THERE has recently been some amusing speculation about the relative size of the intellectual reading publics of different countries. Mr. Louis Lazarus estimates that there is a group of about forty thousand such readers in France; the English publishers, Gollanez and Constable & Co., give England half that number. In the United States the guesses have run from half a million ‘who might buy, read, and appreciate’ down to five thousand of ‘those who are not a public at all, but think and read for themselves.’ Publishers, naturally, would love to arrive at some dependable figures, but I doubt if they ever will, for the variables are too great. Three hundred and thirty-five thousand Americans bought copies of the trade edition of All Quiet on the Western Front; probably twice that number read the book. Remarque’s sequel.The Road Back, which was exceptionally praised by the critics, has so far found less than sixty thousand buyers. Such fluctuations in interest area common occurrence. That book publishing is at present a fairly limited trade in the United States can be adduced from the statement of a prominent bookseller who concluded that there are not more than fifty or seventy-five bookstores (not department stores) in the whole country enjoying an annual business of $100,000 or more. Books, it seems, are still a luxury, not a necessity. . . . But as I scan the lists of books that are promised for this fall it is easy to find a number which I should not like to get along without. Among the novels there are The Waves by Virginia Woolf, A Buried Treasure, by Elizabeth Maddox-Roberts, and Finch’s Fortune, reviewed in this issue; among the poetry Items I was caught by a Beowulf with Rockwell Kent illustrations; then I want to read Noel Coward’s new play, Post-Mortem, and Francis Hackett’s Life of Francis I. . . . Since so many notable titles are not to appear until the late autumn, we have postponed our quarterly selection of Readable Books till the November issue.
