UNSAVOURY FICTION.

"The Increasing Popularity of the Erotic Novel" forms the subject of a short but significant paper in the "Monthly Review," by Mr Basil Tozer. He points out that it seems but yesterday that quite a big proportion of the reading public professed to consider a number of works of fiction by the popular authoress known as "Ouida," and by one or two of her contemporaries, very "improper" indeed, and in many households, with growing daughters of an inquisitive turn of mind, parents and guardians were on the alert to refuse admittance to the family circle of books by those writers. "To-day there may be said to be comparatively few schoolgirls well in their teens — and I don't make this assertion without having first of all gone carefully into the subject and made strict inquires —who would not smile at the thought of exception being taken to their reading anything 'Ouida' ever wrote. Nor is this to be wondered at if you come to look into the class of fiction that the schoolgirl has been battening upon, either with or without the consent of her guardians, for the past few years. For, out of eighty seven selected novels that I have by me at this moment, and that have been published within the last three years and a half, books that have had a considerable vogue, and have all, at one time or other, been obtainable at the circulating libraries, seventeen adopt the attitude of sneering at matrimony as a thing 'played out', eleven raise upon a pinnacle imaginary co-respondents in imaginary divorce cases, twenty-two practically advocate that married men shall be allowed to keep mistresses openly, seven hold up to ridicule the woman who is faithful to her husband, and twenty-three describe seduction as openly as it can be described in a book that is not to be ostracised by the bookstalls."

There can be no doubt, unfortunately, that the undesirable novel is on the increase; it is too often the new writer's idea of the way to attract notice. And Mr. Tozer notices one disquieting fact about this erotic invasion. "Glancing again at the rows of novels by modern writers of moderate repute that if has been my fate to read within the last few years, I am struck by the fact that by far the most 'daring' — I should like to call them the most prurient— books among them have been written by women. It may be an ungallant thing to say, but it is none the less the truth, that whereas a man able to write clever fiction generally deems it more artistic to veil, to some extent, his descriptions of certain scenes, the woman novelist of the same calibre will, when describing similar situations, tear off every stitch of veiling that can by any possibility be spared. And as it is the nature of woman to endeavour to outshine, or as it is now commonly called 'go one better than' all other members of her sex who may be following the avocation she herself is engaged in, so when it comes to writing 'boldly' Mrs A. will, in her new novel, sail just a little closer to the wind than Mrs B did in her last successful work, and then when Mrs B.'s turn comes again, Mrs B will place Mrs A 's audacious story quite in the background by promulgating some preposterous theory on the advantages of free love, or some such subject, that will set a considerable section of the lending library public whispering and surreptitiously tittering, and will at the same time gratify her vanity and perceptibly increase her royalties." Writers go from bad to worse with the discovery that the market exists for the "daring."

Mr. Tozer says " it is interesting to observe how different the tone of the serial story of average merit is that appears in our weekly and monthly periodicals from that of the average novel of equal literary merit that is published between covers before appearing elsewhere. It is safe to say that no serial story at present running in any English daily newspaper or in the ordinary periodical Press of England is unfit to read by the class that we have gradually come to speak of as 'young people.' Why this should be I am unable to say, unless it is that editors of periodical publications have a greater sense of their responsibility, and of the duty they owe to the community, than certain publishers. But such a supposition, considered from the rational standpoint of hard common-sense, must unfortunately be deemed quixotic, and therefore the only alternative conclusion to be arrived at is that a vast section of the multitude of men and women who read serial fiction regularly have not really a craving for stories that have a vein of double entente running through them, or that appear to advocate a loose code of morality, but that on the contrary they desire the fiction they read to be sound and wholesome throughout.

We do not regard the explanation as at all difficult. Papers are produced for the family circle, and anything that offends the susceptibilities of paterfamilias or materfamilias would promptly have its effect on the circulation figures. A novel may be a success or failure; with a periodical a valuable property is at stake. Risks taken in the one case are incommensurate with those incurred in the other.

 The Mercury 9 November 1905,