Fees Paid to Authors by Certain American
Periodicals,
1840-1850
by
J. Albert Robbins
A RELATIVELY NEW FIELD NOW BEING DEVELOPED by
American literary
scholars is the economic aspects of authorship.[1] Not until the 1830's and 1840's
did
magazine publishers offer adequate payment to authors, but even so,
the rates were flexible and the pay often uncertain or delayed. The
factors, obviously, were the needs of the publisher and the
reputation of the writer. In many cases the rate of payment was
arrived at by a haggling between buyer and seller. Moreover, not
all of the established periodicals could afford adequate payment.
In 1838 the Baltimore American Museum had a standard rate
of
$2 for poetry and $1.50 per page for prose.[2] The Southern Literary
Messenger
in 1840 could offer Griswold only $1.50 or $2 per page, and this
sum only at some future time.[3] The
North American Review had a standard rate of only $1 per
printed page and Edwin P. Whipple later wrote that in 1845 "some of
us who wrote for it at a dollar a page were wont to call it the
Mount Auburn of literature,
affording a most beautiful mausoleum wherein an article could be
buried."
[4]
It is no cause for wonder that many authors were hard pressed to
make a livelihood from their writings. Poe was continually in want
of funds. Lowell hoped to earn from his writings only $400 during
1843.[5] In 1842 Longfellow earned
$517 from his pen—$315 coming from magazine writings and only
$202 from his published volumes.[6]
The "popular" writers, however, were often besting the literary
geniuses of the day. Henry William Herbert, who was hardly more
than a literary hack, averaged from three to four thousand dollars
a year translating French novels for the cheap novel trade,[7] and N. P. Willis's extensive
popularity
brought him great sums. In 1840, Longfellow wrote, "Nat Willis . .
. says he has made ten thousand dollars the last year by his
writings. I wish I had made ten hundred."[8]
George R. Graham's policy of liberal payment and Louis A.
Godey's attempt to meet this competition altered the scale of
magazine payment drastically. Willis, one of the many who
benefited, noted that "The burst on author-land of Graham's and
Godey's liberal prices was like a sunrise without a dawn."
[9] The situation is well summarized
in an
article in the New York
Weekly Mirror, edited by two
Graham's writers, George P. Morris and N. P. Willis:
There are several of the magazines that pay for articles, but no
one of them, we believe, pays for
all its contents. Graham
and Godey, (two men of noble liberality to authors,) pay prices to
some of their contributors that would far out-bid the highest rates
of magazine payment in England. Their prose-writers receive from
two to twelve dollars a page, and their poets from five to fifty
dollars an article. . . . All the paying magazines and reviews,
however, reject fifty articles to one that they accept, and they
pay nobody whose "name" would not enrich their table of
contents.
[10]
The prices paid for magazine contributions roughly corresponded
to a writer's general popularity and renown. A brief look at the
prices which Graham paid Longfellow, Cooper, Lowell, and Poe will
illustrate the process which both writer and publisher
followed.
As Longfellow's account book shows and as Professor Charvat has
recently pointed out,[11] Longfellow
in 1840 and 1841 received only $15 or $20 per poem from magazines.
Park Benjamin, the New York editor and writer, printed Longfellow's
"Wreck of the Hesperus" in his New World, January 11,
1840.
He paid Longfellow $25 and apparently thought himself liberal in
the payment. Graham was determined to buy Longfellow's name for its
advertising value, and apparently during 1841 he urged Benjamin to
do what he could in the matter.[12] In
addition to this, Graham had his editor, Poe, write Longfellow
during May, offering carte blanche terms. Longfellow
declined from press of other duties. Graham then tried a third
alternative. In October, Graham wrote Griswold asking for some way
of persuading Longfellow to contribute regularly. At this point,
Benjamin came through, for he wrote Graham, asking a question to
which he knew the answer: "Would you like to have an occasional
poem from Professor Longfellow? I think I could get him to write
for you at $20.—He asks $25." Graham hastened to conclude the
bargain, and Longfellow's first poem in
Graham's appeared
in
the January, 1842, issue. For it Longfellow received $20, the same
sum paid by the New York
Ladies' Companion for another
of
his poems printed the same month.
