The San Francisco call., 1895-12-01
Justin Mccarthy, MP, Discusses
the Business of Author
ship.
ABOUT LATTER-DAY WRITER'S.
Considers the Modern Neurotic Novel a
Waste of Power-Re "Ameri.
can Pirates"

notable people he has met one time
or another. / called upon him yesterday,
SAYS a London Daily Chronicle interviewer,
and he was good enough to talk to me on
subject somewhat akin. This was his out
look upon English literature, alike from
the point of view of authorship and that
of the public appreciation of books since
he began his literary career. Justin Nc
Carthy, with his wholly winning person
atty, has been much engulfed in politics,
but he remains one of our best regarded
bookmen.
"The general interest in literature, as
compared with the position OF things when
/ was young man." said Mr.. Mccarthy,
'is infinitely greater. 1t is not merely
that there are so many more readers, but
that those readers represent so much more
fully all classes of the population. Even
now though, the English reading public
is not so great proportionately as the
American reading public is. Only we are
still progressing, as, indeed, in our liking
for books | have no doubt we shall always
continue to do"
'And then authorship-is it better
business better worth the best brains of
the country, than IL was when you first
knew it?"
IAN advance in that direction is a nee
essary accompaniment of the other, which
leads me to point out-what l fancy is
well-recognized fact-that the greatest in
crease in reading has been in fiction. How
! many novelists have we now writing to
supply this demand? I'm sure l don't
know. But when | was young man you
could count the recognized novelists on
your tingers-the successful, the thor
oughly popular novelists, / mean. Let
me see-and l speak of the period 1860 and
thereabout-there were Dickens Thack-
cray, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte-
whose writings had immense vogue, al
| though she herself had passed away
| Charles Reade, Anthony Trollope, Wilkie
Collins and Guy Livingstone"
"Guy Livingstone, whose works the
younger generation perhaps hardly
knows?"
Hardly knows, as you say, although in
| popularity he ranked well to the front in
| those days. The names | have run over
would practically represent the successful
output of fiction then-a dozen successful
writers-let US take it. Now, as | re-
marked a minute ago, we have such a
number of successful novelists, and such a
mass of really clever novels. Still, is there
one single novelist of the present who
could be called great-great, that is to say,
as Dickens was great and Thackeray was
great? There is not one; SO we come to
| this that the general body of our literature
is better-making qualification which
shall come to just now-but the great are
| fewer"
1--WE have larger output of good litera-
tlire, but we rear fewer giants to give US
the very best?"
Quite so we rear fewer giants. The
! exception | was referring to-and / speak
OF the average novel especially-is literary
%,,I0 ~, p NCy
what prevailed when the demand for fc-
tion and the means of putting 1t on the
| market were so much less than now.
have in my mind-as extreme examples
perhaps-the folk who don't make their
nouns and their verbs agree, for l must
confess that one sometimes comes across
even that I'm very sensitive as to good
pure English, a thorough mastery of gram
mar and style as apart from the story told
in the novel, which may be ever so clever;
but then I'm possibly old-fashioned in
that respect"
Probably some writer's find publishers
now who in .he old days would not have
been able to do it-I mean the, opportuni-
ties are greater, and so possibly the scrutiny
on style is less?'
"rhat sounds likely enough. Before, a
man might have good ideas, but if he could
not write good English he would not write
at ALL Or if he did write he would not
have been able to find a publisher, pub
fishers being both fewer and more con-
servative. The trouble at one time was to
get book of any kind published, only in
that respect / was myself more fortunate
than many others. was on the staff of q
paper and that was at least passport for
my manuscript to be looked at by the pub
fishers. To-day anybody of literary gifts
| has at least fair chance-some who have
none, Pm afraid, get IL, as witness the case
| of orhc yyh hinh
agree. To come back to where we were,
authorship is, in fine, q better business
| than 1t was when / began it. and the same
for that matter may be said of journalism. !"
"You have, no doubt, noted some of the
changes in the sort of fiction taken in and
read by the bulk of readers?"
1.-THE fiction of the sixties was the social
fiction-the fiction about things we all
knew. our customs, our habitudes, the fic-
ton of Anthony Trollope, if you like, for
| type. Thackeray wrote 'Esmond' and
George Eliot 'Romola, and those are the
only two historical novels of that period
which occur to me. Now, thanks largely
no doubt to the genius of Robert Louis
Stevenson, the historical novel is strongly
with us. And this renaissance on the lines
of Scott, of Dumas, with differences and a
more direct form of narration perhaps, is a
notable change. OF the neurotic novel
! another change, and feature quite disap-
pear1ng, belleve-tnere was no MINT
then. True. Reade and others wrote
books dealing with problems, but they
were problems which legislation could
| reach. There was hope of something
coming out of the matter, but what could
come Of the neurotic novel which we have
had in these later days2 Woman we have
| had always with US and we have known
her long time. We cannot change her
much, nor she us, and therefore I'm in
clined to think the modern problem novel q
waste of power"
"You have seen also the fall-for sup
pose it is quite dead-of the three-volume
novel?h
81 imagine the influence of that on the
quality of English fiction will be good, be-
cause tbs not satisfactory thing for an
author to have to pan out story to three
volumes, when really it ought to be
shorter. can fecollect very well the in
terest which was excited by the monthly
installments of stories by Dickens and
| Thackeray as they came out. The circu-
lation of Dickens in this way was probably
five times as great as Thackeray's circula-
| ton. After Dickens would have come
| Charles Lever and then Anthony Trollope,
and the method of the authors, for the
| most part anyhow, was to write as the sto-
ries came out, installment by installment.
| For cavoral months there were no INSTALL