On Writing

and Reading

Wilkie Collins

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Table of Contents

Preface to this edition

How I Write My Books

Reminiscences of a Story Teller

Books Necessary for a Liberal Education

Considerations on the Copyright Question

Colophon

Preface to this edition

Wilkie Collins lived in London from 1824 to 1889, a period in which ‘the inevitable self-assertion of wealth, so amiably deplored by the prosperous and the rich; [was] so bitterly familiar to the unfortunate and the poor.’

He was short, plump, and short sighted; despite his severe suffering from gout he was a traveller, bon vivant, journalist, satirist, essayist, novelist, dramatist and social activist; and friend, collaborator, and rival of Charles Dickens. He became addicted to laudanum, and several of his characters praise it.

One of his characters says ‘… isn’t it the original intention or purpose… of a work of fiction, to set out distinctly by telling a story? … What I want is something that seizes hold of my interest… something that keeps me reading, reading, reading, in a breathless state to find out the end.’

This ebook contains four of Wilkie Collins’ short non-fiction articles dealing with writing and reading. They were never collected together during his life, but I hope that they will give modern readers as much pleasure as they have given me.

The source texts for On Writing and Reading were taken from

www.web40571.clarahost.co.uk/wilkie/wilkie.htm. I have silently corrected typos, curled quotes, and made minor changes to spelling, punctuation, and hyphenation using oxforddictionaries.com.

How I Write My Books

You ask me, Madam, to tell you how I write my books; and you express an opinion that other persons besides yourself may be interested in the result, if I comply with your request. I am not at all sure that I have the honour of agreeing with you. My own impression is that the public cares little how books are written. If the books are easy to get, and if they prove to be interesting, the general reader asks for nothing more. You assert, upon this, that there is but one way of deciding which is the sound opinion, yours or mine; and that way is – to try the experiment. Your will is law. Let the experiment be tried.

All my novels are produced by the same literary method. If we take one book as an example, I shall perhaps be able to make myself more readily understood; and I shall certainly occupy less of your time. When I think of the claims of the toilette, the claims of the shops, the claims of conversation, the claims of horse exercise, and the claims of chat – to say nothing of hundreds of other smaller occupations – my respect for the value of your time is part of my respect for yourself. Which book shall we choose as a specimen? Shall it be the most popular book? Very well. I have now to tell you how I wrote The Woman in White.

My first proceeding is to get my central idea – the pivot on which the story turns.

The central idea of The Woman in White is the idea of a conspiracy in private life, in which circumstances are so handled as to rob a woman of her identity by confounding her with another woman, sufficiently like her in personal appearance to answer the wicked purpose. The destruction of her identity represents a first division of the story; the recovery of her identity marks a second division.

My central idea suggests some of my chief characters. A clever devil must conduct the conspiracy. Male devil? or female devil? The sort of wickedness wanted seems to be a man’s wickedness. Perhaps a foreign man. Count Fosco faintly shows himself to me, before I know his name. I let him wait, and begin to think about the two women. They must be both innocent and both interesting. Lady Glyde dawns on me as one of the innocent victims. I try to discover the other – and fail. I try what a walk will do for me – and fail. I devote the evening to a new effort – and fail. Experience tells me to take no more trouble about it, and leave that other woman to come of her own accord. The next morning, before I have been awake in my bed for more than ten minutes, my perverse brains set to work without consulting me. Poor Anne Catherick comes into the room, and says: “Try me”.

I have got my idea; I have got three of my characters. What is there to do now? My next proceeding is to begin building up the story.

Here, my favourite three efforts must be encountered. First effort: to begin at the beginning. Second effort: to keep the story always advancing, without paying the smallest attention to the serial division in parts, or to the book publications in volumes. Third effort: to decide on the end. All this is done, as my father used to paint his skies in his famous sea pieces, at one heat. As yet, I do not enter into details; I merely set up my landmarks. In doing this the main situations of the story present themselves; and, at the same time I see my characters in all sorts of new aspects. These discoveries lead me nearer and nearer to finding the right end. The end being decided on, I go back again to the beginning, and look at it with a new eye, and fail to be satisfied with it. I have yielded to the worst temptation that besets a novelist – the temptation to begin with a striking incident, without counting the cost in the shape of explanations that must, and will follow. These pests of fiction, to reader and writer alike, can only be eradicated in one way. I have already mentioned the way – to begin at the beginning. In the case of The Woman in White I get back (as I vainly believe) to the true starting point of the story. I am now at liberty to set the new novel going; having, let me repeat, no more than an outline of story and characters before me, and leaving the details, in each case to the spur of the moment.

For a week, as well as I can remember, I work for the best part of every day, but not as happily as usual. An unpleasant sense of something wrong worries me. At the beginning of the second week, a disheartening discovery reveals itself. I have not found the right beginning of The Woman in White, yet.

The scene of my opening chapters is in Cumberland. Miss Fairlie (afterwards Lady Glyde); Mr. Fairlie, with his irritable nerves and his art treasures; Miss Halcombe (discovered suddenly, like Anne Catherick), are all waiting the arrival of the young drawing master, Walter Hartright. No: this won’t do. The person to be first introduced is Anne Catherick. She must be already a familiar figure to the reader, when the reader accompanies me to Cumberland. This is what must be done, but I don’t see how to do it; no new idea comes to me; I and my manuscript have quarrelled, and don’t speak to each other. One evening, I happen to read of a lunatic who has escaped from an asylum – a paragraph of a few lines only, in a newspaper. Instantly the idea comes to me of Walter Hartright’s midnight meeting with Anne Catherick, escaped from the asylum. The Woman in White begins again; and nobody will ever be half as much interested in it now, as I am. From that moment, I have done with my miseries. For the next six months the pen goes on; it is work, hard work; but the harder the better, for this excellent reason: the work is its own exceeding great reward.

As an example of the gradual manner in which I reach the development of character, I may return for a moment to Fosco. The making him fat was an afterthought; his canaries and his white mice were found next; and the most valuable discovery of all, his admiration of Miss Halcombe, took its rise in a conviction that he would not be true to nature unless there was some weak point, somewhere in his character.

My last difficulty tried me, after the story had been finished, and part of it had been set in proof for serial publication in All the Year Round. Neither I, nor any friend whom I consulted, could find the right title. Literally, at the eleventh hour, I thought of The Woman in White. In various quarters, this was declared to be a vile melodramatic title that would ruin the book. Among the very few friends who encouraged me, the first and foremost was Charles Dickens. “Are you too disappointed?” I said to him. “Nothing of the sort, Wilkie! A better title there cannot be.”

