So much has been written this week on the impending
demise of the Strand Magazine that I can add little new comment of my own. The event shakes belief in the stability of any human institution, even though the great days of the Strand, the days of Sherlock Holmes and Jeeves and Miss Cayley and the rest, belong essentially to the past. Thirty years or so ago the Strand and the Windsor held the field in that particular class of publication, and the Strand was always the better of the two. But there is one point that deserves attention. The publishers of the Strand explain that " with paper three times its pre-war price and with all other cost:-, very heavily increased "—including particularly, it may be added, the price of printing—it is impossible to continue the Strand on a paying basis. This, it is remarked, is " a somewhat sad commentary on present-day publishing problems." It is, and the Strand is far from being the only publication confronted with such problems. It is something that the weekly reviews have been able so far to offer the same goods at the same price as before the accumulation of prob- lems descended on them—for though there has been some slight reduction in volume I don't think there has in quality. I am not
speaking of the Spectator only. a * * *
Previous page
