The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920, 1919-04-06

tEtalt III III u uaIo it-ClNNu
Houghton Miffin' Company.
I In volume of sale, OIL Money,
L. Money, by Eleanor Fl. Porter.
And that it is not Fictitious sale
founded on the authors reputation and
on advertising is shown by the steady in
flow of orders ever since its publication.
The reason is obvious to any one who has
read the book. Mrs. Porters characters
are prominently human and through
them she touches, more unerringly per-
haps that any other living novelist, the
chords that set all hearts vibrating.
Excluding fiction, our best seller has
been The Education of Henry Adams,
which has already gone through thirteen
printings and heads the March Bookma.'s
list of non-fictiOn books most in demand
throughout the country.
2. The CGrGpda Man, by Ernest Good
win. Not that it has been failure. It's
sale has been good, even for fiction. But
it has somehow missed the overwhelming
popular success that its care free, light
hearted spirit, its all pervasive humOr and
its rapid action promised, not only 10 our
selves but 10 almost every reviewer We
have heard two explanations for this;
one that it was too clever; the other (by
cynical midwestern critie) that readers
expect artists TO obey different code Of
morality and resent the comparative vir-
tue with which Mr. Goodwin has endowed
his protagonist. .--
3. The Education Of Henry Adams
Here is an autobiography of a compare
lively obscure man selling (unilustrated)
for S.; book stepped in pessimism and
drenehed with irony; book truly great
and yet almost totally lacking in what
are generally considered the qualities es-
sential for popular success, and for which
even the most optimistic would have
scarcely ventured to predict an early sale
Of more than two or three thousand
copies. Yet to-day, six months after pub
LEGATION, it is the best selling non-fctiOn
book in. America. Little wonder that
many critics have hailed it as a most
hopeful sign for the American reading
public to have yielded so instant an ap-
probation of what is apparently destined
to be one of the worlds great literary
classics.
Marshall Jones Company.
I The Letters Of Susan Hale, The
IL League Of Nations, To-day and
Tomorrow and On Becoming an Ameri-
can are running close race for first place
on our sales records. The Letters will
win. because they have the salt of humor
to preserve their human stuff through
many years. A book that college pro-
fessor and a store clerk relish and that
my lady in her boudoir and the cook in
the kitchen both prize is bound to get
there. 1t would be easy to put between
one pair Of covers matter of four sorts
for these four sorts of readers; but the
triumph of these letters is that all sorts
of people like them all.
2. Decidedly overlooked? The re-
viewers treated The Eastern Windo,0 very
well-as it deserved to be treated-but the
the public held aloof. Your neighbor
across Spruce street said: "A volume Of
beauty so rare and exquisite that it must
stand apart, almost unique and solitary"
1t has stood apart-and the public has
missed something! Some day somebody
will discover" this story, and then
3. If any Of our books has upset trade
preeedents" We should say it was Ralph
Adams Grams Nemesis of Mediocrity. A
small book, which might have been ex-
pected to climb up for three months or
six months, and then either decline swiftly
or "fall off, abruptly, it hit its stride
quickly and has held the pace steadily, SO
that week after week the figures hardly
,o1