You are kind enough to allude, in terms of approval, to my method of writing English, and to ask if my style comes to me easily. It comes easily, I hope, to you. Let a last word of confession tell you the rest.

The day’s writing having been finished, with such corrections of words and such rebalancing of sentences as occur to me at the time, is subjected to a first revision on the next day, and is then handed to my copyist. The copyist’s manuscript undergoes a second and a third revision, and is then sent to the printer. The proof passes through a fourth process of correction, and is sent back to have the new alterations embodied in a Revise. When this reaches me, it is looked over once more, before it goes back to press. When the serial publication of the novel is reprinted in book form, the book proofs undergo a sixth revision. Then, at last, my labour of correction has come to an end, and (I don’t expect you to believe this) I am always sorry for it.

You have enjoyed, Madam, a privilege dear to ladies – you have had your own way. How I write my books, you now know as well as I can tell you. If you have been able to read to the end, show these lines, if you like, to any friends who care to look at them. In the meantime, I make my bow and my exit.

Wilkie Collins

From The Globe 26 November 1887 p. 511-514

Reminiscences of

a Storyteller

After a period of eight-and-thirty years devoted to the art of writing fiction, I am asked to look back at my experience of the readers of novels, and to place on record some account of the result.

If I allow myself to be influenced by first impressions, compliance with this request threatens to involve an elaboration of literary treatment which might produce hundreds of pages of dull reading, and startle my friend, the proprietor of this Review, by presenting him with a book when he only asks for an article.

Not to insist, however, on a fanciful obstacle, there is a serious reason for hesitating to avail myself of the proposal with which I have been favoured. I should be insensible indeed if I did not gratefully feel my obligations to the kindness of readers at home and abroad. At the same time I must not forget that there are exceptions to rules in all human affairs – the modest affairs of a literary man even included. Some of my relations with readers (English readers for the most part) have not been always amicably maintained. I find these words prefixed, more than a quarter of a century since, to the first cheap editions of one of my early novels called Basil: ‘On its appearance this work was condemned offhand by a certain class of readers as an outrage on their sense of propriety. Conscious of having designed and written my story with the strictest regard to true delicacy as distinguished from false. I allowed the prurient misinterpretation of certain perfectly innocent passages in this book to assert itself as offensively as it pleased, without troubling myself to protest against an expression of opinion which aroused in me no other feeling than a feeling of contempt.’ The conviction of the duty that I owed to my art, expressed in those terms, has remained my conviction to the present time. In the thousands of pages that I have written, I never remember to have asked myself: Will this passage be favourably received if the prying eyes of prudery discover my book? But if I am to write of readers of novels with anything approaching to a complete treatment of the subject, that section of the public which I now have in my mind must be included, or my record of experience will not be complete. Never having attached any importance to the opinions of these people, I have no inclination to notice them. I do not address them in my writings; neither do I care to remember them in this place.

Renouncing, for these reasons, any attempt at a serious presentation of the subject suggested to me, I think I see an alternative which permits me to gossip when I do not presume to instruct. What I might say in conversation with a friend can be said perhaps to many friends who will open these pages. They may accept a little light talk growing out of casual recollections, if they will kindly consent to be amused on easier conditions than I once encountered, when I was compelled to address my first audience in the bedroom at school.

The oldest of the boys, appointed to preserve order, was placed in authority over us as captain of the room. He was as fond of hearing stories, when he had retired for the night, as the Oriental despot to whose literary tastes we are indebted for The Arabian Nights; and I was the unhappy boy chosen to amuse him. It was useless to ask for mercy and beg leave to be allowed to go to sleep. ‘You will go to sleep, Collins, when you have told me a story.’ In the event of my consenting to keep awake and to do my best, I was warned beforehand to ‘be amusing if I wished to come out of it with comfort to myself.’ If I rebelled, the captain possessed a means of persuasion in the shape of an improved cat-o’-ninetails invented by himself. When I was obstinate, I felt the influence of persuasion. When my better sense prevailed, I learnt to be amusing on a short notice – and have derived benefit from those early lessons at a later period of my life. Like other despots, the captain had his intervals of generosity; I owe to his system of rewarding me that ‘passion for pastry’ to which Byron tells us he was indebted for the privilege of reading Wordsworth’s poetry. In after years, I never had an opportunity of reminding the captain that I had served my apprenticeship to story telling under his superintendence. He went to India with good prospects, and died, poor fellow, a few years only after he had left school.

I have now to try if I can tell some stories of readers. Let me endeavour to be amusing at the other end of my life.

Some years since, being one of the guests at a large dinner party, I discovered a variety among the groups of individuals known to civilised society under the name of novel readers.

The master of the house presented me (unfortunately, as the event proved) to the lady whom I was to escort to the dinner table. A lazy, genial, companionable man, he numbered among his many social accomplishments a cultivated taste for all that is most enjoyable in the best eating and drinking. ‘There’s a devilish good dinner today,’ he whispered to me; ‘leave it to the lady to do all the talking: Before I could say ‘Thank you,’ I was presented. It might have been due to hurry, or it might have been due to hunger, my friend’s articulation failed to convey to me any accurate idea of the lady’s name. Before we had been long seated together at dinner, I became aware that my predicament was her predicament also. And this was how it happened. As well as I can remember, we had only arrived at that second act in the drama of dinner which may be called the fish act, when my neighbour began to talk of novels. To a man who has been hard at work all day writing a novel, this interesting subject fails (especially in the hands of amateurs) to produce the effervescent freshness which stimulates the mind. I listened languidly. The lady’s method of criticism divided the works of my colleagues into books that she liked and books that she hated. On my side, I made such polite answers as are consistent with proper attention to one’s fish; and I really thought we three – I mean the lady, the fish, and the present writer – were getting on very well, when she suddenly turned to me, like a person inspired by a new idea, and said:

‘I hope you don’t like Wilkie Collins’s novels?’

The enviable faculty which can say the right thing on the spur of the moment is possessed by few people; and I am not one of that quick-witted minority. The nearest visible refuge I could see presented itself under the form of prevarication. I had only to remember that I had written the novels, and the reply was obvious:

‘I haven’t read them.’

