The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-06-27
THE OLD BOOKS
 STILL SELL BEST The Bible Is First of All the SHAKESPEARE IS SECOND Steady Demand for Irving, Dickens, Hawthorne, While the Best Seller
 Of Year Ago Is Forgot
 ten-Popular Poets.
SHAKESPEARE IS SECOND
From the New York Sun.

From the New York Sun.
 In any ten years 100 standard books. classics if you will, outsell any 100 new books. The genuine best sellers, If any long period is considered, are not new favorites but old.
 After the daring young lady has writ ten a book that her mother shouldn't let her read and has drawn her royalties from a sale of 50,000, 100000, 150,000 copies in 8 year the public looks for new sen sation, but the books that were classics before the daring young lady was born go right on selling It is the hare and the tortoise all over again, only the sleep that overtalxes the novel of the year is apt to be a sleep that knows no waking.
 Shakespeare outsells his great modern rival. George Bernard Shaw, not only every ten years, but every year, and probably every month in the year. In fact Shakespeare. If all the English speaking countries are considered, Is about the best seller going except the English Bible. Editions of Shakespeare are like hotels in New York, it seems im- possible to get too many of them
 Long after Washington Irving's copy
 
 most profitable books on the list of his publishers. In fact Irving's earlier works underwent death and resurrection while he himself yet lived.
 When in 1846 Irving returned from long residence in Europe his Philadelphia. publishers told him that his books were out of print and that they did not care to undertake new editions. The plates v a Ynrlx T- wing went on writing, and between his new books and his old his royalties in the next dozen years until his death amount ed to about s250,00o. The sale of his books for the 50 years since his death at Irving ton in November, 1859, has never greatly Jagged for long, and the sale of the most popular among them has been enormous Rip Van Wfnkle' was one of the best sellers of the nineteenth century. and 1t promises to be one of the best of the twentieth.
 There are few great novels of the last century that would enrich in ten years any publisher who could have a monopoly of their publication. 'Ivanhoe'' is one of these. "The Scarlet Letter. Is another. Anybody can publish flaw thorne now, but his original publishers go right on selling his works singly and in sets almost as If he were alive and still writing.
 "The Pckwick Papers, sells better than any recent humorous work and David Copperfield' has been selling steadily for 80 years There are those who prophecy that ''Pickwick will be popular when most other prose fiction of the last century has gathered dust upon the library shelves. Hardly any other book by youth of 25 has had such a success for so long a period, now more than 70 years. Publishers are making ready for a spurt in the sale of Dickens works at his centennial in 1912.
 Thackeray, whose centennial comes a year earlier. wrote nothing that has had the steady sale of "Pickwick," though Vanity Fair is still best seller. Coop CTS Misunderstanding Tales have never ceased to sell both at home and abroad, and many thousands of them are called for every year. You may buy them to- day in cheap gaudi1y-oovered French pa per-bound editions, just as you may have some of Hawthorne's New England sto- ries in an Italian popular edition bearing the title "Racconti del Farwest' The French "Pickwick,' by the way, in two small paper-bound volumes, is a thing to make the admirers of Dickens rub their eyes.
 No current new books for children long outsell few old favorites of the last and of earlier generations. Not to go beyond the middle of the last century, @Alice in Wonderland" a few of Louisa Alcott's books and the best of Uncle Remus never yield long to the popularity of new juvenile. Hans Brinker'' also outsells the new books. Treasure Island" won a place on the permanent juvenile list long before Stevenson's death. Uncle