will want to have the series complete. New subscribers for 1892 will receive the last two numbers of THE AUTHOR for 1891 free, on request.

For the rest, THE AUTHOR next year will be as good as the support it receives shall enable its conductor to make it. The experience of the past two years justifies the belief that the plan and scope of the magazine are satisfactory to its readers, and it will be continued on the lines which have been laid down already. It should be remembered always that THE WRITER and THE AUTHOR are companion magazines, and that neither one is complete without the other. It is to be hoped, therefore, that those who subscribe for one will subscribe for both, and thus help the publisher to make both, as near as he can, what they ought to be.

IMPORTANT TO OLD SUBSCRIBERS.

With the exception of those that have been renewed, all subscriptions for THE AUTHOR expire with the current number. The publisher has adopted the rule of invariably stopping the magazine when subscriptions expire unless a renewal order and a remittance are received. This plan was adopted, contrary to the usual custom of the smaller magazines, because it seemed fairest and most likely to please the greater number of subscribers. Due notice of expiration of subscriptions is given both on the address label of the magazine and by circular notices mailed in the month when the subscription expires; and it seems fair to assume that if a subscriber does not renew his subscription before the next issue is mailed, he does not care to do so. Still, the publisher believes that many subscribers allow their subscriptions to lapse by inadvertence, or because they do not understand the rule. He hopes, therefore, that all whose subscriptions expire with this month's issue will notice the fact of expiration and renew promptly, so that the trouble and delay caused by taking names off the list unnecessarily may be avoided. Renewals of WRITER Subscriptions and renewals of AUTHOR subscriptions may be sent together, even if they do not expire at the same time. Due credit will be given in every case. It is hoped that

every subscriber for THE WRITER will become also a subscriber for THE AUTHOR, and by so doing help both magazines to increased usefulness and success.

"THE WRITER" FOR DECEMBER.

THE WRITER for December has a frontispiece portrait and a biographical and critical sketch of Danske Dandridge, the West Virginia poetess, whose poems are familiar to readers of Lippincott's, the Independent, and other leading publications. An exhaustive review of Professor Barrett Wendell's book on "English Composition," being eight lectures delivered by him before the Lowell Institute, makes an interesting special article, which should be read by all writers. A scholarly article on "An Indeterminate Pronoun" combats the assertion of a contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, that the language needs a new personal pronoun of the singular number, common gender. "The Indenting of Sonnets," "Are Literary Women Unpractical?" and "The Domestic Happiness of Literary People" are titles of the other articles in this number. The draft of a petition to be signed by the working writers of the country, and then to be formally submitted to Congress, in favor of the reduction of the postage on authors' manuscripts, is also printed, together with an editorial setting forth the purposes of THE WRITER in behalf of this necessary legislation. The departments, as always, are full of interest.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

THE STORY OF INCA ROCCA, AND OTHER SHORT POEMS. By Chauncey Thomas. 118 pp. Cloth. Boston: Damrell & Upham. 1891. REPUBLICA: A National Poem. By John Preston Campbell. 151 pp. Cloth. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company. 1891.

POEMS GRAVE AND GAY. By Albert E. S. Smythe. 184 pp. Cloth, $1.00. Toronto: Imrie & Graham. 1891.

PERSONAL GOSSIP ABOUT WRITERS.

Beecher. During the days of Mr. Beecher's courtship he wrote a few lines of verse, teeming with affection for his sweetheart. But the verses

were always kept sacred by Mrs. Beecher, as they have been to the present day. One day, however, Mr. and Mrs. Beecher were in the office of Robert Bonner, who was then conducting the New York Ledger. "Why don't you write a poem, Beecher?" said the publisher. "I will give you more for a poem than I have for 'Norwood."" "He did once," admitted Mrs. Beecher, and Bonner's eyes sparkled. "Recite it for me, won't you, Mrs. Beecher?" he asked. But the eyes of the great preacher were riveted on his wife, and she knew that meant silence. "Come," said the persistent publisher, "I'll give $5,000 if you will recite that poem for me," addressing Mrs. Beecher. Why, it began the preacher's wife. "Eunice!" said Mr. Beecher. And, although Bonner offered to double the sum, he never got the poem. - Epoch. Crim. Miss Matt Crim, the new Southern novelist, is described as of the blonde type, slender of medium height, with bluish-gray eyes, manners naturally graceful, and a ready conversationalist, and sympathetic listener. She has "a soft, musical voice and a bright face full of merriment.". Albany Journal.

