Waterbury evening Democrat., 1894-03-17

until after he had been several years upon the lecture platform. For that work oi his which the critics have always said was his most artistic performance and as fine art as appeared in any English work of f1c tion, Henry Esmond," ," he received scarcely enough to pay him fair wage, so he said for the work of writing it. and when An thony Trollope met him one day and spoke with words of high praise of "Esmond' Thackeray replied, "Yes, but the people don't buy it'
 Notwithstanding these great earnings oi Mrs. Ward, George Eliot and one or two other English writers, it is probable that the largest sums of money realized by the sale of single book have come to American authors and publishers, and within very few days there has been a new illustration of the lasting success of what is probably the most popular, certainly pecuniarily the most successful, work ever published in the English language-the memoirs of General Grant.
 General Grants son, Colonel Fred Grant lately United States minister to Austria completed in February a work upon which he has been occupied since his return from his diplomatic mission-the editing of new edition of his fathers memoirs. This work of editing did not entail any revision of the text. With the exception of single word the new edition is exactly as General Grant wrote the manuscript of his memoirs.
 Advance orders have already been re, ceived for this edition for some 30, 900 copies, and the indications are, the publishers say. that within the next 10 months an edition of 2O0, 900 copies will be sold. Nothing like the success which such sale would illus. trate has been known in the history of any book. It was supposed that within two ol three years after the first publication of these memoirs the sale would practically be ended. Yet, instead of that being so, the demand for the work has been constant and has every year yielded to Mrs. Grant a very handsome income.
 Up to this time Mrs. Grant has received in the way of royalties a little over $500 COG for this book, and the publishers and Colo nel Grant, now looking back. realize that if they had had the experience when the book was published that they now possess the sales would have been so much larger that Mrs Grants profits would probably have been $750 900. To these profits must be add ed those of the publishers as we'll as the enormous aggregate commissions paid to the agents in order to get an idea of the gross profits obtained by the sale of this work. It has been upon the market less than 10 years, and yet it is fair estimate of it's profit making capacity to say that it
 
 siderably more than $l,000000.
 No single work published in the English language can show such figures as those for the same length of time. MT. Blaine's Twenty Years of Congress" brought him not far from 8 quarter of a million dollars, and that was regarded as so phenomenal 8 sale that it has passed into tradition. There have been some series of works, like ency- clopedias or Bible histories. which have earned more money than that, but no short work, such as those memoirs were.
 General Sherman was supposed to have received for his memoirs about $50, ,0O0, but he was asked by New York friend not long before his death if those figures were correct, and he replied that they were more than 50 per cent out of the way. He did not make even SS0,OOO. Sheridan's memoirs brought even less money in the way of profits, while Jeff Davis netted only an in- considerable sum to his widow.
 E. J. EDWARDS