For a year past I have been inveighing against the
increasing taste for feeble naughtiness concerning king's mistresses and
all that sort of tedious person. And I have remarked on the growing
frequency of such words as "fair," "frail," "lover," "enchantress," etc.,
in the supposed-to-be-alluring titles of books of historical immorality.
(I presume that these volumes are called for by the respectable, as the
_cocotte_ calls for a _creme de menthe_ at a fashionable seaside hotel on
a winter Sunday afternoon.) Apparently the circulating libraries also have
noticed the growing frequency of such words in their lists. But what they
have noticed with more genuine alarm is the growing prices which clever
publishers have been putting on such books. It has not escaped the
observation of clever publishers that the demand by library subscribers
for such books is a very real demand, and clever publishers therefore
thought that they might make a little bit extra in this connexion by
charging high for volumes brief but scandalous. The libraries thought
otherwise. Hence, in truth, the attempted censorship. The now famous moral
crusade of the libraries would certainly not have occurred had not the
libraries perceived, in the moral pressure which was exercised upon them
from lofty regions, the chance of effecting economies.
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