ran

Daudet. Few writers have passed through greater privations than has Alphonse Daudet, who, at the age of seventeen, reached Paris penniless and friendless. The only acquaintance he possessed in that immense city was his brother Ernest, who lived on a salary of $4.50 per week. It was while sharing this miserable pittance that Daudet wrote his first book, a not very meritorious volume of poems. It served, however, to introduce him in the world of literature, and paved the way for his first engagement with the newspaper. He now makes about £5,000 out of every story he writes. Public Opinion.

Dickens. The letter from Dickens which follows was sold at an autograph sale recently in London. It was marked " Private," and bears the date April 3, 1844:

"I fear the best reply I can give you, in acknowledging the receipt of your letter, will be rather unsatisfactory; but if it be so, it is not from any lack of interest on my part. It is in the nature of all literary beginners to be surrounded by unsatisfactory circumstances.

"You know the general character of your composition, and can tell by looking over the magazines for any single month to which periodical it seems to be the best adapted by its resemblance to the prevailing tone. You send it addressed to the editor, with a brief note, intimating that you wish it to be inserted at the usual rate of remuneration.

If you send it at the end of one month, you will most likely know its fate at the end of the next.

"A magazine sheet is sixteen pages. If you count the words in one page of the magazine you select, and then count the words in any page of your own writing, you can easily calculate what quantity of your manuscript will go to a sheet. When I say that a magazine sheet is sixteen pages, I mean sixteen pages of the magazine, of course.

66 "The rate of remuneration to unknown writers is six or eight guineas a sheet, usually. Many unknown writers write for nothing. I wrote for the next thing to it myself when I was one-and-twenty.

"The only additional piece of advice I can give you is, to concentrate on this pursuit all the patience that would be required in all the other pursuits of this world put together, and to lay your account with having it tried. I have no great private knowledge of any magazine, but I should say that Ainsworth's, Hood's, and Bentley's were the least likely to be already oppressed by a great accumulation of accepted contributions. So far as I know, your offering is pretty certain to be read and to receive courteous attention."- New York Times.

Edwards. Amelia B. Edwards, traveller and author, says: "For twenty-five years I have rarely put out my lamp before two or three in the morning. Occasionally, when work presses, I remain at my desk the whole night. I am essentially a worker, and this I have been since my early girlhood. When I am asked what are my working hours, I reply: "All the time when I am not either sitting at meals, taking exercise, or sleeping; and this is literally true."- Montreal Gazette.

Hearn. Lafcadio Hearn's family history is romantic. He is the son of an Irish father and a Greek mother, the former, a surgeon in the English army, having married a beautiful maiden of one of the Ionian isles where he chanced to be stationed. It was not without a struggle that the gallant young Irishman won his bride, for a jealous rival attacked him one night, wounding him almost mortally, so that for days Dr. Hearn hung between life and death. Two sons were born to the couple, Lafcadio being the younger. When still a child he was sent to relatives in Wales, and was educated with a view to his entering the Catholic priesthood, but when nearing manhood he realized that the Church was not his vocation. In a spirit of adventure he left home and came to this country, experiencing at first "the chance and change of a roving life." From the East, where his occupation had been proof-reading, he drifted to Cincinnati, and there as a reporter took his first steps

