Their affiliation is
rather with the new literatures of France, of Russia, of Spain, than with
the modern fiction of England. They have to compete in the market with
the uncopyrighted literature of all other lands, good and bad, especially
bad, which is sold for little more than the cost of the paper it is
printed on, and badly printed at that. But besides this fact, and owing
to a public taste not cultivated or not corrected in the public schools,
their books do not sell in anything like the quantity that the inferior,
mediocre, other home novels sell. Indeed, but for the intervention of the
magazines, few of the best writers of novels and short stories could earn
as much as the day laborer earns. In sixty millions of people, all of
whom are, or have been, in reach of the common school, it must be
confessed that their audience is small.
This relation between the fiction that is, and that which is to be, and
the common school is not fanciful. The lack in the general reading
public, in the novels read by the greater number of people, and in the
common school is the same--the lack of inspiration and ideality. The
common school does not cultivate the literary sense, the general public
lacks literary discrimination, and the stories and tales either produced
by or addressed to those who have little ideality simply respond to the
demand of the times.
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