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It cuts me to the heart to compare English with American publishers to the disadvantage, however slight, of the former; but the exigencies of a truthful narrative demand from me this sacrifice of personal feeling to the god in “the sleeping-car emblematic of British enterprise.” The representative of a great American firm came over to England on a mission to cultivate personal relations with authors of repute and profitableness. Among other documents of a similar nature, he had an introduction to myself; I was not an author of repute and profitableness, but I was decidedly in the movement and a useful sort of person to know. We met and became friends, this ambassador and I; he liked my work, a sure avenue to my esteem; I liked his genial shrewdness. Shortly afterwards, there appeared in a certain paper an unsigned article dealing, in a broad survey alleged to be masterly, with the evolution of the literary market during the last thirty years. My American publisher read the article—he read everything —and, immediately deciding in his own mind that I was the author of it, he wrote me an enthusiastic letter of appreciation. He had not been deceived; I was the author of the article. Within the next few days it happened that he encountered an English publisher who complained that he could not find a satisfactory “reader.” He informed the English publisher of my existence, referred eulogistically to my article, and gave his opinion that I was precisely the man whom the English publisher needed. The English publisher had never heard of me (I do not blame him, I merely record), but he was so moved by the American’s oration that he invited me to lunch at his club. I lunched at his club, in a discreet street off Piccadilly (an aged and a sound wine!), and after lunch, my host drew me out to talk at large on the subject of authors, publishers, and cash, and the interplay of these three. I talked. I talked for a very-long while, enjoying it. The experience was a new one for me. The publisher did not agree with all that I said, but he agreed with a good deal of it, and at the close of the somewhat exhausting assize, in which between us we had judged the value of nearly every literary reputation in England, he offered me the post of principal reader to his firm, and I accepted it.

It is, I believe, an historical fact that authors seldom attend the funeral of a publisher’s reader. They approve the sepulture, but do not, save sometimes in a spirit of ferocious humour, lend to the procession the dignity of their massive figures. Nevertheless, the publisher’s reader is the most benevolent person on earth. He is so perforce. He may begin his labours in the slaughterous vein of the Saturday Review; but time and the extraordinary level mediocrity of manuscripts soon cure him of any such tendency. He comes to refuse but remains to accept. He must accept something—or where is the justification of his existence? Often, after a prolonged run of bad manuscripts, I have said to myself: “If I don’t get a chance to recommend something soon I shall be asked to resign.” I long to look on a manuscript and say that it is good, or that there are golden sovereigns between the lines. Instead of searching for faults I search for hidden excellences. No author ever had a more lenient audience than I. If the author would only believe it, I want, I actually desire, to be favourably impressed by his work. When I open the parcel of typescript I beam on it with kindly eyes, and I think: “Perhaps there is something really good here”; and in that state of mind I commence the perusal. But there never is anything really good there. In an experience not vast, but extending over some years, only one book with even a touch of genius has passed through my hands; that book was so faulty and so wilfully wild, that I could not unreservedly advise its publication and my firm declined it; I do not think that the book has been issued elsewhere. I have “discovered” only two authors of talent; one of these is very slowly achieving a reputation; of the other I have heard nothing since his first book, which resulted in a financial loss. Time and increasing knowledge of the two facts have dissipated for me the melancholy and affecting legend of literary talent going a-begging because of the indifference of publishers. O young author of talent, would that I could find you and make you understand how the publisher yearns for you as the lover for his love! Qua publisher’s reader, I am a sad man, a man confirmed in disappointment, a man in whom the phenomenon of continued hope is almost irrational. When I look back along the frightful vista of dull manuscripts that I have refused or accepted, I tremble for the future of English literature (or should tremble, did I not infallibly know that the future of English literature is perfectly safe after all)! And yet I have by no means drunk the worst of the cup of mediocrity. The watery milk of the manuscripts sent to my employer has always been skimmed for me by others; I have had only the cream to savour. I am asked sometimes why publishers publish so many bad books; and my reply is: “Because they can’t get better.” And this is a profound truth solemnly enunciated.

People have said to me: " But you are so critical; you condemn everything? Such is the complaint of the laity against the initiate, against the person who has diligently practised the cultivation of his taste. And, roughly speaking, it is a well-founded and excusable complaint. The person of fine taste does condemn nearly everything. He takes his pleasure in a number of books so limited as to be almost nothing in comparison with the total mass of production. Out of two thousand novels issued in a year, he may really enjoy half a dozen at the outside. And the one thousand nine hundred and ninety-four he lumps together in a wholesale contempt which draws no distinctions. This is right. This contributes to the preservation of a high standard. But the laity will never be persuaded that it is just. The point I wish to make, however, is that when I sit down to read for my publisher I first of all forget my literary exclusiveness. I sink the aesthetic aristocrat and become a plain man. By a deliberate act of imagination, I put myself in the place, not of the typical average reader—for there is no such person—but of a composite of the various genera of average reader known to publishing science. I am that composite for the time; and, being so, I remain quiescent and allow the book to produce its own effect on me. I employ no canons, rules, measures. Does the book bore me — that condemns it. Does it interest me, ever so slightly—that is enough to entitle it to further consideration. When I have decided that it interests the imaginary composite whom I represent, then I become myself again, and proceed scientifically to inquire why it has interested, and why it has not interested more intensely; I proceed to catalogue its good and bad qualities, to calculate its chances, to assay its monetary worth.

The first gift of a publisher’s reader should be imagination; without imagination, the power to put himself in a position in which actually he is not, fine taste is useless—indeed, it is worse than useless. The ideal publisher’s reader should have two perfections—perfect taste and perfect knowledge of what the various kinds of other people deem to be taste. Such qualifications, even in a form far from perfect, are rare. A man is born with them; though they may be cultivated, they cannot either of them be acquired. The remuneration of the publisher’s reader ought, therefore, to be high, lavish, princely. It is not. It has nothing approaching these characteristics. Instead of being regarded as the ultimate seat of directing energy, the brain within the publisher’s brain, the reader often exists as a sort of offshoot, an accident, an external mechanism which must be employed because it is the custom to employ it. As one reflects upon the experience and judgment which readers must possess, the responsibility which weighs on them, and the brooding hypochondriasis engendered by their mysterious calling, one wonders that their salaries do not enable them to reside in Park Lane or Carlton House Terrace. The truth is, that they exist precariously in Walham Green, Camberwell, or out in the country where rents are low.

I have had no piquant adventures as a publisher’s reader. The vocation fails in piquancy: that is precisely where it does fail. Occasionally when a manuscript comes from some established author who has been deemed the private property of another house, there is the excitement of discovering from the internal evidence of the manuscript, or from the circumstantial evidence of public facts carefully collated, just why that manuscript has been offered to my employer; and the discovered reason is always either amusing or shameful. But such excitements are rare, and not very thrilling after all. No! Reading for a publisher does not foster the joy of life. I have never done it with enthusiasm; and, frankly, I continue to do it more from habit than from inclination. One learns too much in the rdle. The gilt is off the gingerbread, and the bloom is off the rye, for a publisher’s reader. The statistics of circulations are before him; and no one who is aware of the actual figures which literary advertisements are notoriously designed to conceal can be called happy until he is dead.