humourless news from1893

Once again we're back with news from Publishers Weekly of long ago.

This time we're "reporting" the news from April 1, 1893 (PW no. 1105)

NOTES ON AUTHORS

MISS HELEN AINSLEE SMITH, of Newark N.J., a well-known writer of children's books, has been married for three years, and is the wife of James Elliott, a New York lawyer.

FOREIGN NOTES

THE Russian publishers do not intend to allow author to interfere with their business. They have petitioned the Minister of the Interior to impose a special tax on the works of all authors who acts as their own publishers.

IN Japan it has just been decided by a committee of the peers that the discharge of the work of editors or publishers is neither becoming nor desirable for women and that these offices shall be reserved to men of, or over, twenty-one years of age.

A "LOVER OF BOOKS," writing to an English journal makes a vigorous and much-needed protest against what he calls the ridiculous practice of allowing some modern litterateur to advertise his name as "editor" upon every reprint of a standard work offered to the public. He asks why these modern editors should be allowed to annoy in this impertinent fashion a classic read and beloved before they were born, and he scorns the "ridiculous, fussy and artificial ceremony of editing things which only require to be left alone to the care of any sensible publisher." Here is a slap for Andrew Lang: "Of Mr. Lang- Editor-in-Chief to the British Nation- it is too late to speak. The 'admirable and exhaustive index' now to be appended to Sir Walter's novels give one only more stimulus to the prevalent vices of the age- aimless quotation and a pretence of familiarity with our great classics."

LITERARY AND TRADE NOTES

HORACE C. DONOGHUE, a well-known Chicago publisher, committed suicide on the 27th of March. While he was standing before his dressing-case his wife took up a newspaper and began reading about Elliott F. Shepard's death in New York. Suddenly she heard her husband fall with a peculiar gurgling sound, and rushing to his side she found that he had cut his throat from ear to ear with a razor. The cause for the suicide is a mystery. Mr. Donoghue leaves a large estate.

*sigh* I wonder how many sites will be rick-rolled tomorrow.