HOTEL VICTORIA.
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE.
London, Nov. 30th. 1911.
Dear Miss Addams,
I have been talking with Mr. Perris, the Managing Editor of the Home University Library, and with Mr. Williams of Williams & Norgate the English publishers, and they feel very much as do the Holts, that they should prefer a book from you on the Social Settlement to a book on that subject from anybody else.
Mr. Perris knows Mr. Woods's work very well, and has a high opinion of it, but he thought that for England, as I had thought for America, that what you had to say would reach better than almost any other person.
From your own point of view you might find it very well worth while to do this book of 50,000 words, since the series is undoubtedly having very great success in England, and will have more and more success. They have now sold over 300,000 copies of the first thirty books, some of which have been out only a few weeks, and long before the books originally planned are issued, the totals will reach a million in England besides what sells in America. [page 2]
One cannot of course tell exactly what the sales would be, and I am not now of course speaking of financial returns. I merely mean that there seems to be [today] no better means for one to get one's ideas before the public than this same Home University Library, for each book is by itself and not, like a magazine, accompanied by a great many other things, and furthermore there has been devised, and is in successful operation, a method of obtaining extensive circulation.
May I not hear from you at your leisure, unless you have already written to Mr. Harcourt of Henry Holt & Company.
I do not think there would be any haste about the writing of such a book, but I assure you again we all wish that you could write this.
My address is c/o Brown Shipley & Co, 123, Pall Mall, London. I am, with kind regards,
Comments