Longfellow apparently liked the conservative format of
Graham's and saw a chance for a little regular income from
it. At any rate, he wrote Poe late in 1841 about further
contributions. Graham answered this letter, offering $30 for a
monthly poem or article, provided he write for no other
Philadelphia periodical. Longfellow must have felt $30 rather low,
for early in 1842 Benjamin—still involved in the
negotiations—wrote him that Graham had agreed to $50 "for each
article." Later Graham explained that he had in mind $50 for prose
and $30 for poetry. The latter figure he thought liberal "as I had
purchased at $20"; but he was willing to pay any sum mutually
agreeable. Longfellow was firm and for all other contributions
Graham paid $50.[13]
The wily and money-wise Cooper negotiated directly with Graham,
and prudently did even this when he happened to be in Philadelphia
on other business. It would be interesting indeed to read a
stenographic record of their bargaining. Cooper did very well for
himself. He sold a very inferior product (Autobiography of a
Pocket-Handerkerchief) to Graham for $500. It took up 48 pages,
making a per-page rate of $10.40. Later Graham printed Cooper's
biographical sketches of naval commanders, for which he paid $1000.
They ran to 130 printed pages, a per-page rate of $7.70. Cooper's
longest contribution was the Islets of the Gulf, running for
17 installments. It took up 188 pages, a per-page rate of
$6.38.[14]
Lowell is a convenient illustration of a growing reputation
reflected in the rate of magazine payment. In 1842 Graham paid him
$10 per poem. It is likely that he paid $20 the following year. In
1844, Graham went up to $25 and $30, and by 1850 Graham was
offering Lowell $40 for his "very best" poems and would have paid
fifty, but for business troubles.
A letter which Graham wrote Longfellow in 1844 indicates
Graham's opinion of Lowell's market-value at the time and presents
a picture of the problems of a magazine publisher.
In regard to Lowell, I told Mr. Peterson to write to him last
week, and to offer him $25 per poem. I have already engaged
exclusively Bryant, Paulding, Cooper & I hope your self for
"Graham" with a host of lesser lights, and the truth is I cannot go
beyond a certain mark in general expenses. Lowell's reputation is
not as wide-spread as yours or Bryant's, and his poems—to
me— are not worth as much. He wrote me some time
ago
that
Godey had offered to take his poems, at the same price I paid, but
I feel assured that Mr. Godey will not give him 25
per month for
one year, although he may take a
single one for the
sake
of getting his
name.
[15]
In addition to his income as editor, Poe received $4 per printed
page from Graham. Poe's income from magazine contributions seldom
exceeded five dollars per page. During his lifetime Poe was not
universally popular as a writer and he had antagonized innumerable
fellow craftsmen and editors. Actually, Graham paid Poe what his
reputation was then worth.
The "lesser lights," as Graham called them, frequently commanded
quite respectable prices for their contributions. The only
periodical writer in this period for which I have found a complete
account book is Mrs. Emma C. Embury, an amateur female writer and
wife of a wealthy Brooklyn banker. Graham paid her as high as $40
per prose tale, and her rate per page ran as high as $7.30. For 133
contributions of prose and poetry between 1837 and 1849, she
received $3100, quite a respectable sum for one of the "damned
scribbling women" that Hawthorne scorned.[16]
For many of the periodical contributors only scattered facts are
available. In some cases the figures mentioned are haggling-prices.
Yet all data are useful to a student of the economics of
authorship.
In 1841 Park Benjamin received $10 from Graham for two
sonnets.[17] In 1842 Henry T.
Tuckerman asked Griswold (then editor of Graham's) only
for
"whatever remuneration you can afford for my last
contribution."[18] During this year
Evert A. Duyckinck attempted to sell a minor writer, William A.
Jones, to Graham's. Griswold explained that Mr. Graham
offered only $2 a page to minors, reserving high pay for the
"'stars' in his
stock company."
[19] For prose articles
in
Godey's Lady's Book Seba Smith was receiving $5 per
page.
[20] Graham paid Epes Sargent,
the New York editor and publisher, $20 for a four-page
article.
[21] In August, 1842, Albert
B. Street, a poetically-minded New York lawyer, offered Graham an
875-line narrative poem for $60.
[22]
The poem was not accepted. The prolific Henry William Herbert
received a $5 per page rate for prose printed in
Grabam's.
For a story, "The Sisters," printed in three installments in 1842,
he felt his payment too low. He returned the draft and asked $100
for the piece.
[23] The following year
Herbert found himself in need of "a little ready money" and offered
Graham twelve tales of about eight pages each for $200 cash, at
considerable loss. "The price of these tales," he wrote, "would be
at the rate
M
r. G. pays me now $500 & I am willing to sacrifice
$300 for
the present accomodation."