The lady sincerely congratulated me; she was apparently, though I had not noticed it hitherto, a kind-hearted woman. I ventured nevertheless to change the subject. When we had done with novels, one of us was silently contented, and the other talked. I think our politics were Conservative; and our fashionable views on the art of music preferred noise to tune. The dinner reached its end at last; the ladies left us to our wine; and, in due time, we too rose from the table and followed them upstairs.

The moment I entered the drawing room the mistress of the house made a signal to me with her fan. We sat down together in a distant corner, and I heard a confession. My friend’s wife began by acknowledging that she had made a sad mistake. ‘But it is really not my fault,’ she pleaded. ‘When we left the dining room, the lady whom you took down to dinner mentioned you to me as a pleasant intelligent sort of man. “I didn’t catch the name,” she said, “when your husband introduced us; who is he?” I innocently told her who you were – and provoked, to my utter amazement, an outburst of indignation. It seems that she had expressed an opinion about your books –’ There we both burst out laughing; but the serious part of it was still to come. My reply was declared by the angry lady to have been unworthy of a gentleman. ‘A well-bred man,’ she said, ‘would have mentioned his name.’ This was surely a matter of opinion? I persisted in claiming for myself the modest merit of good intentions. My impulse was to spare the lady the embarrassment which she might possibly have felt if I had let her discover that I was the writer of the books which she hoped that I hated. My hostess agreed with me. ‘The best of it is,’ she said, ‘that this curious friend of mine wasn’t able to answer me, when I asked how it was that your books had failed to please her. She said : “Oh, how should I know?”’ This quaint reply interested me: it exhibited a state of mind which I had hitherto unaccountably overlooked. Assisted by the experience of later years I have discovered that the readers who like a book or dislike a book without knowing why are fairly represented, in respect of numbers, among the readers of novels. There is undoubtedly something to be said in favour of this independent frame of mind. Disputatious people are not able to entrap you into an argument; inquisitive people find it useless to ask for your reasons; you and your novel are on strictly confidential terms, and you keep your secret.

At the same time it is not to be denied that those persons who can give their reasons – by means generally of letters to the author – for offering or refusing a friendly welcome to a work of fiction, are readers who interest the novelist, although they write as strangers to him. Whether they are critics who praise or critics who blame – whether they are foolish and spiteful or wise and generous – they at least pay the writer of the book the compliment of taking him into their confidence. Sometimes they bear witness unconsciously to the extraordinary coincidences which so often present themselves in real life. Sometimes they write autobiography without knowing it, and present their own characters as freely to a stranger as if they were writing to their oldest and dearest friend.

I remember hearing from a reader (apparently apt to take offence) that he had closed The Woman in White before he had got half way through the story because I had committed ‘a violation of the sanctity of private life.’ This gentleman’s house and estate happened to be situated in one of the few English counties which I have never seen. I had not heard of his name, or of the name of his house; none of my friends, when I made inquiries, had the honour of knowing him. I was accused, nevertheless, of privately entering his park, and availing myself of certain defects in the scenery (left unimproved through want of pecuniary means) for the purely selfish purpose of writing a piece of picturesque description. My offence will be found, by anyone who cares to look for it, at page 157 of the edition of the novel in one volume. The character named ‘Miss Halcombe’ is supposed to be writing a description of a stagnant piece of water in the grounds of a house called Blackwater Park, and she expresses herself in these terms: ‘The lake had evidently once flowed to the place on which I stood, and had been gradually wasted and dried up to a third of its former size. I saw its still, stagnant waters a quarter of a mile away from me in the hollow, separated into pools and ponds by twining reeds and rushes and little knolls of earth… Nearer to the marshy side of the lake I observed, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still.’ Every word of this description, my correspondent assured me, applied to his lake – diminished, as I had treacherously discovered, to a third of its original size. The pools of stagnant water were his pools; the old overturned boat was his boat; the spot of sunlight shone on it through the trees, and the snakes basked in the warm light! Here, in short, was one of the strange coincidences, found constantly in the world of reality, reviled as improbabilities in the world of fiction. I made no attempt to reply in my own defence. In the first place, my correspondent would have refused to believe me; in the second place, I was not in the least angry with him. Had he not been so good as to inform me, on his own authority, that I had written a description which was true to nature?

I may also thank ‘Count Fosco’ for having laid me under similar obligations. He has introduced me to more of the readers who, when they dislike a story, can tell the reason why. A bourgeois of Paris, reading ‘The Woman in White,’ in a French translation, wrote to say that he had flung the book to the other end of the room on discovering that ‘Fosco’ was an absolutely perfect likeness of himself. He naturally insisted on receiving satisfaction for this insult, leaving the choice of swords or pistols to me as the challenged person. Information, on which he could rely, had assured him that I meditated a journey to Paris early in the ensuing week. A hostile meeting might, under such circumstances, be easily arranged. His letter ended with these terrible words:

‘J’attendrai Monsieur Vilkie avec deux témoins a la gare.’ [I will wait Mr Wilkie with two seconds at the station] Arriving at Paris, I looked for my honourable opponent. But one formidable, person presented himself whom I could have wounded with pleasure – the despot who insisted on examining my luggage.

A lady was so good as to inform me of another objection to the same story. She considered it to be the work of an incompetent writer, and here again ‘Count Fosco’ was to blame. When he made his appearance on the scene the feebleness of that conception of the character of a villain had destroyed my fair correspondent’s interest in the novel. If I thought of trying again, she would be glad if I would call on her. From her own experience she would undertake to provide me with literary materials for the presentation of the most tremendous scoundrel that had ever darkened the pages of fiction. ‘You may depend on my observing the strictest truth to nature,’ the lady wrote, ‘for the man I have in my eye is my husband.’ But one incident was required to make this proposal complete, and that incident was not wanting. Her husband was a friend of mine.

Let me not forget to do justice to a select few among the readers of novels. Here we find those excellent Christians who return good for evil. Letters, in this case, arrive accompanied by a gift, at the sight of which humanity shudders. It is known to the martyrs of literature as a manuscript. Your last work, the letter informs you, has been read with the deepest interest. accompanied (alas!) by a feeling of regret. The central idea of your story happens, by an extraordinary coincidence, to have been exactly the idea which occurred to your reader. ‘Let me not shock you, dear sir, by describing toil uselessly endured, and noble aspirations completely thrown away. I make you a present of my poor work. It may suggest improvements in your next edition. Or, your well-known kindness of heart may induce you to give the public an opportunity of judging between the first effort of a young person and the matured work of the great master. Any remuneration which the publisher may offer, under your advice, will be gratefully accepted by yours truly.’ Mine truly is sometimes an unhappy man who has been compelled to pawn his clothes, or sometimes a mother of a family who has employed her humble pen in the intervals of domestic anxiety. People talk about pathos. Ah! here it is, isn’t it?

