The Montgomery advertiser., 1901-12-13
APPETITE FOR FICTION.
There is Growing American Demand
 for Good Stories.

Literary Digest. ..
 The amount of fiction written and read in America during 1901 is evidence of an omnivorous demand. The facts pre- scented by Talcott Williams Review of Reviews, November) warrant his asser- ton that we are turning the current Of scale. Truly. the American people have here an apparently limitless appetite. observe MT. Williams's statistics:
 The year u9OD has had at least six novels which run to a circulation of l5O,- 900. one-half as many more which reach 100000. score with what would once have been the phenomenal circulation of 5O,OO0, and from forty to fifty editions of 2O.QO0 to 5000. Nowadays book scarce ly moves which does less. Work out this sum, add the editions of the 800 or more novels with normal editions, and there is novel production of not less than some ists the world over. The literary statis- tics of our urban quadrilateral-New York. Chicago. Philadelphia and Bos- ton-will give you public library circu- some 4,SOC,OOO are novels. Our lesser libraries will nearly double this In all, this appetite for novel-reading calls for the issue of 100000 volumes, and the circulation of fiction, new and old, through libraries. is some seven million to eight million volumes. l have laid bare the basis of my estimate. Any man can check that chooses. Accurate the figures are not. Approximate they are. The big sellers give round one million volumes year. The next grade another one million. The crowded rank and file as many more. more rather than less. The libraries, where fiction IS all ways 70 to 80 per cent. of the total over turn. run up to a circulation Of O.OOO volumes of fiction month in our cities. This, too, does not reckon the hood or fiction in two-thirds of our population not in cities pent and the myriad lesser cir cles of book circulation. with better Nudes than Great Britain ever had in the 'Book-lover's Library whose orders for books are now running in sums or six figures 1 hesitate to quote.
 This locust army of readers is not set ting on the green fields of fresh hction only. A point brought out by thls writer Is the inclusive character ot the Amerl- can choice. He says:
 Tn a single great store-one or the hVe or six largest in the country, put, alter all. only one of d dozen in our four cities which hold 7,OOO,0OO population-l md that in a year there are, roughly speak ing sold 7.OOO volumes of Walter Scott, 5000 of Thackeray, 12,O00 of Elot, ana close to zv.OO0 volumes of Dickens. George Eliot and Thackerav sell by sets. Eliot especially, set being a cheap present. Cooper, too, in solitary volumes like The Pathfinder, runs past all the rest; scot and Dickens sell by volumes. me saie of sets. while large in amount IS small by the side of the call for single volumes,
 
 the sale of Dickens in the current year at less than 100000 to 25OOOo volumes His own life saw no year of more. have no mahner of doubt that this twelVe, month sees 100000 volumes or Scot' bought by readers. This estimate m cludes ali the swarm of cheap pracies pla nra. and is by volumes. The colleges are pro vincial in these things. Their reading lists show a belief that
 Laurel is green for a season, and love Is | sweet for a day,
 as they turn to the new gods of the passing moment; but for the great mass Things long past over suffice, and mer forgotten that were.
 Do you doubt these figures? Do you | Imagine that the stacked sets of Dick ems, Scott. Cooper. Thackeray ana Eno, l you see In cairns in the great departmen' | stores are there for ornament! 20 yot | realize that every square inch or taDlt | service in the thronged aisles in which you will tostle for two months rs1r to come 2pt the tiny squares at the bottom of the blue clay of Kimberley diamond rench'