Trollope & the History of Books (1 of 2)
As I mentioned in my previous post, my reading of Trollope's autobiography
and his novel "The Way We Live Now", with the stress on the financial
aspects of writing novels, had made me curious about the history of the rise
of the literary agent.
Now, I have become curious about the history of books, publishing and
the marketplace of readers.
Trollope relates that the vocation of novelist was one avenue open to
women, who were otherwise rather limited by society with regard to
careers. I am reminded of Virginia Woolf's "A Room of One's Own."
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791.txt
Trollope seems more concerned with matters of money than with
immortalizing fame.
Obviously, income has been one motive for certain writers. Fame,
being immortalized by posterity, has been a different motive. F. Scott
Fitzgerald found it easy to earn large sums by writing short story,
sometimes over night, and selling it to a magazine. Novels were not
as lucrative an endeavor. Yet Fitzgerald desired lasting fame, and felt
that this might be achieved only through novels. He needed the quick
money from the short stories to finance prolonged periods in which he
might devote himself to work on a novel.
The history of the book, the novel, the novelist, the market place, the
agent and the publisher are all interrelated.
We may note, as an aside, that Samuel Clemens served as a kind of
literary agent to Ulysses S. Grant as he wrote his memoirs. Grant
knew he was dying with throat cancer caused by excessive tobacco
use. Grant's family was bankrupt. Sale of the memoirs was the only
means to proved for his family after his death. The memoirs were
published within months of Grant's death. Clemens presented Grant's
widow with a royalty check of $50,000.00 which was the largest
royalty to date ever paid for an authors work. Some critics suspected
that Clemens was Grant's ghost writer, but to this day, the original
manuscript in Grant's own handwriting is archived in Washington, D.C.
Of course, the financial success was due to the marketing technique
of sending salesmen door to door, to each farm house throughout the
country, selling subscriptions to the three volume set. Patriotic zeal
fueled the sales.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_book
The authors of Antiquity had no rights concerning their published
works; there were neither authors' nor publishing rights. Anyone could
have a text recopied, and even alter its contents. Editors earned
money and authors earned mostly glory; a book made its author
immortal. This followed the traditional conception of the culture: an
author stuck to several models, which he imitated and attempted to
improve. The status of the author was not regarded as absolutely
personal.
http://www.humanities.wisc.edu/archive/2003/hwb.html
Robert Darnton is Professor of History at Princeton University. He is a
prominent historian of pre-modern Europe, and a specialist in the
history of books and publishing. His lecture will explore the tale of
Mademoiselle Bonafon, a maid and writer in 18th century France
whose wildly popular fairytale and romance novels contained thinly
veiled stories about the private lives of royalty and the aristocracy.
Perhaps we can see from excerpts of Darnton's interview, below, the
manner in which culture, economy, politics and gossip joined in
synergy to evolve the contemporary novel and novelist.
I recently viewed the DVD of Jose Ferrer's movie performance as
Cyrano de Bergerac. Cyrano is portrayed as a formidable swordsman
and also a gifted writer who angers the political establishment with his
criticisms. In the final scene of the movie, Cyrano narrates to his
beloved a "Gazette" or gossip column regarding prominent figures.
One may imagine from this scene, together with the excerpts below,
how such a covert and illegal activity of unauthorized books might
evolve into a legitimate trade in fiction.