WCP5053

Letter (cc) (WCP5053.5527)

[1]1

2nd Oct[obe]r. [1]899

D[octo]r. Alfred R. Wallace.

Dear Sir,

We are in receipt of your letter of the 1st inst[ant].2 returning the Printer’s a/c. [account]

It had never occurred to is that Clause 2(c) might be worked as you suggest, in an unfair way, so as to deprive an Author of part of his Royalty. The clause is only intended to refer to dead stock, sold at a substantial reduction from the published price.

Of course so long as a book sells in the regular way, it would be a suicidal policy for us to sell it off at a reduced price.

We have made a note in the [2]3 Agreement4 that you wish us to consult you before your book is sold at "remainder" price, and we should probably have done so in any case.

Yours very truly | FRS5 [signature in intials]

1
The letter bears no heading, but originates from ARW’s London publisher Swan Sonnenschein & Co., founded in 1878 by William Swan Sonnenschein (1855-1931) a son of Adolphus Sonnenschein, a teacher and writer originally from Moravia, and his first wife Sarah Robinson Stallybrass. In the light of the hostility to Germans during the First World War William Swan Sonnenschein changed his surname to Stallybrass for the remainder of his life, as did some of his family.
2
See WCP5177. This letter is presumed lost or does not survive.
3
The page is stamped "767".
4
The agreement in place refers to publication of the current, probably 3rd edition of Wallace, A. R. (1898). The Wonderful Century; Its Successes and Its Failures London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co. Ltd. (1st ed. June 1898; 2nd ed. Dec. 1898; 3rd ed. May 1899).
5
The author is likely to be F. R. Stallybrass (see WCP5163 in the same hand), presumably a relative of the founder, but as yet unidentified.

Editorial information

Status: Draft transcription [Letter (cc) (WCP5053.5527)]

For more information about the transcriptions and metadata, see https://wallaceletters.myspecies.info/content/epsilon

Revision history

Transcribed by O'Dell, Sandra [2018-08-15]

Please cite as “WCP5053,” in Beccaloni, G. W. (ed.), Ɛpsilon: The Alfred Russel Wallace Collection accessed on 28 April 2024, https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/wallace/letters/WCP5053