At last, one day when I was being visited by Mr.
Grant Richards, since then a London publisher, but at that time a writer,
who had come to interview me for 'Great Thoughts', I told him of my
difficulties regarding the title. I was saying that I felt the title
should be, as it were, the kernel of a book. I said: "You see, it is a
struggle of one simple girl against principalities and powers; it is the
final conquest of the good over the great. In other words, the book will
be an illustration of the text, 'He has put down the mighty from their
seats, and has exalted the humble and meek.'" Then, like a flash, the
title came 'The Seats of the Mighty'.
Since the phrase has gone into the language and was from the very
first a popular title, it seems strange that the literary director
of the American firm that published the book should take strong
exception to it on the ground that it was grandiloquent. I like to
think that I was firm, and that I declined to change the title.
I need say no more save that the book was dramatised by myself, and
produced, first at Washington by Herbert (now Sir Herbert) Beerbohm
Tree in the winter of 1897 and 1898, and in the spring of 1898 it
opened his new theatre in London.
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