. Yeats, Stephen Graham and A. P. Herbert. " The Gateway Library " of Methuen and Co. opens its windows to the essays of E. V. Lucasj. Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton and Robert Lynd. In Cassell's " Pocket Library " are the literary diversions of Frederick Treves, the Prime Minister on Social- ism, and works by Maxim Gorky, Edinural Gosse, and H. M. Tomlinson : in Arnold's " Kingfisher Library " are the novels of E. M. Forster : 7Constable's " Miscellany " is adorned by the poetry of Walter De La Mare, the philosophy of Havelock Ellis, and the political wisdom of Graham Wallas. Longman's " Pocket Library " has the best of William Morris, and the " Phoenix " books of Chatto and Windus include the cream of Lytton Strachey, and Marcel Proust and nearly the whole of Aldous Huxley. The" "Faber Library "- contains work by Siegfried Sassoon, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound. As for the " Travellers' Library," its range extends from Samuel Butler to W. H. -Davies, from Laicadici Hearn to J. Middleton Murry, and from Winwood -Reade to -Beverley- Nichols.
But this article is degenerating- into a catalogue. At any rate these random and inadequate selections prove one thing for certain. In spite of income-tax and the motor-car, cabaret, cinema, and the week-end habit, there is still a vast and growing public for good literature well presented ; and that public-i$ never likely to.prove fickle to authorship, so long as the_ CheapEditiOn is " cheap " Only in its demand upon the-reiOurces of ffie iiiodeat purse. —
AaTuni WAucit.
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