The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, .1912. THE PRICE OF BOOKS.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1599, 16 November 1912, Page 4

The Dominion. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 16, .1912. THE PRICE OF BOOKS.

Students, ; clergyman, readers of all kinds, have flinch to be thank-, ful for in these days, for the present, in an eminent degree, is the age of cheap literature, Within xmnt years many publishing houses of the first rank; have effected a veritable revolution in the world of literature by issuing standard classic works at prices which, two decades ago, would have been considered altogether outside the bounds of the possible. Dent, Collins, Nelson, Macmillan, ana other firms must be looked upon as public benefactors simply by reason of their marvellously cheap pub' lications. Their books have led to important- and opportune revelations. The first of these is the knowledge that great and historic works can be sold to the public at a cost surely sufiiciently low to suit the most modest of incomes: and the second the truly remarkable demand which has been displayed, in-all parts of the Empire for cheap, first-class literature. That the demand has been such as to encourage publishers in their worthy task may be safely assumed, inasmuch as. the majority of publishers, like most other people, can scarcely afford'to be general philanthropists. Tho issuing, at a shilling or less a volume, of practically everything that merits reading, ancient and modern, must in no long time powerfully affect the British people. France and Germany, in particular, among European countries, have long possessed their chcap publications, Dut few are really comparable, in general character of work or exccllence in printing and binding, to the volumes published by British firms. Cheap fiction seems to be read in vast quantities, - and a glatida at tho liste of tho 'boSt alius L.of Dubliehers shows that every house

invariably gives a wide selection of authors of established reputations. But the reading of even mediocre fiction is to be commended: especially where it may prevent recourse to amusements of an injurious or objectionable character. And, in time, from fiction readers advance to something more instructive—to history, science, and biography, thereby enlarging and correcting their views of the world and of mankind; "The foundation of knowledge roust be laid by reading," declared Dr. Johnson, in combating "the idle, superficial notion" that knowledge enough may be acquired in conversation. "General principles," he continued,' "must be had from books, which, however, must be brought to the test of real life. In conversation you never get a system. The parts of a truth _ which a man gets are at such a distance, from each other that he never attains to a full view." The, foundations of much knowledge, doubtless, have been, and are being, laid through the agency of present-day cheap literature. But, in spite of' Dr. Johnson's dictum in favour of books, as opposed to the oral in literature, titie tiruth must not be fofgotten that for ages, in the British Isles as in most European countries, unwritten literature-played a great and lasting part among' all classes of the people. Legendary lore and ballads were handed down orally ; from generation to This was the stage in national history which the Germans name the saffenzeit, of tradition time, a period through which all peoples pass. The oral method of preservation, was followed by the time when parchments iwere prepared—always laboriously-, often wjien ' publipand private libraries consisted entirely of manuscripts. Then came the art of printing,, and: slowly, 'very slowly, were the. wonderful' ;■ regions of. knowledge and of imagination opened to the people, But, long before the age of manuscripts in Europe, Assyria. Babylonia, and Egypt possessed their "books"—bricks and cylinders rudely stamped with strange symbolic figures. The struggle upwards has been arduous; but tjie genius of man has slowly overcome the difficulties of those far-off ages. ■ A vast fjold of human effort divides, say, the latest volumes of Everyman's Library and .the tablets of Aoydos. Parchment writing was succeeded hy blockprinting, which may have been borrowed from China. The Biblin Pnumrxtm is the most famous example of the early block-book. What its' soiling price per copy..was cannot be stated with accuracy, but : it is recorded that "a fair-li.S. copy made in Prance about 1460 sold for <100 crowns of gold." Gctenhkro's development upon the block-books—cutting the blocks into separate words—laid the beginnings of modern printing and progress, .since, his time has been continuous. But books of worth, until comparatively lucent times, - were- 1 -scarce, Thev were, for long, poorly printed, badly bound, and their prices, to all save, the wealthy, were, absolutely prohibitive*- The Scots quickly realised the value of printing. In 1574 the Scottish Privy Council levied a contribution of £a from every parish in the kingdom to enable Thomas Bassendyne to print an edition of the Bible. The printer, in return, was bound under, heavy penalties to deliver copies, "weel and sufficiently ' bund in paste or timmer" for the sum of 54 13s. 4cl, a • volume. To make sure that the somewhat rowdy, and frequently lawless, nobles atleast possessed the sacred volume,, the Privy Council further ordained that air persons worth £500 should purchase a Bible, or. be fined to the extent of $10 Great store , was. later laid upon the binding and embol- : ■lishing of volumes, and- the. eostly raiment meant dear books. But, nowadays, interest centres, it is to be hoped, where it should, not : on the- exteriors, but on the' interiors of the volumes, In view of what has already been accomplished in the provision of cheap literature it seems natural to consider how far the cheapening process, can be continued. Many readers would be glad if the prices of new important works and pf the higher class of reviews'could be lowered. No great alteration has been made for man.v years-in the cost of these two' varieties ; of- literature, . and here, probably, lie Opportunities for the ingenuities of, : present-day publisher?. .But the contents of these. - books and magazines are original and authors are,- assuredly, worthy of their hire. The recent proposal that the' old-established six-shilling novels should give place to three- j 'shilling, or half-crown editions, it will be recalled, was stoutly condemned by novel writers who explained that the six-shilling rate wae the minimum, were they to receive'adequate remuneration.