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IilTERAKr INTELLIGENCE 458—472 BOOKS AND...
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St. Du^nstan's House, E.C. May 1, 1889.
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THE 'Humboldt Publishing Company' of I -...
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To the Editor of the Publishebs' Circula...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Transcript
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
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45 8 The Publishers' Circular May 1 , 188 9
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Iilterakr Intelligence 458—472 Books And...
IilTERAKr INTELLIGENCE 458—472 BOOKS AND RUMOURS OF BOOKS 459—461
NOTES AND NEWS 461 , 462 AMERICAN NEWS AND NOTES 462 ^
THE CASKET LETTERS 462 , 463 BOOK PRICES CURRENT 463
] THE BOOK TRADE IN RUSSIA 463- ^ 65 SA baLE lie ; j JOTTINGS ui j . UNua 465 so ^ 466 400 ^
TRADE CHANGES . 466 IN MEMORIAM 466
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE MAGAZINES 466—469
REVIEWS , & c 469—472
INDEX . TO BOOKS PUBLISHED IN GREAT r BRITAIN BETWEEN APRIL 16 & 30 473 , 474
BOOKS PUBLISHED IN GREAT BRITAIN FRQM APRIL 16 TO 30 474—477
RECENT FOREIGN WORKS 477 NEW BOoks AND BOOKS LATELY
PUBLISHED 478—495 MISCELLANEOUS 496—504 / 502
BUS . BUSS-INESS UN-ESS CARDS UA . HJLJO .. .. ... . / OlK ^ . 503 503 ASSISTANTS WANTED 505 "WANT SITUATIONS 505
I BOOKS FOR SALE 506 1 BOOKS -WANTED TO PURCHASE 506 -512
St. Du^Nstan's House, E.C. May 1, 1889.
St . Du ^ nstan ' s House , E . C . May 1 , 1889 .
The 'Humboldt Publishing Company' Of I -...
THE ' Humboldt Publishing Company' of I - * - JN New ew York xorJK seems seems to to be be wnat what is is called caiiea
. across the Atlantic a ' live' concern , for it is prepared to take the wind out of everybody
else ' s sails ; Its aim is high , for , apparently despising the broad realm of fiction , it proposes
to provide the public with ' the great classics of modern science ; strong meat for them that
are of full age / and all this for a beggarly fifteen cents , a volume ! In other words
the works of such men as Darwin , Tyndall , Huxley , R . A . Proctor , Herbert Spencer ,
Bagehot , Bain , W . K . Clifford , Charles Kingsley , Sir John Lubbock , and many other
celebrated English authors are to be placed before the public at sevenpence halfpenny
a volume . It is proposed to do all this quite Jh . irrespective A . of the interests and the
rights of the authors themselves , who are regarded simply as part of their machinery , and
whose brainwork is set in motion for the sole benefit of ' The Humboldt Publishing ¦
Com-1 ' pany . ' ' Tiinm' has apparently no sense or meaning in the minds of such peop JL JL . le ; they fseize
everything within their reach and call it ' meum . ' If the public , which this enterprising publishing
company proposed to benefit in this way , were that of its own country only , there would
be no novelty whatever in their undertaking ; we have heard of ten-fifteen-, and
twenty-, cent reprints of English copyrights before : to-daybut the aim of the Humboldt
Company is , by no means so limited ; they intend to supply—indeedthey are supplying—* the
1 m . Jk . % r , % * ajlv *——British Colonies' and ' the British Isles ' with these remarkably cheap productions .
Judging by their lists , over one hundred of these fifteen-cent copyri * . ms gK-rht volumes are
now in circulation . In Great Britain , they I have already appointed the Postmaster-General
mt Jfc I as their special agent to convey theae books to I eacrer customers , who , it seems . ' find the benefit
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so great , ' as a rule , that Vney don't grumble
even if a loss sometimes occurs by confiscation' ! We do not for a moment doubt their word
when they assert their * sale ia large' in the British Colonies ; unfortunately , howeverit
, is not every day that enterprising publishers of this sort catch such a Tartar as our good
friend Mr . Samuel Mullen . As a rule , we fear , they would find no difficulty in appointing
willing agents to co-operate with the unconscious Post-office in working for them .
The correspondence we publish below will explain the foregoing remarks . The extract
from the letter of ' The Humboldt Publishing Company' is really a remarkable production ,
and we specially commend its codl effrontery to the attention of our postal a . authorities .
This barefaced and most impudent attempt to rob English authorsand to suborn British
sub-, jects to break the law , by asking them to buy contraband literature for sevenpence JL ,
halfpenny which would legitimately cost them five to ten shillings , is surely an infringement
of international comity , if not of international law , to which the attention of the American
Government ought immediately to be directed . Our thanks and the thanks of all British
authors and publishers are due to Mr . Samuel Mullen for bringing this matter under our
notice , as well as for the dignified rebuke he has administered to * The Humboldt Publishingi-j
Company . ' If all other booksellers throughout the British Colonies and Dependencies
were only half as much alive to the dignity of their calling as Mr . Mullenthe operations of
v , 'A such filibusters would be effectually checked .
E . M .
To The Editor Of The Publishebs' Circula...
To the Editor of the Publishebs' Circular . I think Sir , — be The advantageousl inclosed correspondence inserted in might ,
columns , , with the view of y pointing out your to British publishers the losses they suffer by the
importation or contraband literature fchTough
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Citation
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Publishers’ Circular (1880-1890), May 1, 1889, page 458, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/pc/issues/tec_01051889/page/4/
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