Then, again, there is the truly considerate reader.

He may only appear at intervals, but he claims notice, in respect of his polite aversion to troubling you with a letter. The considerate reader knows what large demands on your valuable time must be made by correspondence, and he will call on you personally. Speaking for myself, I view him with a feeling of reluctant admiration; he represents, so far as my observation extends, the only entirely fortunate human being to be found on the face of the earth. Other people whom it is not convenient to receive, on certain days, you can succeed in keeping out of the house when your servant says: ‘Not at home.’ The considerate reader who calls on you is the favourite child of spiteful chance, and gets into your house by lucky accident. For example, the servant who opens your door happens to have gone out for a few minutes. In those minutes, the favourite of fortune rings at the bell, and is let in by the other servant who has not received instructions. Or, perhaps, you wish to see a person who is to call on a matter of business, at a given time, and the servant is told when to expect the arrival of the visitor. He has encountered an obstacle, and he is late by five minutes for his appointment. In those minutes the reader who will not trouble you with a letter arrives and says, ‘How lucky to have found you at home!’ Even when you are going out yourself, your chances of escape are not always favourable. As you open your door, a smiling stranger ascends the step from the street. ‘Surely, I have the pleasure of seeing Mr. Collins?’ And he will have the honour of accompanying Mr. Collins, whichever way that unlucky man may be going, for a few minutes only. These are not beggars in search of money. Perish the thought! They only want your interest for a son who is a candidate for this or that, or for an interesting young creature eager for a career in life open to a woman. Sometimes a romantic incident has taken place. A member of the family has mysteriously disappeared. To obtain the customary police assistance in tracing the fugitive is beyond the means of anxious relatives. You, who have invented such wonderful plots, need only exert your imagination and find the clue. Or, perhaps, an incautious young man, with the prospect before him of an excellent marriage, has been misled, while he happened to be taking a holiday in Scotland, by an audacious creature who declares that she is his lawful wife. ‘You once wrote a novel about Scotch marriages. Oh, sir, it held everybody at home breathless from the first page to the last! All I want to know is – the law about Scotch marriages.’ And these people, differing from each other in language and manner and personal appearance, all agree in having made the same formidable discovery. Your own books have turned traitors to you, and have informed the considerate reader that you have a kind heart.

Well, well! let us not permit ourselves to be annoyed by small troubles. How infinitely preferable to reflect on the compensations which present themselves in the literary career! It is in the power of a writer to cheer the hearts of readers of a certain way of thinking, on the easiest imaginable terms. All that the novelist need do is to make a mistake – the more inexcusable the better – in the course of telling his story. To quote only one, among other instances (I regret to say) within my own experience, a little story of mine was published some time since, relating events which were supposed to happen in the year 1817. With that date confronting me, in my own writing, I was sufficiently careless, or sufficiently stupid, to represent my characters as travelling from place to place by railway. Now, everybody knows, including our old friend the typical Schoolboy, that the first railway on which carriages ran, drawn by a steam engine, was the Stockton and Darlington Railway, opened in 1825. I was the one ignorant exception to the general rule. Never before or since have I received letters brightened by such delightfully good spirits as the letters in which certain readers informed me that they had discovered my blunder. They were quite charmed with their favourite literary man for giving them this opportunity. Some of the theories which they advanced, in satirical explanation of the circumstances which might have pleaded my excuse, showed surprising ingenuity. It was plain that I could not possibly have been in a position to consult the most ordinary works of reference. Perhaps I was living in a tent in the great desert of Sahara. Or I was enjoying an Arctic drive on a sledge, on my way to the North Pole. Or I was lost in the recesses of a cavern in the Caucasus, and was writing, by the light of my last torch, with a gallant resolution to keep up my spirits under the prospect of being buried alive. One correspondent only addressed me seriously; he was a young man who described himself as ‘a mine of information.’ He suggested living with me (on a sufficient salary), so as to be always at hand, and able to enlighten me on a subject at any hour of the day or night. If I would make an appointment he would call with pleasure, and submit himself to examination. The bare idea of this living encyclopaedia getting into the house, and dropping useful information all the way along the hall and up the stairs, put an end to the amusement which I had derived from the other letters. If that young man is still alive, and if his object was to frighten me, I beg to offer him the congratulations which celebrate and sweeten success.

Even the circumstances accompanying a journey by railway sometimes lead to the discovery of new varieties among readers. I once travelled in the same carriage with a dexterous old lady who was carrying on two different employments at one and the same time.

While she was knitting industriously, she was also engaged in reading a book. It lay on her lap, and her accommodating companion turned over the pages. After a while the work seemed to lose its hold on the interest of the venerable reader. She shut it up. The companion said: ‘Don’t you like your book?’ The old lady pronounced sentence in a strong Northern accent : ‘Poor stoof’ As she handed the volume to her companion I recognised the illustration. Far be it from me to deny that the novel might have been poor stuff. Shall I also acknowledge that I hated the old lady? No, no; nothing quite so bad as that; let me say that she sank in my estimation. Poor humanity – and when it is literary humanity, poorest of all!

On another occasion I encountered a mitigated severity of criticism. My travelling companions were a clergyman, portly and prosperous, accompanied by two daughters. Before long, Papa fell asleep. After a sly look at him, one of the young ladies opened her travelling bag and took out a book. She dropped the book, and I picked it up for her.

It was a cheap edition of The New Magdalen. She reddened a little as she thanked me. I observed with interest the soft round object, sacred to British claptrap – the cheek of the young person – and I thought of a dear old friend, praised after his death by innumerable humbugs, who discovered the greatness of his art in its incapability of disturbing the complexion of young Miss. The clergyman’s daughter interested me; she was really absorbed over her reading. Papa began to snore, and failed to interrupt her. Her sister got tired of looking out of window at the landscape, and put a question: ‘Is it interesting?’ The fair reader answered: ‘It’s perfectly dreadful.’ The sister tried another question : ‘Who is the new Magdalen?’ ‘Oh, my dear, it’s impossible to speak of her; wait till you read it yourself.’ Time went on and Papa showed symptoms of returning to a state of consciousness. The new Magdalen instantly disappeared, and the young person caught me looking at her cheek. It reddened a little again. Alas for my art! It was worse than ‘poor stoof’ this time; it was stuff concealed from Papa, stuff which raised the famous Blush, stuff registered on the Expurgatory Index of the national cant. Who will praise The New Magdalen when I am dead and gone? Not one humbug – thank God.

