Contrasts in Writers' Earnings.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, 12 January 1905, Page 15

Contrasts in Writers' Earnings.

' Milton received £5 down for his immortal " Paradise Lost," ' said a lea'dmg author the other day, ' and to-day the very manuscript of it is considered worth £5000. Hjow many of our modern manuscripts which are worth £5000 to-day will, 1 wonxlef , be worth a iivepoujnld, note a century hence '.' ' If anyone is curious to see under what different conditions the writers of the past and present worked, lie should glance at the list of prices in past centuries for works that have become immoital.

, According to Oldys, ' Hamlet ' fetched not a penny more than ' Paradise Lost '—£5 is the exact figure he gives— and yet hve thousand times this price would not t>e cooisidereid dear lor the original manuscript of it. Dryden considered himselt in luck when Jacob Tonson aigreedi to pay him sixpence a line for 10,000 verses ; and to maike u,p the number the poet ' threw in ' the famous ' Ode t o Music ' and his ' EpisiTle ' to his cousin. It is said that £40 was all that Gray ever received for all ■his poems, and his ' Elegy ' he actually g,ave away to a publisher, who cleared £10/00 by its publication. Goldsmith thought himself ' passing rich ' when ho pocketed £60 in exchange for his ' Vicar of Waikencld,' which has put so many thousands of pounds into other people's pockets since his day ; and £21 was e\eiy penny he gpt for ' The Traveller,' a price which could not have paid him many pence an hour for the work he lavished on it.

Johnson sold for £200 his ' Lives of the Poets,' the monumental work which brought £5000 clear profit to its publishers within a quarter of a century ; and the £100 he received for his ' Kassel'as ' proved little) more than sulhcient to bury his mother, the object Uor which he wrote it. Fielding was more fortunate, for ' Tom J.ones ' rewarded him with £700 and ' Amelia ' brought; him £1000 ' as dower.'

With the closing years of the eighteenth century a golden era dawned for authors, and some of the prices they received tor their works could scarcely be improved on tp day. llayley was by no means a literary giant, but it is said that his ' Life of Cowper ' brought him £11,000 ; Southey only received £1000 for his biography of the same poet. For a single novel Scott w a s paid no less than £10,000 ; in twenty laborious months he is credited with haung earned money at the rate of fifty' guineas a day ; a round dozen of his works produced '.£IOO,OOO ; and his life's labor with the pen yieHde'd an average income of £10,000 a year for the Whole of his writing days. • Byron's comparatively short writing career put just under £- # i2o,t>oo into his purse— an average of about £1200 a year ;- there is no doubt, however, that if he had wisihed he might have increased this sum very materially. ,Ui> one occasion, it will be remembered, when Murray, the publisher, sent him a cheque for a thousand guineas in payment for two poems, Lord Bryan promptly returned' it, fleclining to receive a penny flbr his work. Moore was paid £3000 for ' Lalla R'aakh,' a paymemt at the rate of about 10s a line, or twenty times Dryden's remtujneration. And yet all that Thomas Campbell could

get for his ' PJeiasures of Hope ' was £60. No wonder that he was bitter, or that he once toasted Napoleon because, forsooth, he had ordered a bookseller to bo sfhot.

L,ord Macaulay received a single cheque for £20,000 as Ins share of the profits of his ' History of England ' ; Gibbon is said to ha\e cleared £10,0010 by his ' Decline and Fall of the Koman Empire ' , while Hume receded £700, relatively a modest sum, for each volume of his history. Charles Dickens was able to leases behmd him £100,000 ot the profits made by hisi pen, half of which amount he received during the last five years ot his lite , liulwer Lytton's books brought their author £f»0,000, a smaller sum than one would be inclined to credit him with ; and Thackeray's novels produced about the same sum.

Anthony Trollope worked very hard for the £70, 000 his novels are sand to have yielded in twenty years. It is instructive to learn that he began his writing career with an income ot a pound a month and closed it with £4000 a year. His novel 'La Vendee,' published in 1850, was sold outright for £20 ; a dozen years later he was receiving well over £3000 for a story. Lord Tcnnysjon was able to refuse £5000 a year for the exclusive right of publishing his poems ; and Mrs. Grant received £100,000 for her share of the profits of her husband's (General Grant's) l Memoirs.'