[24] Early
in 1843 James Kirke Paulding, a collaborator of Washington Irving
and a writer of considerable prominence, wrote Griswold that "I
don't like Mr. Cooper's agreement with you, and though having
expressed myself willing to be placed on the same footing with him,
I am bound to stand to my word, yet I would much prefer the
original terms proposed, namely:—ten dollars a page for all
contributions, within the compass of five pages, or not exceeding
it, and five dollars a page for all over that number."
[25] Still another of Graham's
contributors
was jealous of Cooper's high payment. In the same year Thomas C.
Grattan,
the British consul at Boston, wrote, accepting Graham's offer of $5
per printed page, "the more so as you tell me M
r. Cooper
is
satisfied with the same."
[26] Either
Graham or Griswold was guilty of misleading Mr. Grattan on this
point.
Mrs. Frances Sargent Osgood was one of the period's prominent
women contributors. Graham wrote to her in 1843, asking for monthly
contributions at $25 per story and $10 per poem.[27] The following year, Charles J.
Peterson, the publisher of Peterson's Ladies' National
Magazine, stated that his rate of pay to women writers was $2
per printed page for prose and $5 per poem. "This is, perhaps, no
remuneration for them, but it is all the publishers here, excepting
Graham, give, and all we can afford." He accurately estimated the
market-value when he stated that "you & Mrs [Ann S.] Stephens .
. . are above all rule."[28] By 1848,
Mrs. Osgood was asking $1 for every four lines of poetry and $10
per page for prose.[29]
In 1844, just before his European trip, Bayard Taylor raised
some of his expense money by contracting with the Saturday
Evening Post and the United States Gazette for a
series
of travel letters. To enlarge his fund he looked up Graham and left
a number of poems with him, and later Graham wrote, offering $30
for the lot.[30]
The famous "Ik. Marvel" wrote a friend that he didn't "like the
idea of writing for such a magazine" as Graham's, but he
found the pay "too tempting." Graham paid him $4 per page.[31]
The total cost to a publisher such as Graham for literary matter
in a single issue is impossible to calculate from the incomplete
data available. The highest price he paid any author per monthly
issue for his name-value was Cooper. The amount was $125.[32] In a letter written in 1850, Graham
claimed that he had paid up to $1085 for the literary matter in a
single issue.[33] Three years later he
claimed to have spent as high as $1500 per single issue "for
authorship alone."[34] In 1852 he
boasted that he had paid "over $80,000 to American writers alone"
during the first ten years of publication.[35]
When one attempts to compare the high prices paid by Godey and
Graham with those prices of a later day, he finds it difficult to
reduce all the factors to a common level. Certainly, late in the
nineteenth century, magazine publishing became big business, with
circulations running into the hundreds of thousands. The prices
paid to authors did increase, but the living cost also increased.
Putnam's Magazine averaged about $7 per page. The better
class of literary periodical in the 1870's paid a standard price of
$10 a page.[36] Professor Mott has
attempted a comparison. Considering differences in money values,
Graham's paid a price corresponding to $13 per
Putnam
page. However, the cost of living had tripled, and to equal
Graham's, Putnam's should have paid about $40 per page to
meet Graham's payment in 1842.
[37]
It is illogical to attempt to compare Graham's prices in 1848
with the Saturday Evening Post's prices in 1949. Today the
large-circulation magazines can afford $10,000 and more for single
articles or stories by world-renowned figures. But for such
magazines as the Atlantic and Harper's, the
standard
rate is around $200 to $250 per article. Against such a pay
scale—if one considers cost of living changes—Graham's
payments
compare favorably indeed. For poetry, Graham paid as much as $50.
The best American poets today receive about $200 per poem. Here,
again, the comparison is favorable.
The 1840's marked a turn in the history of periodical
literature. Literary magazines began to reach a large audience. The
quality of the literary contents improved. Prices for literary
matter increased noticeably and, in some respects, are comparable
with current rates. As a result of competition, the principle of
literary name-value was established. The top periodicals became
national magazines, drawing upon the writing talent of all sections
of the country. These changes worked to the advantage of American
authors, yet during the 1840's and 1850's no author of first
magnitude could earn an adequate livelihood from periodicals alone.
By the 1870's and 1880's his prospects were no better. Contributing
to magazines could afford a convenient supplement to one's income,
but as a sole source of income it was obviously insufficient.
Notes