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| C. Kevin Thompson |
We’ve arrived. Part 3 completes this blog trilogy revolving
around my reading of Les Standiford’s The
Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday
Spirits (You can read Part
1 and Part
2 here). As I stated before, if you want to learn about the writing life
and how other writers who have gone on before us have endured the trials and
tribulations therein, reading about them
is just as important as reading about the craft itself. For one thing I found
when learning about Dickens’s life was how universal some things are. It truly
is a small world.
So far, we have covered the first two “gleanings” I gathered
from my reading of this work. Gleaning
#1 (found in Part 1 above) was: Authors have always wished to get their
works in as many readers’ hands as possible, sometimes at the chagrin of their
publishers (if they are traditionally published) or themselves (if they
are independently published). And if not handled properly, it can become
an all-consuming fire.
As much as this writing life can become a soul-wrenching
conflagration, this mindset can worm its way into the writer’s business
relationships as well, which led us to Gleaning
#2 (found in Part 2 above): The
constant tension between authors and publishers will always be a constant.
If an author like Dickens, who made such an impact of the art
of story in relationship to the downcast and poor among us, then who are we to
think that everything we write should be loved and adored by every editor and
publisher who reads it? It’s actually quite the tip of the hat to arrogance, if
you ask me. And believe me, I’ve asked me a lot. We all think, if we’re honest with ourselves, that
what we write should be adored and published with an air of delight. It should
be venerated and lavished with contracts fit for a king or queen. So, when we
are told by an editor or agent, “I’m not interested,” or “It’s not something
our house can support,” our proud belief in our work explains the utter
incredulous nature of the expression on our face. It’s definitely something we
need to work on, for sure.1
This brings us to my last gleaning from Les Standiford’s book.
Gleaning
#3: Crooks abound in publishing, and sometimes in the unlikeliest of places.
Did you know Charles Dickens had to deal with pirates? Not the
Jack Sparrow, “Where’s the Rum?” brand of pirate. He probably could have more
easily accepted the “Yo-ho-ho,” parrot on the shoulder kind of buccaneer than
the scallywags he faced.
Dickens had fought for years to have an International
Copyright Law. He saw the practical and legal need and lobbied for it every
chance he got, for the problems crossed the Atlantic—heading both east and
west—and didn’t seem to play favorites. However, the pirates had their preferences,
and popularity was always the key.
American authors popular in England watched as their works
were literally stolen and reprinted in England. Edgar Allen Poe was a common
victim. Such works as The Fall of the
House of Usher (1839) and The Masque
of the Red Death (1842) were both bootlegged from Poe’s pen by English
publishers and sold to a British audience without Edgar receiving any
compensation at all.
Dickens was Edgar Allen Poe’s contemporary, as well as his
fellow quarry. His works traveled abroad, from England to America, were
retooled, and sold for a pittance with no recompense heading into Dickens’s
bank account. The one foray into plagiarism that caught my eye, though, was
when A Christmas Carol landed in
Boston, and was subsequently harvested by the publisher known then as Harper
and Brothers.
Does the name of that company sound familiar? It should.
Harper and Brothers later merged with Row, Peterson, and Company in 1962 to
become Harper & Row. In 1987, Rupert Murdoch purchased the company for $300
million and merged it with his News Corporation. Then, three years later, he
purchased William Collins, Sons & Co., a British company (ironically!), and
HarperCollins was formed as a means of creating a worldwide English-speaking
book market that has great potential, according to one analyst.2
The article I found went on to say, “Harper & Row evolved
from a publisher of books on religion and ethics—its first title
was Seneca’s “Morals”—to books by Mark Twain, James Thurber, E. B. White, the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Moshe Dayan, Allen Dulles, Svetlana
Alliluyeva, Erich Segal and Sylvia Plath” (emphasis added).3 Apparently, religion and ethics didn’t play a huge
part in the company’s earlier days. There didn’t seem to be any feeling of remorse
about the act of thievery. Even though copyright laws existed in both America
(Copyright Act of 1790) and England (Statute of Queen Anne in 1710), they only
applied to authors within their own borders.4
How convenient, right? There have always been legal loopholes…
Dickens, like others, knew there was little they could do
about the literary poachers of their day who operated across the pond, much
like we cannot do much about the ones that exist today.5 However, when a British publisher
known as Lee & Haddock had planned to publish a “re-originated” version of A Christmas Carol—which turned out to be
the book in its entirety with a few lines of introduction added and a few minor
things changed—for two pennies a copy in their Parley’s Illuminated Library, in the January 6, 1844 edition,
Dickens wrote his friend and legal counsel, Thomas Mitton, who filed a formal
complaint with the courts.
