A publishing house," Anthony West recently remarked, "is a simple
business today, and a publisher considers that his first responsibility is not
to culture as an abstract idea but to the investors who have provided him
with his working capital."[1] Still
more recently Arthur Mizener has taken the opposite view: "Publishers are
all more or less bad businessmen because they all care to some extent for
good books and are forever trying to publish them. It's a mug's game and
as businessmen they know it."[2] Both
these knowledgeable observers of the twentieth-century literary scene cite
striking examples to support their apparently irreconcilable opinions. The
question remains open: is a publisher's responsibility primarily to author
and public, as his own literary and social conscience may dictate? Or is it
primarily to the financial success of his firm—more bluntly, to his
own
pocket-book? To use a Victorian distinction,
is publishing a liberal profession, or a trade?
The answer cannot, of course, be drawn out in black and white.
Publishers have been called Maecenas and Barabbas, perhaps with equal
justice, equal inaccuracy. The answer, so far as it can be arrived at, will
come from an understanding of the subtle web of interacting influences
which unites author, publisher, and reader—or, if you prefer,
producer,
distributor, and consumer. As a step toward understanding such influences,
consider a chapter in literary history in which they are to be studied with
a fair amount of perspective: the fortunes and misfortunes of Victorian
magazines and reviews, their publishers, editors, contributors, and
readers.
