Lancaster daily intelligencer. [volume] (Lancaster, Pa.) 1864-1928, 1885-03-21
/" THE WIDE, WIDE WORLD
Writer Whose s,ook Reached u Sale OF a
Half Million Copies.

A Writer whose s,ook Reached u Sale OF
Half Million Copies.
From the New York Times.
Perhaps nineteen reading people out of
twenty, upon noticing the simple announce
ment of the death of Miss Susan Warner
would he moved TO inquire who Miss Susan
Warner was that her death should be made
the subject of II press dispatch. And yet the
woman who bore this name and who died
yesterday, at no very great age, after life
of seclusion, was the author of the most
popular book, excepting Uncie Toms CdJiJi,
ever written by an American woman.
This fact suggests several reflections upon
the nature of literary fame, or rather upon
the singularity of the relation between lit
erary popularity and literary fame Ger
tainly The IFide, Vide World has never been
reckoned among the glories of American lit.
erature. The more literary people are the less
likely they are even to have heard of II. The
appeals to an audience inuch lower are
also much wider than that 10y which the
fame of authors Ia determined, The sue
cess which II had on It's first appearance
in 1850 and for some ten years thereafter
recalls the remark of British theatrical
agent upon the project of a lecturng tour of
England for the Rev. DIR. Talmage. "Do you
know sir " said the astonished agent after an
investigation Of the question "that 200, 600
copies of that mans sermons are printed and
read in England every week, and no respect
able person ever heard of him ~ The num-
Der of readers attributed to the divine In
question may not be accurately given, but
the implied deduction is none the less valid,
the deduction that it Is not necessary to be
famous in order to be very popular.
In fact, the qualities which make an author
famous may be Inconsistent with the quail
ties which make him popular. "A writer
who attains his full purpose" remarks DIR.
Johnson, closes himself in his own lustre."
II the "full purpose" of novelist be to
attai the widest possible circulation for his
books, II appears tAat he must appeal TO tie
uncritical classes, who never think of a work
of fiction as a work of art at all, but only as a
transcript OF nature, and read il with an avid
interest entirely disconnected from any ad-
miration Tor or any interest in the author.
The lftdc, Iiidc World had a success of this
kind. A sale of half u million copies
when readers were fewer and books
were dearer than now is almost I'M
paralleled, and yet among these hun
dreds of thousands Of generally. .unliterary
readers there was scarcely any curiosity
about the personality of the author who had
given them so much pleasure. If there had
been any demand of that kind ii would have
been supplied. but even when The Vide
Hidc World, which we believe has not been
reprinted for twenty years. was at the height
of its popularity there was none of the gos-
sip printed in the newspapers which circu-
lates so freely about writers who never at
tain hundredth part of the popularity of
MISS W afner nut whose WrltlngS appeal to
people who are in the habit of identifying
the writers of books with the things written.
Miss Warmers success it is to lie noted,
was entirely different in kind from the even
greater success OF Mrs Stowe. II was not as
"A picture of life that EHcic Toms cabin ap-
pealed toaeaderS, II was as the contribu
tion of the writer TO the discussion of a
burning question:" and its uneXampled
popularity was much more than merely lite
rary. The success of The Wade, U'tde Hiorid,
on the other hand, was purely artistic, SO to
speak. IL owes nothing to the subject and
nothing to incidents. There is not a touch
ofmelo.drama in the treatment, and il has as
little " story" as if il had been written by
Mr.. Henry James at is only in England"
observed the astonished NJ. Taine in
speaking Of this very book, though i'm fact
II was in America, /" that "A three volume
novel is devoted to the history of moral
progress i'll girl of thirteen" And it
is to be noted that The Vide, Vide World,
though a book that most parents would doubt
less be glad to see in the hands of their
children, is not goody -goody book in the
sense that it was imposed by parents upon
their children. IL was eagerly read by chill
dren and by adults still in the juvenile stage
of literary culture. The sale of half a million
copies of such book, though 10 a French
critic it is only proof of the boundleSS appetite
of the Anglo-SaNon race for pap, is also a
gratifying evidence OF the ability Of that race
to dispense with the interest that arises from
what an English critic describes as the "lu-
briefly" of the popular French fiction.