LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
"THE OLD ALLEGIANCE."—MR. JOHN LONG'S EXPLANATION.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."]
Sin,—" The Old Allegiance," by Hubert Wales. With respect to your paragraph on this book in your issue of the 8th inst., about one hundred advance copies were sent out without the intimation that the book had been previously published under the title "Purple and Fine Linen." With this exception, no copies of the four editions I have published to date have left this office without the statement that the book originally appeared under a different title. I send you herewith a copy to show you how it has been circulated by me. I understand that only a few hundred copies of the book were circulated under its original title.—I am, Sir, &c., JOHN LONG. 13 and 14 Norris Street, Haymarket.
[We are greatly surprised by Mr. John Long's letter, for it entirely fails to give any satisfactory explanation of the circumstances under which "The Old Allegiance "—a work nine years old—has been presented to the public. In the first place, even if the copy sent to us for review had not been one of the hundred advance copies, but had contained the statement "that the book originally appeared under a different title," we should not have received the information which, we bold, the publisher was bound to give,—namely, that the book was a reprint of a novel published nine years before. There is nothing in the statement on the page opposite the "Prefatory Dedication "—the statement which Mr. John Long tells us was placed in every copy except the hundred advance copies—which would make the reader understand that he was reading an old instead of "a new novel," the
phrase used to describe the book in Mr. Long's advertisement printed on the blue paper wrapper. The following is the whole of the printed matter on the page opposite the "Prefatory Dedication" to which Mr. Long refers :—
First Impression . . . June 1908 Second Impression. . . June 1908 Third Impression . . . June 1908 Fourth Impression. . . July 1908 This Look was originally issued as "Purple and Pine Linen," but that title was found to have been previously used, and another, subsequently adopted, was not agreeable to the author
Copyright in the United States of America by 3fitche12 Kennerley, 1908.
If Mr. Long desired to let his readers know that he was offering them a novel published nine years before, be should
surely have placed the words "in 1899" after "originally issued." As he did not include this important date his state- ment is misleading.—En. Spectator.1
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