The
Council meetings of the Publishers' Association, being dominated by
knights and other mandarins, are apt to be formal and majestic in
character. You can't blurt out whatever comes into your head at a Council
meeting of the Publishers' Association. And nearly everybody is afraid of
everybody else. No one had had time to think the matter over, much less to
decide whether surrender or defiance would pay best or look best.
Consequently the reply sent to the Libraries was a masterpiece of
futility. The mildly surprising thing is that, in the Council itself,
there was a strong pro-Library party. Among this party were Messrs.
Hutchinson and Mr. Heinemann. Messrs. Hutchinson, it is well known, have
consistently for many years tried to publish only novels for "family
reading." It is an ambition, like another. And one may admit that Messrs.
Hutchinson have fairly well succeeded in it. Mr. Heinemann issues as much
really high-class literature as any publisher in London, but if his policy
has had a "family and young lady" tendency, that tendency has escaped me.
He has published books (some of them admirable works, and some not) which
a committee of hiring experts would have rejected with unanimous
enthusiasm. It is needless to particularize.
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