Are there readers still left whose portraits have not yet been painted in these pages?

No. The readers who still remain are not asked to sit for their likenesses; and for this reason – the painter is doubtful if he could do them justice. He is now in the presence of an audience which makes the only literary reputations that last – the intelligent readers of the civilised world. They represent all nations and all ranks. Whether they praise or whether they blame, their opinions are equally worth having. They not only understand us, they help us. Many a good work of fiction has profited by their letters when they write to the author. Over and over again he has been indebted to their stores of knowledge, and to their quick sympathies, for information of serious importance to his work which he could not otherwise have obtained. When a novel extends its influence over more than one public and more than one country, it is still their doing, They are heard to speak of the story among themselves, and their words give reasons for the faith that is in them. In places of private assembly and in places of public amusement, their opinions flow, in ever widening circles, over the outlying mass of average readers, and send them on their way to the work of art, when they might stray to the false pretence. In one last word, our intelligent readers are our truest and best friends, when we are worthy of them. Their influence has raised fiction to the great place that it occupies in the front of Literature.

Wilkie Collins

From The Universal Review 15 June 1888 p.183

Books Necessary for a

Liberal Education

You have proposed that I should recommend to inexperienced readers some of the books which are necessary for a liberal education; and you have kindly sent a list of works drawn out by Sir John Lubbock with this object in view, and recently published in your journal.

I am sincerely sensible of the compliment to myself which is implied in your suggestion; but I am at the same time afraid that you have addressed yourself to the wrong man. Let me own the truth. I add one more to the number of reckless people who astonish Sir John Lubbock by devoting little care to the selection of what they read. I pick up the literature that happens to fall in my way, and live upon it as well as I can – like the sparrows who are picking up the crumbs outside my window while I write. If I may still quote my experience of myself, let me add that I have never got any good out of a book unless the book interested me in the first instance. When I find that reading becomes an effort instead of a pleasure, I shut up the volume, respecting the eminent author, and admiring my enviable fellow creatures who have succeeded where I have failed. These sentiments have been especially lively in me (to give an example) when I have laid aside in despair Clarissa Harlowe, La Nouvelle Héloise, the plays of Ben Jonson, Burke on The Sublime and Beautiful, Hallam’s Middle Ages, and Roscoe’s Life of Leo the Tenth. Is a person with this good reason to blush for himself (if he was only young enough to do it) the right sort of person to produce a list of books for readers in search of a liberal education? You will agree with me that he is capable of seriously recommending Sterne’s Sentimental Journey as the best book of travels that has ever been written, and Byron’s Childe Harold as the grandest poem which the world has seen since the first publication of Paradise Lost.

After this confession, if I nevertheless venture to offer a few suggestions, will you trust my honesty, even while you doubt my discretion? In any case, the tomb of literature is close by you. You can give me decent burial in the wastepaper basket.

To begin with, What is a liberal education? If I stood at my house door, and put that question to the first ten intelligent looking persons who passed by, I believe I should receive ten answers all at variance one with the other. My own ideas cordially recognize any system of education the direct tendency of which is to make us better Christians. Looking over Sir John Lubbock’s list from this point of view – that is to say, assuming that the production of a good citizen represents the most valuable result of a liberal education – I submit that the best book which your correspondent has recommended is The Vicar of Wakefield – and of the many excellent schoolmasters (judging them by their works) in whose capacity for useful teaching he believes, the two in whom I, for my part, most implicitly trust, are Walter Scott and Charles Dickens. Holding these extraordinary opinions, if you asked me to pick out a biographical work for general reading, I should choose (after Boswell’s supremely great book, of course) Lockhart’s Life of Scott. Let the general reader follow my advice, and he will find himself not only introduced to the greatest genius that has ever written novels, but provided with the example of a man modest, just, generous, resolute, and merciful; a man whose very faults and failings have been transformed into virtues through the noble atonement that he offered, at the peril and the sacrifice of his life.

Let me not forget that the question of literary value must also be considered in recommending books, for this good reason, that positive literary value means positive literary attraction to the general reader. In this connection I have in my mind the most perfect letters in the English language when I introduce the enviable persons who have not yet read it to Moore’s Life of Byron. Again, if any voices crying in the literary wilderness ask me what travels it may be well to read, I do justice to the charm of an admirable style, presenting the results of true and vivid observation, when I mention the names of Beckford and Kinglake. Get Beckford’s Italy, Spain, and Portugal; and, beginning towards the end of the book, whet your appetite by reading the “Excursion to the Monasteries of Alcobaça and Batalha.” In Kinglake’s case, Eöthen is the title, and the cheap edition of the book is within everybody’s reach. Dr. Kane (in Arctic Explorations) and Mr. George Melville (in The Lena Delta) are neither of them consummate masters of the English language; but they possess the rare and admirable gift of being able to make other people see what they have seen themselves. When you meet with travellers who are unable to do this, you will get nothing out of them but weariness of spirit. Shut up their books.

Keeping clear of living writers, may I recommend one or two works of fiction, on the chance that they may not have been mentioned, with a word of useful comment perhaps, in other lists?

Read, my good public, Mrs. Inchbald’s Simple Story, in which you will find the character of a young woman who is made interesting even by her faults – a rare triumph, I can tell you, in our Art. Read Marryat’s Peter Simple, and Midshipman Easy, and enjoy true humour and masterly knowledge of human nature. Let my dear lost friend, Charles Reade, seize on your interest, and never allow it to drop from beginning to end in Hard Cash. Let Dumas keep you up all night over Monte Cristo, and Balzac draw tears that honour him and honour you in Père Goriot. Last, not least, do justice to a greater writer, shamefully neglected at the present time in England and America alike, who invented the sea story, and created the immortal character of Leather Stocking. Read The Pilot and Jack Tier; read The Deerslayer and The Pathfinder, and I believe you will be almost as grateful to Fenimore Cooper as I am.

