The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-11-01
On the Reading of Books

The Atlantic Monthly for November contains several short papers of more than ordinary interest to thoughtful readers. One of them is on books ..sThe Reading of Books Nowadays" by George P. Brett.
 The writer of this paper is the pres ident of an old and honored publish ing house-the Macmillan company. He tells us of the declining demand for books of solid worth, and as the days of his boyhood were back in the sixties he has now reached the age when his observations contribute something of value to the modern history of book reading. Indeed, no one is better qualified than he to speak with authority on this subject. In his youth all well bred boys and girls were brought up on serious literature, books that required con- centration of thought for a proper understanding of them.
 Mr. Brett mentions some of the works that were widely read half century ago and some years later; among them, "Darwin's Origin of . Species," Proctor's "Other Worlds Than Ours" Hugh Miller's Foot prints of the Creator" and "The Testi- mony of the Rocks," and Martin Tup- per's "Proverbial Philosophy" There was very large demand little later on for works of absorbing scientific interest, and often the supply of books by Darwin, Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall was insufficient to meet the call for them. In this same period, MT. Brett says, there was consid- erable interest in the philosophy of Carlyle, Emerson and Holmes and the rationalism of Lecky; and in the verse of Tennyson, Longfellow, Whit
 
 At somewhat later period there was an extraordinary interest, MT. Brett tells us, on the part of the pub- lie in Kidd's Social Evolution" and Henry Drummond's Natural Law in the Spiritual World" of both of which ''more than 100000 copies were sold within three months of publication. l" The demand for instructive and ele- vating works is singularly limited to- day, hence MT. Brett's lament.
 The writer of the article referred to tried the experiment of selecting about forty volumes of "recent issue on serious subjects" taking care to choose only those which had proved popular in the expensive first edi- tions in the years gone by and pub \ fishing them at fifty cents each. The result of this experiment was not encouraging, for the books in cheap editions sold in less numbers than in the original more expensive editions. This seemed to prove beyond question that there is not large and eager public interested in the best works of modern literature.
 Among the bright and instructive books published not many years ago Mir. Brett mentions Theodore Roose- vslt's Autobiography" and asks why 1t is that it fails to find a sale large enough in numbers to supply each public library in the country with even a single copy?"
 Incidentally, MT. Brett refers to the decline in letter writing-the writing of social letters such as fused to give with such charm and style descriptions of life and the news o1 the day" Also he is saddened at the passing of the art of conversation.
 Mir. Brett accounts for the decline of the love of good reading in par1 by the feverish life of the present time, and while he deplores the lack q literary taste in what is known al cultured society he seems to think 1,