Category: Books
-
Literary Bootlegging
By 1922, a black market had emerged in New York for banned books. Distribution of such “obscene” material remained illegal in the state until a 1948 Supreme Court decision struck the law down as unconstitutional. This 1922 New York Times Magazine article detailed the underworld for books and other literary works: And now a committee in…
-
The Year in Books
This late-1921 article recapping the year in books predicted: “The average of fiction was but fair, and it is to be doubted if anything of lasting import appeared.” Well, now we know: nothing of lasting import appeared. Looking at the Publishers Weekly list of the 10 bestselling novels of 1921, as of this writing, only four…
-
The Child, the Book and the Movie
In 1921, as the nascent medium of film had recently soared in popularity, New York Times Magazine commissioned a debate: would movies decrease or increase children’s love of reading books? Alexander Black predicted it would increase, though his argument was in no small based on how movies of the time required considerable reading with title cards…
-
Book Reviews — Signed or Unsigned?
A relatively recent trend was emerging around 1921: reviewers appending their names to their reviews. It is only in this twentieth century that the newspapers of New York have chosen to declare the authorship of their reviews of books, of plays, of pictures and of music…. [But] even now, a certain proportion of the book…
-
Thirty Years of International Copyright
The Chace Act of 1891 gave copyright to non-U.S. works in return for international copyright protections for American authors. On the law’s 30th anniversray, Brander Matthews wrote that he considered the law a smashing success. It remains the least adequate [such law] now in force of any of the civilized nations; but, improvable as it…
-
The Future of the Novel
A 1921 article predicted novels would move towards action and adventure. That happened… eventually. While the biggest novels of recent decades have been action-heavy, perhaps the least action-heavy classic ever — Ulysses by James Joyce — was published only the next year. This is the age of the airplane, the wireless telegraph, of radium, of…
-
Martin Van Buren’s Autobiography
Martin van Buren’s autobiography wasn’t published until 1920: 60 years after his death and 80 years after he was last president. That’s like if FDR’s or Herbert Hoover’s memoirs were only published now. 80 years ago in 1941, FDR was president. Excluding JFK, the president who died closest to 60 years ago (of natural causes)…
-
America’s Unwritten Novels
The mostly-forgotten novelist Coningsby Dawson, speculated in 1920 that America would have difficulty producing great novels moving forward. “I believe American novelists as a class to be the most unobservant and the least local in their affections. When I say local, I use that term in its best sense. Hardy and Kipling and Tolstoy and…
-
The Corner Where Traffic Cop and Fairies Meet
In 1919, Benjamin de Casseres described New York Public Library children’s section as a world apart from the hustle and bustle just outside its walls at 42nd St. and 5th Ave.: Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue… is, as we all know, right in the very heart of practical, jazzing, money-scrambling little old New York. Only,…
-
Must We De-Alcoholize Literature?
Two months after the 18th Amendment established prohibition, this satire wondered how far the movement would go. Would Dickens and Shakespeare’s references to alcohol be expunged? The losses would be appalling; Chaucer would be a walking casualty, Shakespeare a stretcher case, and the forces of Dickens would be decimated. Think of Mr. Pickwick bereft of…
SundayMagazine.org 