MR. BUCHANAN AND HIS PUBLISHERS.
[TO TEE EDITOR OF TEE "SPECTAT0R:1
SIR,—I observe in last Saturday's Spectator a review of a work entitled " Stormbeaten," published by Messrs. Ward and Lock, and purporting to be a new work by "Messrs. Robert Buchanan and Charles Gibbon." As the publication of the work at the present moment involves a double deception, permit me to offer some words of explanation.
Some years ago, when I was a lad of 19, subsisting entirely by my pen, I published, in conjunction with another young lad of my own age, Mr. Gibbon, a little Christmas book of prose and verse, con- sisting chiefly of reprints from cheap magazines. The book was named as the joint work of " Williams Buchanan and Charles Gibbon," the former being a kind of nom de plume attached by me in those days to work issued under my direction, but not neces- sarily the literary production of myself solely. " Stormbeaten," as the book was called, was issued to the press, reviewed, and sold rather extensively, and then, as the author confidentlyexpected, died the natural death of all trifles produced only for the temporary amusement of the hour. My own portion of the work, indeed, had by that time served a double purpose, for the poems you reviewed as new work last Saturday had previously appeared in Mr. Dickens's All the Year Round, being written and published when I was about 18 years of age.
Note now the deception on the public. The work you reviewed last week, and which has been issued everywhere to the press and the public as a new work, is the same " Stormbeaten " published, issued to the press, and reviewed nine years ago. You are not the only critic who has fallen a victim to this deception.
Note now the second unfairness, — that upon the authors. Secretly, without one word of warning, reckless apparently of all consequences, the publishers have re-issued a work which was, nal maintain, their property for a Christmas season nine years ago, and which ever since has been the sole and undisputed property of the writers. Of course there is now only one court of appeal,—that of the law ; and into that court the matter will be carried without delay. Meanwhile let me hope that through your columns this matter may be brought under the notice of the Press generally, and that reviewers may be warned away from the trap into which even so astute a critic as yourself has fallen.—I ant, Sir, &c.,
ROBERT BUCHANAN.
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