It is time to have done. If I attempted to enumerate all the books that I might honestly recommend, I should employ as many secretaries as Napoleon the Great, and I should find nobody bold enough to read me to the end. As it is, some critical persons may object that there runs all through this letter the prejudice that might have been anticipated in a writer of what heavy people call “light literature.” No, Sir; my prejudice is in favour of the only useful books that I know of – books in all departments of literature which invite the general reader, as distinguished from books that repel him. If it is answered that profitable reading is a matter of duty first and a matter of pleasure afterwards, let me shelter myself under the authority of Dr. Johnson. Never mind what I say – hear him (Boswell, vol 2, page 213, ed. 1859):

I would not advise a rigid adherence to a particular plan of study. I myself have never persisted in any plan for two days together. A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

I first read those admirable words (in an earlier edition of Boswell) when I was a boy at school. What a consolation they were to me when I could not learn my lesson! What consolation they may still offer to bigger boys in the same predicament, among books recommended to them by the highest authorities!

Wilkie Collins

From Pall Mall Gazette 11 February 1886, p2

Considerations on

the Copyright Question

Addressed To An American Friend

You were taking leave of me the other day, Colonel, when I received from the United States a copy of a pirated edition of one of my books. I threw it into the waste-paper basket, with an expression of opinion which a little startled you. As we shook hands at parting, you said, “When you are cool, my friend, I should like to be made acquainted with your sentiments on the copyright question.” I am cool now – and here are my sentiments.

I shall ask permission to introduce my remarks in a manner which will be personally interesting to you, by relating a little anecdote connected with the early history of your own family.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, one of your ancestors, voyaging with the illustrious Hendrick Hudson, got leave of absence from the ship, and took a walk on Manhattan Island, in the days before the Dutch settlement. He was possessed, as I have heard you say, of great ability in the mechanical arts. Among the articles of personal property which he had about him was a handsome watch, made by himself, and containing special improvements of his own invention.

The good man sat down to rest and look about him, at a pleasant and pastoral spot, now occupied, it may be interesting to you to know, by a publishing house in the city of New York. Having thoroughly enjoyed the cool breeze and the bright view, he took out his watch to see how the time was passing. At the same moment an Iroquois chief – whose name has, I regret to say, escaped my memory – passed that way, accompanied by a suitable train of followers. He observed the handsome watch; snatched it out of the stranger’s hand, and then and there put it into the Indian substitute for a pocket,– the name of which, after repeated efforts, I find myself unable to spell.

Your ancestor, a man of exemplary presence of mind, counted the number of the chief’s followers, perceived that resistance on his single part would be a wilful casting away of his own valuable life, and wisely decided on trying the effect of calm remonstrance.

“Why do you take my watch away from me, sir?” he inquired.

The Indian answered with dignity, “Because I want it?”

“May I ask why you want it?”

The Indian checked off his reasons on his fingers. “First, because I am not able to make such a watch as yours. Secondly, because your watch is an article likely to be popular among the Indians. Thirdly, because the popularity of the watch will enable me to sell it with considerable advantage to myself. Is my white brother satisfied?”

Your ancestor answered that he was not satisfied. “The thing you have taken from me,” he said, “ is the product of my own invention and my own handiwork. It is my watch.”

The Indian touched his substitute for a pocket. “ Pardon me,” he replied, “ it is mine now.”

Your ancestor began to lose his temper; he reiterated his assertion: “I say my watch is my lawful property?”

The noble savage reasoned with him. “Possibly your watch is protected in Holland,” he said. “It is not protected in America. There is no watch-right treaty, sir, between my country and yours.”

“And, on that account, you are not ashamed to steal my watch?”

“On that account, I am not ashamed to steal your watch. Good morning.”

The prototypes of modern persons have existed in past ages. The Indian chief was the first American publisher. Your ancestor was the parent of the whole European family of modern authors.

You and I, Colonel, are resolved to look this copyright question fairly in the face. Suppose we look at it from the historical point of view, to begin with.

The Dutch emigrants settled on Manhattan Island about two hundred and fifty years ago. They might have “pirated“ the island, on the ground that it was not protected by treaty. But they were too honest to commit an act of theft: they asked the Indians to mention their price. The Indians mentioned twenty-four dollars. The noble Dutchmen paid, – and a very good price, too, for a bit of uncultivated ground, with permission to remove your “wigwam” to the neighboring continent.

In due course of time arose the Dutch city of New Amsterdam. Civilization made its appearance on Manhattan Island; and with Civilization came Law. Acting as the agent of Justice, Law protected property. In those days of moral improvement, if an Indian stole a Dutchman’s watch he committed an offence, and he was punished accordingly, – for, observe, a watch was now property.

Later dates brought their changes with them. The English forced themselves into the Dutchmen’s places. New Amsterdam became New York. As time went on, a foolish English king and an obstinate English government were deservedly beaten in a trial of strength with the descendants of the first English settlers. The Republic of the United States started on its great career. With peace came the arts of peace. The American author rose benignly on the national horizon. And what did the American Government do?

The American Government, having all other property duly protected, bethought itself of the claims of literature; and, looking towards old Europe, saw that the work of a man’s brains, produced in the form of a book, had been at last recognized as that man’s property by the law. Congress followed this civilized example, and recognized and protected the published work of an American citizen as being that citizen’s property.

Having thus provided for the literary interests of its own people within its own geographical limits, Congress definitively turned its back on all further copyright proceedings in the Old World. After a certain lapse of time, the three greatest nations in the continent of Europe – France, Germany, and Italy – agreed with England that an act of justice to literature still remained to be done. Treaties of international copyright were accordingly exchanged between these States; and an author’s right of property in his work was now recognized in other countries than his own.

With this honorable example set before it by other Governments, what has the Government of the United States done? Nothing! To this day it refuses to the literary property of other people the protection which it gives to the literary property of its own people. To this day, the President and Congress of America remain content to contemplate the habitual perpetration, by American citizens, of the act of theft.

Having now done with our historical survey, in plainer words, having now got at our facts, we may conveniently confront the grand question: Why does the Government of the United States refuse to foreign writers the copyright in their works which it concedes to the works of its own citizens? Are there any insuperable difficulties in the way?

