Mr. Dickens is doing good service to book-buyers by pressing
the publishers to issue their books cut. They, of course, are unwilling, alleging that the majority of purchasers like to cut their own books, an excuse we do not believe. Nobody likes trouble for its own sake, and not one man in fifty can cut a book decently, even if he is able to find his paper-knife, which he never is. Besides, the publishers could issue cut and uncut copies, charging an extra penny for the former. The true difficulty is, that if books are to be sold cut, they must be printed on paper a little wider, machine cutting making the usual margins a little too narrow. If publishers could be persuaded at the same time to give us a little more inner margin, and would compel bookbinders to put backs a little broader, books would lie open, to the immense convenience of everybody who wants tread them. dis it is, they might as well have clasps, as they had a hundred years ago.
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