University of Virginia Library

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:

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 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 Mr. 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 Mr. 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