in journalism. Finding, after a stay of some duration, that the climate was too severe for his health, he went to New Orleans, and engaged in newspaper work there. Becoming greatly interested in Creole life and customs, he issued a book, "Gombo Zhebes," a compilation of quaint sayings and proverbs in the different Creole patois. He contributed translations from the French to the New Orleans Democrat before it was merged with the Times, and continued this work after the consolidation of the two papers into the Times-Democrat, when he became a member of the editorial staff. He was the first one on this side of the water to render Pierre Loti's works into English. He is, in fact, wonderfully gifted as a linguist, the acquisition of a foreign tongue being child's play to him. In person Mr. Hearn is short, even a little below medium height, but strongly built, his chest and shoulders being powerfully developed. Perhaps the latter fact may be partly due to his passion for swimming. He is a bold and tireless swimmer, and would often spend hours at a time in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico encircling Grand Isle, without fear of sharks or other sea monsters. He is a true child of the south and revels in sunlight. He has the use of but one eye, this disability being the result of an accident while playing ball in his childhood, and the other is exceedingly myopic, so that in reading he has to hold the page almost against it. He is dark, with a clear-cut, handsome profile, and altogether his is a face not easily forgotten. In dress he is rather unconventional, his favorite headgear being a sombrero of soft felt. Mr. Hearn

is now about forty years old. He has a quick apprehension of the humorous side of every-day things, and it is a treat to hear him tell some odd story, in his peculiarly low and gentle voice. It is scarcely necessary to say that he is an ardent bibliophile. His becoming a Japanese by adoption is regarded by his friends as a singular freak.. Providence Journal.

Tennyson. Albeit past his eighty-second birth. day, Lord Tennyson's figure is only weakened, not broken, by age. His hair preserves much of its old, dark color, and, excepting in places, is hardly more than "sable-silvered." His spirit is as alert, his glance as keen and alight as ever. Though he does not rise upon our entrance, making no ceremony with friends, he leads at once an animated conversation. On the left side of his neck there lodges a small brown birth-mark, very characteristic, as if a drop of dark wine had dropped there and had stained the skin. His hands are manly and powerful in outline, but delicately and finely formed, as those of a poet should be. On his head, as a

protection from the caprices of the English weather, he wears a small black velvet cap. These precautions are the more necessary, because not long ago he was suffering sadly from rheumatism and bronchitis, which at one time, indeed, filled all his friends with anxiety, and became for weeks together a national concern. And a certain shadow overhangs the hospitable abode, moreover, from the illness of Lady Tennyson (always a great invalid, but recently and to-day in positive danger), so that our first inquiries are made in an anxious and subdued tone; nor does the conversation fairly commence till we have been a little reassured by the last report of the doctor. We shall not see the gentle face of the poet's wife to-day; she is hopelessly imprisoned in her room; but upon the wall hangs a charming portrait of her in oils, by Watts, and she is known far and wide in the neighborhood for her kindness of heart and graceful charities. - Sir Edwin Arnold, in the Forum.

Whittier.- In the "Life of William Garrison," by Archibald Grimke, the subject of the work thus tells of the début of the poet Whittier: "Going up stairs in my office one day, I observed a letter lying near the door, to my address, which, on opening, I found to contain an original piece of poetry for my paper, the Free Press. The ink was very pale, the hand-writing very small, and, having at that time a horror of newspaper original poetry- which has rather increased than diminished with the lapse of time my first impulse was to tear it in pieces without reading it, the chances of rejection, after its perusal, being as ninety-nine to one but summoning resolution to read it, I was equally surprised and gratified to find it above mediocrity, and so gave it a place in my journal. . . . As I was anxious to find out the writer, my post-rider one day divulged the secret, stating that he had dropped the letter in the manner described, and that it was written by a Quaker lad named Whittier, who was daily at work on the shoemaker's bench with hammer and lap-stone, at East Haverhill. Jumping into a vehicle, I lost no time in driving to see the youthful bard, who came into the room with shrinking diffidence, almost unable to speak, and blushing like a maiden. Giving him some words of encouragement, I addressed myself more particularly to his parents, and urged them with great earnestness to grant him every possible facility for the development of his remarkable genius."— Buffalo Enquirer.

LITERARY NEWS AND NOTES.

The manuscript of a new novel of adventure by Robert Louis Stevenson has arrived in London.

The scenes are laid in the South Seas. The title of the story is "The Beach of Falesa."

