The Savannah morning news., 1902-04-27

which should protect the interests of
those who wrote. AS a matter of fact,
5esant must have had a large share
IN the gradual rise of prices for liter
airy wares in England. In spite of this.
however, most publishers admit that
his labors have been of value to them
IN trying to keep down the production
or poor stuff. Besant writes regarding
this:
We have been accused of fostering
the ambitions of the incapable and of
helping flood the market with trash
Far from it; we dissuade by every
means in our power; we have readers
who give them the plain truth; we adj
vertise warnings against paying for
the publication of manuscripts. But /
confess that we can do little to keep
down the swelling stream of ispirants.
Thousands of pens are flying over the
paper at this moment, and every MOI
ment producing bad novels and worse
poetry. We check some of them; the
rest learn by bitter disappointment"
Besant, it may be remembered, was
one OF the three captains who defend
ed the piracy of Counting of Dinah
Shadd," by an American publishing
house, according to Kipling's poem,
THE hyme of the Three Captains"
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
has been dramatized by Mr.. George
Seibel, a Pittsburg editor, and Mr..
Richard Mansfield will present the ver-
sion early next season. We shall ex-
pect to hear says London Literature,
that some one has made dramatized
version of THE Origin of Species" or
the Book of Proverbs"
The business of dramatizing popular
novels has reached a state of separate
vocation. Nowadays a good recaster
of a popular book may make very
comfortable living, and that, too, with
out trying to grind out several plays
in a year. Publishers are beginning to
consider dramatic rights whenever
they take up a romantic tale, and, in
many cases, the income from the play
made from a romantic novel is away
ahead of the royalties gained from
book publication. 1 CHANGED to learn
the other day that two of last years
popular novels were first written as
PLAYS, but never staged. A friend of
the author who happened to read the
plays advised his making regular nov
els out of the plots. This was done,
and the author reaped q considerable
Income. Then an enterprising theatre
cal manager bought the dramatic YER
sion of one of the books, and it is now
making a great success on the stage
perience that a successful romantic
play must have a previous state of ex-
istence between book covers in a vol
ume which has taken the popular
taste.
1t is now no longe@ denied that Mr..
David Graham Phillips is the author
of The Great God Success" a story
OF newspaper life in New York city,
which attracted considerable attention
last year because of it's faithful repre-
sentation of happenings in Park Row.
Mr.. Phillips drew on his own expert
ences considerably. One of these in
stances furnished the writer a clue to
the identity of John Graham" the
pen name attached to the title page.
The hero of the tale makes his first
hit in the newspaper office in which
he is employed in exactly the same
way that Mr.. Phillips himself estab
lished himself on the New York Sun.
Mr.. Phillips was until recently
leading editorial writer on one of the
New York newspapers. but he gave
this work up in order to write books.
His second story will shortly appear
under the title, Her Serene Highness,"
and IT, is said to be story we'll worth
while reading.