That didn’t stop the pilferers, though. Because of Dicken’s
enormous popularity, other works of his were lifted in a similar fashion, many
of which being done so in a not-to-flattering manner. Such titles as The Posthumous Notes of the Pickwick Club,
by “Bos,” Pickwick in America, Oliver Twiss, Nickelas Nicklebery, Barnaby
Budge, and more were allegedly written by “Bos, Buz, Poz, and others.”6
Dickens, more than upset over Lee & Haddock’s actions,
spent over a thousand pounds on legal fees in his court battle—a tough ride,
considering Dickens was always on the verge of bankruptcy. He eventually won
his fight against Lee & Haddock, and decided it was their fault he had
accumulated these legal fees. So, he filed another lawsuit to recoup his funds.
He won that case as well. That was when Lee & Haddock filed for bankruptcy,
thus forcing Dickens to drop the case and absorb the legal fees when he was
already in debt.7
So, what’s an author to do? Those, like Dickens, have gone on
their crusades and fought for themselves and those writers who have come after.
But there are two things that have come out of this Gleaning #3 for me.
1. There will always be pirates. Always have. Always will. And
even the courts can’t eradicate them all. Sometimes, it seems, the laws of the
land protect them with the loopholes that can be used as escape hatches. “There
is no justice in the justice system,” one of my characters says all the time.
2. We are Christian
writers. Most of us write Christian
literature. Dickens didn’t (Neither did Poe, for that matter). And he was taken
advantage of by unscrupulous publishers. In this ever-darkening world around
us, I’ve often wondered how long it’s going to be before our works are rejected
because of the emphasis on Jesus. I believe a form of censoring is coming that
will be allowed (If Jesus doesn’t return before that happens!). The courts will
declare the message of Christ anathema
to all human beings and to be avoided at all costs.
So, what’s an author to do? I believe the answer is as simple
and as complicated as this: write. In the admonition of
Ephesians 5, “redeeming the time because the days are evil.” To use our talents
to help as many people as possible see the light of Christ as it shines
brighter and brighter in a dark world before our window as a writer closes.
Take advantage of the avenues God supplies to get your word out about the
Messiah.
And in the words of Tiny Tim, “God bless Us, Every One!”
1 My
wife ran across a book that deals with this very issue recently, titled Free
of Me: Why Life Is Better When It’s Not about You, by Sharon Hodde
Miller. This book should be on every Christian writer’s shelf.
2 McDowell, Edwin. “Murdoch to Buy Harper
& Row in Surprise Deal.” New York
Times. 1987 March 31. 2019 March 18. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/31/business/murdoch-to-buy-harper-row-in-surprise-deal.html
3 Ibid.
4 Standiford, Les. The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas
Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our
Holiday Spirits. Broadway Books; New York, NY, 2017. pp. 140-141.
5 Clark, Grant, and Shelly Hagan. “What’s
Intellectual Property and Does China Steal It?” Bloomberg.com. 2018 March 22.
2019 March 18. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-22/what-s-intellectual-property-and-does-china-steal-it-quicktake
6 Standiford, Les. The Man Who Invented
Christmas: How Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and
Revived Our Holiday Spirits. Broadway Books; New York, NY, 2017. pp. 142-143.
7 Ibid., pp. 144-152.
(The
Blake Meyer Thriller Series, Book 3)
A
Perverse Tale. A Precarious Truth. A Personal Tribulation.
Supervisory
Special Agent Blake Meyer is at an impasse. Bound and beaten in a dilapidated
warehouse halfway around the world, Blake finds himself listening to an
unbelievable story. Right and wrong warp into a despicable clash of ideologies.
Life quickly becomes neither black nor white. Nor is it red, white, and blue
any longer.
Every
second brings the contagion's release closer, promising to drag the United
States into the Dark Ages. Tens of millions could be dead within months.
Every
moment adds miles and hours to the expanding gulf between him and his family.
What is he to believe? Who is he to trust?
C. KEVIN
THOMPSON is a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a kid at heart.
Often referred to as “crazy” by his grandchildren, it’s only because he is.
He’s a writer. Need he say more?
The first three books of his Blake Meyer Thriller series are
out! Book 1, 30 Days Hath Revenge, Book
2, Triple Time, and Book 3, The Tide of Times, are now available! Book
4, When the Clock Strikes Fourteen,
is coming March 2019! Also, the second
edition of his award-winning debut novel, The
Serpent’s Grasp, is now available!
Kevin is a huge fan of the TV series 24, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, and Criminal Minds, loves anything to do with Star Trek, and is a Sherlock Holmes fanatic, too. It’s quite
elementary, actually.
Website: www.ckevinthompson.com/
Kevin’s Writer’s Blog: www.ckevinthompson.blogspot.com/
Instagram : ckevinthompson
Twitter: @CKevinThompson
Goodreads: C. Kevin
Thompson
BookBub: C. Kevin
Thompson
