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The novelette is the least glorious form of imaginative literature. It is issued in paper covers, usually at a penny, and may be said to be neither a serial nor a book. I have practised nearly every form of literary composition, but not the novelette, and my remarks on it are therefore not based on personal experience. I have, however, obtained information from professional novelettists.

The length of the novelette varies from 13,500 to 40,000 words; the average is 25,000 words. There are two varieties—the love tale and the religious love tale. The aspirant who wishes to make the experiment of writing a novelette should spend sixpence in a few samples. The principal publishers of them are Messrs. Harmsworth, Homer, Brett, Henderson, Shurey, and the Aldine Press of London, Buxton of Manchester (“The Halfpenny Novelette’'), Hey-wood of Manchester, and Leng of Dundee (“Aunt Kate’s Penny Novels”). The aspirant will perceive that these amiable inventions appeal to an extremely low but extremely virtuous order of intelligence, and that they consist of what the superior person would call sheer drivel. But what is one woman’s drivel is another woman’s George Eliot. All literary excellence is comparative.

The rate of remuneration for novelettes is not princely. It varies from two guineas to thirteen guineas for 25,000 words; that is, from one shilling and eight pence to about eleven shillings per thousand. The religious novelette commands the smallest price. As one novelettist epigrammatically put it to me: “The smaller the pay, the more of the Gospel.”

These figures may startle the inexperienced. It must be admitted, however, that the amount of brains necessary to the manufacture of a novelette does not greatly surpass the amount of money paid for it. Those who are capable of more skilful work should attempt it, but there must be a number of women, perhaps clever women, who have a slight literary faculty and just enough brains to spare from other work to concoct a dozen or so novelettes per annum; such women may care to attempt the enterprise, and to accept the trifling reward.

I am assured that there is a large and steady demand for novelettes, and that a practised novelettist with a good connection may rely on continuous employment. Three thousand words of a novelette can be comfortably written in a working day of five hours, and the maximum income of the profession seems to be about three hundred a year.

1. The beginner should study the works of Dumas the elder and of Eugene Sue. Also More New Arabian Nights, by R. L. Stevenson; Armadale, by Wilkie Collins; Cold Steel, by Mr. M. P. Shiel; Dracula, by Mr. Bram Stoker; Monsieur Lecoq, by Emile Gaboriau; and The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter, by E. A. Poe. The most popular newspaper serialists of the day are Mr. Richard Marsh, Mrs. C. N. Williamson, Mr. W. Le Queux, and Miss Esther Miller.