Publishers and Literature

ATLANTIC SHOP-TALK

THERE was once a young publisher — unhappily he did not live to become an old publisher or the successful publisher his talents would have made him — who used to surprise the Shop-Talker by the amount of reading of the best books in the world which, in spite of an extremely busy life, he managed to accomplish. ‘How do you do it?’ ’Oh,’replied the young publisher, ’I simply must; otherwise I might come to think that literature consists of the books published by the firm to which I belong! ’

The publisher who keeps constantly in mind a realization of the truth embodied in this little anecdote is reasonably safe — with whatever vigor he may cry his own wares. I Ie is the safer if the list of publications with which he is concerned contains its share of ’standard works. This is coming to pass with the Atlantic Monthly Press through the means of its educational texts and, in particular, of the Atlantic Library of English Classics. A merciful providence, choosing the College Entrance Examination Board as the instrument for its workings, has ordained that every applicant for admission to our colleges shall have read a few books which the whole world has long been reading with pleasure and profit. It is a part of the work of a publisher of educational texts to make these books available in attractive and inexpensive form. That is what we have begun to do in our Library of English Classics.

A year ago the series was begun with Mill, On Liberty, edited by Professor Matthew’ R. Copithorne, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The classic sequence of the index-maker — Ditto, On the Floss— is not to be pursued. But George Eliot is, nevertheless, to come next — with Silas Marner, edited for this series by Mr. Charles B, Gaston, of the Richmond Hill High School, New York City. The other volumes in preparation arc Tennyson Idylls of the King, edited by R. L. Lyman, University of Chicago; Julius Caesar, edited by Edwin L. Miller, Northern High School, Detroit; Macbeth, edited by Walter S. Hinchman, Groton, Massachusetts; and Midsummer Night’s Dream, edited by Helen Louise Cohen, Washington Irving High School, Now York City.

One more new educational text must be mentioned — The Little Grammar, by Dean E. A. Cross of Colorado State Teachers College. It is in a knowledge of the very basis and structure of language that an important element in the appreciation of literature has its foundations. Dean Cross s little book imparts this knowledge, and in a manner which has led several teachers in Colorado — where the book has, naturally, been put to its first test — to write ot it in terms entirely subversive ot the common belief with respect to a prophet and his own country.