lose your book, or he may let it lie about for months, or he may send it on at once to the real editor with his bitter malison. The utmost possible vexation is thus inflicted on every hand, and a prejudice is established against you which the nature of your work is very unlikely to overcome. By all means bore many literary strangers with correspondence, this will give them a lively recollection of your name, and an intense desire to do you a bad turn if opportunity arises.

    {6}

   If your book does, in spite of all, get itself published, send it with your compliments to critics and ask them for favourable reviews. It is the publisher’s business to send out books to the editors of critical papers, but never mind

    that

   . Go on telling critics that you know praise is only given by favour, that they are all more or less venal and corrupt and members of the Something Club, add that

    you

   are no member of a

    côterie

   nor clique, but that you hope an exception will be made, and that your volume will be applauded on its merits. You will thus have done what in you lies to secure silence from reviewers, and to make them request that your story may be sent to some other critic. This, again, gives trouble, and makes people detest you and your performance, and contributes to the end which you have steadily in view.

   I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who possess beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, and treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated Prince Ahmed. They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black’s novels.

   Much may be done by re-writing your book on the proof sheets, correcting everything there which you should have corrected in manuscript. This is an expensive process, and will greatly diminish your pecuniary gains, or rather will add to your publisher’s bill, for the odds are that you will have to publish at your own expense. By the way, an author can make almost a certainty of disastrous failure, by carrying to some small obscure publisher a work which has been rejected by the best people in the trade. Their rejections all but demonstrate that your 

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