An Autobiography of Anthony TrollopeTrollope, Anthony
General
An Autobiography of Anthony Trollope
Trollope, Anthony
Novelists, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Trollope, Anthony, 1815-1882
Upon this I consented to undertake the duty. My terms as to salary
were those which he had himself proposed. The special stipulations
which I demanded were: firstly, that I should put whatever I pleased
into the magazine, or keep whatever I pleased out of it, without
interference; secondly, that I should from month to month give in to
him a list of payments to be made to contributors, and that he should
pay them, allowing me to fix the amounts; and thirdly, that the
arrangement should remain in force at any rate for two years. To all
this he made no objection; and during the time that he and I were
thus bound together, he not only complied with these stipulations,
but also with every suggestion respecting the magazine that I made to
him. If the use of large capital, combined with wide liberality and
absolute confidence on the part of the proprietor, and perpetual good
humour, would have produced success, our magazine certainly would
have succeeded.
In all such enterprises the name is the first great difficulty. There
is the name which has a meaning and the name which has none,--of
which two the name that has none is certainly the better, as it
never belies itself. _The Liberal_ may cease to be liberal, or _The
Fortnightly_, alas! to come out once a fortnight. But _The Cornhill_
and _The Argosy_ are under any set of circumstances as well adapted
to these names as under any other. Then there is the proprietary
name, or possibly the editorial name, which is only amiss because
the publication may change hands. _Blackwood's_ has indeed always
remained _Blackwood's_, and _Fraser's_, though it has been bought
and sold, still does not sound amiss. Mr. Virtue, fearing the too
attractive qualities of his own name, wished the magazine to be
called _Anthony Trollope's_. But to this I objected eagerly. There
were then about the town--still are about the town--two or three
literary gentlemen, by whom to have had myself editored would have
driven me an exile from my country. After much discussion, we settled
on _St. Paul's_ as the name for our bantling,--not as being in any
way new, but as enabling it to fall easily into the ranks with many
others. If we were to make ourselves in any way peculiar, it was not
by our name that we were desirous of doing so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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