Colonel, when honest men perceive that an act of justice ought to be done and determine really to do it, there are never any insuperable difficulties in the way. On the plain merits of the case – mark that, if you please; you will soon see why – there are no more difficulties in the way of international copyright between England and America than between England and France, England and Germany, England and Italy. The cases run on parellel lines, the necessity of foreign translation, in the European case, being an accidental circumstance, which adds to the expense of publishing the book, and nothing more. My work is republished in America in English, and republished in France in French. Whatever difference there may be in the language of the republication, the fact of the republication remains the same fact in both instances.

I am very careful to put this plainly. There must be some clear ground to stand on, before I can attempt to clear away the extraordinary accumulation of delusions under which the unfortunate subject of copyright has been smothered in recent years. If you see any difficulty in accepting my statement of the case thus far, let us revert to first principles, and ask ourselves, What is the object to be attained by the thing called International Copyright?

In answering this question I will put it personally, for the greater facility of illustration. The object of International Copyright is to give me by law (on conditions with which it is reasonably possible for me to comply) the same right of control over my property in my book in a foreign country which the law gives me in my own country. In Europe, this is exactly what we have done. When I publish my book in London, I enter it at Stationers’ Hall, and register it as my property, – and my book is mine in Great Britain. When I publish my book in Paris, I register it by the performance of similar formalities, – and again my book is mine in France. In both cases, my publisher (English or French) is chosen at my own free will. His position towards me is the position of a person who takes the business of publishing and registering off my hands, in consideration of a bargain previously made between us, the essence of which bargain is that the book is my property, and that my written permission is necessary before he can obtain his right to publish the book, and his exclusive claim (for a greater or less period of time) to the privilege of selling it for me. Why cannot I do the same thing in the United States; and and why cannot my American brother writer do the same thing in Great Britain?

Here the Colonel lays down my letter for awhile, and looks bewildered.

“The copyright difficulty, as stated by Mr. Wilkie Collins,” he says, “appears to be no difficulty at all. What am I to think of the multitudinous objections, from the American point of view, raised in leading articles, pamphlets, speeches, and so forth.” My good friend, a word in your ear. The American objections (I say it with due respect for the objectors) are, one and all, American delusions! The main object of this letter is, if possible, to blow some of those delusions away. I promise not to be long about it, and to keep my temper,– though I have lost some thousands of pounds by American pirates.

Let us begin with the delusion that the American people have something to do with the question of International Copyright.

An American citizen sees a reprinted English book in a shop window, or has it pitched into his lap by a boy in a railway train, or hears from a friend that it is well worth reading. He buys the book and reads it; and, as I can gratefully testify from my own personal experience, he feels, in the great majority of cases, a sincere respect for literature and a hearty gratitude to the writer who has instructed or interested him, – which is one among the many honorable distinctions of the national character. When he has done all this, what in Heaven’s name has author, publisher, orator, or leading article writer any further right to expect from him? When I have paid for my place at the theatre, and added my little tribute of applause in honor of the play and actors, have I not done my duty as one of the audience? Am I expected to insist on knowing whether the author’s rights have been honestly recognized by the manager, and the player’s salaries regularly paid without deduction once a week? It is simply ridiculous to mention the American people in connection with the copyright question. The entire responsibility of honorably settling that question, in any country, rests with the legislature. In the United States, the President and Congress are the guardians and representatives of American honor. It is they, and not the people, who are to blame for the stain which book stealing has set on the American name.

Let me introduce to you another delusion, which has amused us in England.

We are gravely informed that the United States is the paradise of cheap literature, and that international copyright would raise the price of American books to the inordinately high level of the English market. Our Circulating-Library system is cited as a proof of the truth of this assertion. There can be no two opinions on the absurdity of that system; but, such as it is, let us at least have it fairly understood. When a novel, for example, is published at the preposterous price of a guinea and a half, nobody pays that price. At a deduction of one third at least, an individual speculator buys the book and lends it to the public. Give this man, as an annual subscription, the nominal price originally asked for the book (a guinea and a half), and he will lend you at least three novels a week, for a whole year. If this is not cheap reading, what is? But you will say, The public may want to buy some of the best of these novels. Very well. Within a year from the date of its first issue, the book is re-published at five or six shillings (a dollar and a half), and is again republished at two shillings (fifty cents). Setting this case of stolen literary property out of the question, are these not current American prices? But why should the purchaser be made to wait till the book can be sold at a reasonable price? I admit the absurdity of making the purchaser of a book wait until the borrower has done with it. But is that absurdity likely, under any conceivable circumstances, to be copied in America? In England, the circulating library is one of our old institutions which dies slowly. In America, it is no institution at all. Is it within the limits of probability that one of your citizens should prefer lending a novel to a few hundred subscribers, when he can sell it to purchasers by the thousand? That citizen is not to be found out of a madhouse. The one thing needful, so far as works of fiction are concerned, is to show you that our popular price for a novel is the American popular price. Look at the catalogue of “Harper’s Library of American Fiction,” and you will find that the prices range from two to three shillings (fifty to seventy-five cents).

Turning to literature in general, let us consult Messrs. Harper again. I am away from home while I write, and I have no means of quoting from a more recent catalogue than the “Summer List for 1878.” However, the prices of less than two years ago in New York cannot be obsolete prices yet. Here are a few specimens only: The Atlantic Islands. Illustrated. 8vo, cloth. $3.00” (Twelve shillings.) Annual Record of Science and Industry for 1877. Large 12mo, cloth. $2. (Eight shillings.) The Student’s French Grammar. 12mo, cloth. $1.40. (Say five shillings and sixpence.) Art Education, Applied to Industry. Illustrated. 8vo, cloth gilt. $4-00. (Sixteen shillings.) Harper’s Travellers’ Handbook, for Europe and the East. $3.00 per volume. (Twelve shillings.) I am quite ready to believe that every one of these books is well worth the price asked for it. But don’t tell me that American books are always cheap books. And let it at least be admitted that English publishers are not the only publishers who charge a remunerative price for a valuable work, which has proved a costly work to produce, and which is not always likely to command a large circulation. To sum it up, literature which addresses all classes of the population is as cheap in England as it is in America: literature which addresses special classes only will, on that very account, always be published at special prices (with or without international copyright) on both sides of the Atlantic.

I must not try your patience too severely, Colonel. Let me leave unnoticed some of the minor misunderstandings which obscure the American view of the copyright case, and let me occupy the closing lines of this letter with a really mischievous delusion, entertained by one class of American citizens only. Prepare yourself for a surprise. The American publisher has actually persuaded himself that his individual trade interests form an integral part of the question of international copyright!