It is said that fully one-fifth of Pepys' Diary remains unpublished. A large part of this will appear in Mr. Wheatley's forthcoming new edition.

Mrs. Flora Haines Longhead, one of the Pacific coast writers, whose story of "The Man Who Was Guilty" was widely read several years ago, and who more recently, with "The Abandoned Claim," won the $800 prize offered by a literary syndicate, has entered on the unique enterprise of becoming her own publisher of her own short stories. They are to be brought out, one a month, in small books, of heavy paper, with wide margins. The first, now in press, is "The Man from Nowhere."

Houghton, Mifflin, & Co. announce for immediate publication "Masterpieces of American Literature." This book contains complete masterpieces from the works of the following thirteen authors of America, with a biographical sketch of each: Longfellow, Whittier, Irving, Bryant, Hawthorne, Franklin, Holmes, Thoreau, O'Reilly, Lowell, Emersor, Everett, and Webster. "The Masterpieces" was recently adopted by the school board of the city of Boston by a unanimous vote, as a reading book in the highest classes of the grammar schools.

It is a curious fact that in stories in Harper's, Scribner's, and the Century magazines for December Novelists Harris, Allen, and Hibbard have each introduced a personage named Spurlock. It is an uncommon name, and that it should have been chosen by three writers for stories which appeared in print almost simultaneously is a very uncommon thing. But this is no more strange than the fact that in Mr. Howells' "An Imperative Duty," published in Harper's Magazine, and in a Southern story by Matt Crim, published in the Century, and in a book manuscript read by the Writer's Literary Bureau, all within one month, the heroine in each story had negro blood in her veins.

Mrs. Burnett is to be asked by certain New York women who move in literary circles to start a writers' club in New York similar to that which she is mothering in London.

A unique thing in books is promised to a chosen few. It is a book containing twenty-three poems by the late Francis S. Saltus, Jr., the erratic young genius who died a year or two ago. His father will have twenty-five copies published by a Parisian house at a cost of $15,000, and will distribute them among the personal friends of his son and himself. The poems could not be brought out in this country. Each poem is written in a different language.

The remains of the poet, whose brother is Edgar Saltus, the novelist, lie in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, at Tarrytown, N. Y., where a $12,000 monument to his memory will be erected.

Mr. Howells' novel, "The Quality of Mercy," now running as a serial in a syndicate of American and English newspapers, is published in England under the title, "John Northwick, Defaulter." The reason for this is the fact that an English author, Richard Dowling, happens to have a novel which he has also called "The Quality of Mercy."

Mrs. Humphrey Ward's new book, "The History of David Grieve," will be published in JanuShe spent three years in writing it.

ary.

It was with undisguised regret that the literary world received from Dresden the news of the death in that city of Wolcott Balestier, the young American writer who collaborated with Kipling in writing a novel begun in the November Century. His literary work proved that he had ability of a high order, and gave promise of a successful career. Another story by him, entitled "Benefits Forgot," sent anonymously through Edmund Gosse to the editor of the Century, was pronounced by the latter one of the most powerful stories the magazine ever printed. It will appear later. Mr. Balestier was born in this country, December 13, 1861. His paternal ancestors were natives of Martinique, though his grandfather was an American by birth, and was one of the founders of the Century Club. He inherited literary talent, which he displayed at an early age. He studied for a year at Cornell, and during the summer of 1883 he studied law at the University of Virginia. He was connected for a short time with the Rochester Post-Express, and later he managed a small paper of his own in Rochester. His first story, "A Patent Philter," was pub

lished in the New York Tribune in 1884. The same year Lovell published his novel, "A Fair Devise." He wrote a campaign life of James G. Blaine. Novels flowed from his pen. He went to London in 1888 as agent for the Lovells, and about a year ago he entered the publishing business on his own account, becoming junior member of the firm of Heinemann & Balestier, of London and Leipsic, publishers of the Review of Reviews in London, and the English Library on the Continent The latter was started as a rival of Tauchnitz. It is believed that this business and his literary activity in other directions undermined his constitution, and made him a ready victim of disease. Mr. Howells says that had he lived a few more years, he would have achieved great fame.