A NOTABLE AMERICAN PUBLISHER.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1639, 4 January 1913, Page 9

A NOTABLE AMERICAN PUBLISHER.

; In his "George Palmer Putnam"' Mr. George Haven.i J iitnaju tells the liio story of his father, who when he died in lbri had founded ono of the great publishing houses in America and left behind him a reputation for the'highest business probity. '.Che face of tho literary world in America has completely changed since the time covered by the narrative, but a reader is brought into interesting contact with many names which count for a great deal in literature still. W.o see. i'enimoro Cooper, standing more than six i'eet high, lecturing for live minutes on end a carman on the, prior rights ot the foot-passenger to the road over all vehicles whacsoovcr; we meet Bayard Taylor—him who "in idle mood had from hira hurled The poor squeezed orange of thpworld,"—anxious. to be known as a poet and philosopher rather than ns a Writer | of travels; we go with Fredrika Bremer, the Swedish novelist, on her vain visit to tho Harpers to beg them to desist from pirating her works, while we have distant glimpses of such nien as Hawthorne, Proscott, and Emerson. With Poo, Putnam seems to have. become acquainted in his works before meeting him personally, for when in London during tho forties, managing tho English branch of his firm, ho published there an edition of "The Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym." That on a superficial reading, ho took the tale for a veracious narrative, and published it for its geographical value is no great marvel; many readers fell into tho same mistake. Apart from the Defoeliko minuteness of the details in this case, there are always folk who do not easily distinguish fact from fiction, and it is on record that when Seton Mcrriman published his first really successful novel, "With Edged Tools, correspondents wroto him, applying for shares, in the Simiacine Company. In Mr. Putnam's account of this transaction, as expanded from his father's narrative, there are certain 'palpable inaccuracies, and one is .inclined to take the story of Poo's visit to tho office in Broadway as an actual event transfigured into a breezy anecdote. Poe, Mr. Putnn'm tolls us, came in a tremor of excitement., He was full of a discovery that was to shake the 'scientific world; that of tho law of gravitation was nothing to it, and n first edition of 50,000 copies would only be.a beginning. Calling for a desk and writing materials, ho sat down arid wrote until the publisher had (o depart for homo, leaving him in the soriety of the bookkeeper. Presently tho bookkeeper had to depart for homo, leaving.him in the society of the porter. Pre-mully the porter had tm depart, and. sorely against his will, Pnn had to follow his example. The uext>

r- day he returned and the santo thing haj peucd, and the third day witnessed th a completion of "Eureka." An edition c r, 750 copies was published, and after th .' lapse .of a year even of that small issuo i- tlard part remained unsold. ~ The friendship between Washington Ir n ving and his publisher is, in a genera B way, pretty widely known, but' as se il forth in detail now it roads as a von pleasant story of relations of mutual re" spect and helpfulness between publisher and .author.-, 'to begin with, it is I'utnart .who; is the benefactor. Irving's reputation; which had, to begin with, flown sc j high; had come upon a hole in the an and'fallen Hat. liis Philadolphinn pub | lisher, convinced that tho public taste , had moved.away from his work, refused I to ; issue any. ; m.ore. editions, and, as the ~' English returns were also petering out, Ir.'ving had to accept a desk in the office of his: brother, At'this crisis'Putnam pro- , posed a uniform complcto edition of his works, offering, handsome royalties and ■ guaranteeing that, for .the first year ho would receive not less than v£2so, for tho second .£SOO, and for the third .£750. Irving was at his desk when ho received tho letter containing tho proposal,' and his oxclanmtion was, "There is no necessity, John, for my bothering further about tho law. ■ Here is a fool of a publisher going to give me' JJ2SO a year for doing nothing." Tho experiment was a complete success, and from that time onward Washington Irving was -Putnam's principal author. When, in 1857, tho publishing firm had to suspend business operations for. a time, it was tho author's turn to be benefactor. He bought back his plates, resold them to Putnam on the. principle of repayment by instalments,. ana asked no increased royalties. ' This was ft distinct business sacrifice on Irving's part, - as he had from other \ publishers offers with which Putnam could not have competed; but it. steadied the House .by guaranteeing it a sure flow of income anij by keeping other authors from severing their connection .with-it. It is agreeable to add that Irving had his reward: "In giving an almost undivided attenr during the succeeding two. years to these books; in planning for certain of them (more particularly ■ 'The Sketch Book' and 'The Life of Washington') new forms, and in pushing the sales in a number of new channels, it did prove practicable for my father to secure very, much larger annual results during tho two years '-between 1857 and 1859 (the year of Irving's death) than had ever before been'realised.. My father tried to per-, suade Irving to accept a higher royalty, but on this point the old gentleman had made up his mind. ' By. 1859 tho plates 'were again fully, under the ownership of the publisher." .'■■'...-■ : The thing for which the name of Georgo Palmer Putnam, however,' is, chiefly deserving of remembrance is his early,' persistent, and energetic' fight for interna-, tional copyright. It was only in 1891' that the Act was passed, bnt the state of tho book markets in . England-and-Amer-' ica; before that date is already like a story of the world before the' Flood. . Of American piracies we have heard enough, and wo only get glimpses in this volume how Irving and Emerson suffered in this country, bnt Mr. Algernon Tassin has recently shown that English pirates were oven, worse, than their, American congeners. Having no "courtesy of the trade." they.could not make payments, for the books they seized, and only paid for advance- sheets; they published books without their authors' names or with wrong names; they rewrote., chapters or mutilated volumes; whibvas if fo add insult to'.. injury,, invectives against, American methods were on all men's lips. . America was bad enough, however. There mutual understandings. mrido pnblishings just tolerable;' authors .were starved by the .foreign 'competition, while the. public; if it got cheap'books, got them in the porest possible-,form. ' Acainst evils so clamant it was worth fighting, and although Putnam did not live to see the 'Act of 1891 it was substantially-his Act. —Exchange. ■[', .' '■ ,