Just consider what this extraordinary delusion really amounts to. “We don’t deny,” the American publishers say, “that you English authors have a moral right of property in your books, which we are quite ready to make a legal right on condition that we are to dictate the use which you make in America of your own property. If we confer on you international copyright, we see with horror a future day when English publishers and English printers may start in business under our very noses; and we will give you your due only with the one little drawback that we forbid you to employ your countrymen to publish your books in our country, Our respect for justice is matched only by our respect for our purses. Hurrah for honorable dealings with the British author, so long as there is no fear of a decrease in the balance at our banker’s! Down with the British author and away with the national honor, if there is the slightest danger of the almighty dollar finding its way into other pockets than ours!”

Am I exaggerating? Let two of the chief American publishers speak for themselves.

Hear Messrs. Harper & Brothers first. After reciting the general conditions on which they propose to grant us copyright in the United States, they proceed as follows:

And provided further, that within six months after registration of title the work shall have been manufactured and published in this country, and by a subject or citizen of the country in which such registration has been made.

Mr. W.H. Appleton, writing to the London Times (in a curiously aggressive tone), expresses himself even more plainly.

“Our people,” he says – evidently meaning our printers and publishers

would rejoice to open this vast opportunity to your intellectual laborers… But they hold themselves perfectly competent to manufacture the books that shall embody your authors’ thoughts, in accordance with their own needs, habits, and tastes; and in this they will not be interfered with.

(Extracted from Messrs. Harper & Brothers’ pamphlet. New York, March 17, 1879.)

To argue the question with men who are of this way of thinking would be merely to waste your time and mine, If we are ever to have international copyright between the two countries, we must have the same unreserved recognition of moral right, the same ungrudging submission to the law of honor, which has produced the treaties exchanged between the European Powers. In this respect, England has set the example to the United States. And, let me add, England has no fear of competition. I have put the question myself to eminent London publishers. They have no idea of intruding their trade interests into a great question of national justice. They are ready to welcome wholesome competition in an open market. If they set up branch establishments in New York, the American publishers shall be free to follow their example in London. What does Mr. Marston (of the well-known London firm of Sampson Low, Marston, & Co.) say on this subject, in his letter to the Times published May 12, 1879?

As a publisher, I trust I shall be absolved from the charge of advocating trade interests, when I express my strong conviction that the only convention between the two countries which can possibly bear the test of time must be one based upon the original and inherent rights of property. Let registration in Washington and London, within a month or two months of first publication in either country, convey respectively to English and American authors the same right in each other’s country as in their own, and one’s sense of justice will be satisfied… Such restrictions as those proposed by American publishers exist in no other conventions; they arise out of a most unfounded and unnecessary fear of competition by English publishers.

There is the opinion of one representative member of the trade. I could produce similar opinions from other members, but I must not needlessly lengthen my letter. Hear, instead, an American citizen, who agrees with Mr. Marston and with me. Let Mr. George Haven Putnam speak, – delivering an address on International Copyright, in New York, on the 29th of January, 1879:

I believe that in the course of time the general laws of trade would and ought so to regulate the arrangements for supplying the American public with books that, if there were no restriction as to the nationality of the publisher or as to the importation of printed volumes, the author would select the publishing agent, English or American, who could serve him to best advantage, and that that agent would be found to be the man who would prepare for the largest possible circle of American readers the editions best suited to their wants… If English publishers settling here could excel our American houses in this understanding and in these facilities, they ought to be at liberty to do so, and would be for the interest of the public that no hindrances should be placed in their way.

I have now, I hope, satisfied you that I do not stand quite alone in my way of thinking. If you make inquiries, you will find that other American citizens, besides Mr. Putnam, can see the case plainly, as it stands on its own merits.

Thus far I have been careful to base our claim to international copyright on no lower ground than that of justice. Would you like, before I conclude, to form some idea of the money we lose by the freedom of robbery which is one of the freedoms of the American republic?

Take the illustrious instance of Charles Dickens. The price agreed on with his English publishers for the work interrupted by his death – Edwin Drood – was seven thousand five hundred pounds; with a provision for an addition to this sum if the work exceeded a certain circulation. Even Dickens’s enormous popularity in England is beaten by his popularity in the United States. He has more readers in your country than in mine, and, as a necessary consequence (with international copyright), his work would be worth more in America than in England. What did he get in America for the “advance sheets,” with the pirates to be considered in making the bargain? Less than a seventh part of what his English publishers agreed to give him, before a line of his novel was written, – one thousand pounds.

But the case of Charles Dickens is the case of a writer who stands apart, and without a rival in popularity. Take my case, if you like, as representing the position of writers of a less degree of popularity. I fail to remember the exact price which Messrs. Harper paid me for the advance sheets of The Woman in White. It was certainly not a thousand pounds; perhaps half a thousand, or perhaps not so much. At any rate (with the pirates in the background, waiting to steal), the great firm in New York dealt with me liberally. It has been calculated, by persons who understand these matters better than I do, that for every one reader in England I have ten readers in the United States. How many unauthorized editions of this one novel of mine – published without my deriving any profit from them – made their appearance in America? I can only tell you, as a basis for calculation, that one American publisher informed a friend of mine that he had “sold one hundred and twenty thousand copies of The Woman in White.” He never sent me sixpence.

Goodbye for the present, Colonel. I must go back to my regular work, and make money for American robbers, under the sanction of Congress.

Wilkie Collins

NOTE. The editors agree with Mr. Collins in thinking that a treaty securing International Copyright is in every way just and proper; but they must disclaim all responsibility for the language adopted by him in his argument. In a letter to the publishers of this Review Mr. Collins says: ”It [this article] has my name attached to it because I wish to take on myself the entire responsibility of the tone in which this little protest is written. If the article is published, I must ask as a condition that it shall be published without alterations of any kind, excepting palpable errors or slips of the pen, exactly as it is written. The article is printed in exact accordance with this request.

This piece first appeared in the International Review, New York, June 1880 and in a pamphlet published by Trubner & Co. in the same year.

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Version 1  April 2014

Table of Contents

Cover page

Title and copyright page

Preface to this Edition

How I Write My Books

Reminiscences of a Story Teller

Books Necessary for a Liberal Education

Considerations on the Copyright Question

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