A Famous Publishing House
THE house of Chapman and Hall is just celebrating its centenary. It is fortunate in its historian. Until his recent semi-retirement—he is still chairman and literary adviser— Mr. Waugh was managing director of the firm for twenty-eight years. He is, moreover, a true littirateur, who for three decades has been recognized as one of the most scholarly and pleasant of literary critics. -He has brought to his task not merely intimate knowledge, but imagination and charm of style.
The story begins with the opening of a double-fronted bookshop in the Strand in 1830. The two ambitious young partners—Edward Chapman and William Hall—hoped to become publishers in time ; but, after the manner of their day, they started with a retail bookseller's counter. It was over this counter—so appropriately did coming events cast their shadow before them—that, in 1833, a young and shy customer was handed a copy of the Monthly Magazine. A simple enough transaction! But the young customer was Charles Dickens, and the magazine, which he opened on reaching Westminster Hall, where he read it with eyes "dimmed with joy and pride," contained his first published article. Destiny had begun to weave the threads that were to bind for ever the names of Dickens and Chapman and Hall ; but it was two years before the pattern became visible. In the meantime, Dickens had made, through the publisher Malone, a " hit " with his Sketches by Boz, and Chapman and Hall had launched a few modest publishing ventures of their own. It was in 1835 that, looking around for an author to write the letterpress for a series of sporting sketches by Seymour, they thought of Dickens. When Hall approached Dickens in his chambers at Furnivall's Inn, he was immediately recognized by the young man who was to be the builder of his firm's fortunes. "Why, it was from you," said Dickens in effect, "that I Eought the very first story of mine that ever appeared in print—do you remember ? " Hall did not remember, but agreed with Dickens in hailing the incident as "a good omen."
The tale of the fortuitous origin of Pickwick has been told many times, but Mr. Waugh retells it vivaciously and with some new details. The story, issued in monthly parts, was not an immediate success. But the appearance of Sam Weller in the fifth number created a boom, and thenceforward Dickens held his place as the most popular English novelist. Through the study of Dickens's relations with Chapman and Hall, Mr. Waugh gives us an intensely vivid portrait of that vital, lovable, but irritable genius. Chapman and Hall dealt generously with Dickens from the start ; but Dickens, while grateful and warmhearted, was never quite satisfied. He was a dictator, and his publishers were his willing and obedient slaves. That they were able to retain him was due partly to their own patience and wisdom, and partly to the mediatory ' services of that bluff lawyer and man of letters, John Forster, who always remained the best friend both of Dickens and the firm. Even as things were, Dickens, whose sensitive, impulsive, overwrought spirit was ever prone to take offence, left Chapman and Hall for Bradbury and Evans in 1844. If, however, a trivial irritation caused him to part from the old firm, an equally trifling incident drove him back fifteen years later, and he roamed no more.
For eighty years the publishing of Dickens remained the primary activity of Chapman and Hall. But a host of other celebrated names adorns their record. They "fathered" Carlyle in his obscurity, and he remained loyal to them in his success. They issued a long succession of Browning's vol- umes before they became profitable. They introduced to the world, through Mary Barton, the "sweetness and light" of Mrs. Gaskell. For many years they published, on terms of great mutual cordiality, for Anthony Trollope, and, slowly and with difficulty, they nursed into public recognition the genius of Meredith, whom they also employed for thirty years as their " reader " in succession to John Forster. Clough, Thackeray, Ainsworth, Lever, Kingsley, Reade, and Black- more are but a few other eminent names that once figured in their list. As for the Fortnightly Review, which they took over from the small group of original promotors (including Anthony Trollope) in 1865, its brilliance and prosperity have alike been unsurpassed in the history of its own class of periodical literature. Mr. Waugh's chapter on the Fortnightly is admir- ably supplemented by the fuller account of its history which Mrs. Courtney gives us in the memoir of her husband, who occupied the editorial chair for over thirty years until his death in 1928. Her book is not only an affectionate tribute to a brilliant, many-sided, and lovable personality, but a masterly study of the politics, sociology, and literature of the period as reflected in the files of the Review with which, as her hus-
band's invaluable assistant, she herself was intimately asso- ciated.
In having the monopoly in Dickens and Carlyle, Chapman and Hall were both fortunate and unfortunate : fortunate because they had ample and reliable sources of profit, and unfortunate because they were faced with the temptation to be easy-going. This was a temptation which they did not resist. The old regime continued too long, and, when the last Chapman died, in 1895, there was already about the firm an air of tradition grown musty. When Mr. Waugh took over the reins in 1902, he was faced with the task not merely of infusing new life into the business, but of completely readapting it to the rapidly changing conditions of the book trade and of the world at large.
Mr. Waugh's intimate account of Chapman and Hall's development during his time is remarkably fascinating, and is hill of good stories about Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Arnold Bennett, and many other famous and lesser authors. But A Hundred Years of Publishing is, throughout, more than the record of a single firm ; it is an outline history of the whole book trade during the period. In his earlier pages, for example, Mr. Waugh supplies a most interesting account of the genesis and early influence of the circulating library system.
Coming to later days, Mr. Waugh deals at length with the revolution in the book trade wrought by popular education and mass production, by the "net book agreement" and the rise of the literary agent, and by the Great War, with its repercussions not only _upon working costs, but upon social habits and intellectual take. He delightfully combines information with entertainment and reflection, and all true bookmen will revel in his pages, GILBERT TuoBias.
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