of James Branch Cabell at Putnam's, Benedetto Croce's Æsthetic at Brentano's, and Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol at Scribner's. On January 3, Putnam's would dole out a new novel by Sinclair Lewis, Brentano's would vend a book by Arthur Machen (if they could find one),[1] and Scribner's would sell Mencken's A Book of Prefaces. On January 4, I might possibly persuade Putnam's to stack the counters with The Tiger in the House, Brentano's would offer Max Beerbohm's Seven Men, and Scribner's would display The Newcomes by William Makepiece Thackeray. January 5 would be the day to buy Esther Waters at Putnam's, William Dean Howells's Heroines of Fiction at Brentano's, and Wyndham Lewis's Tarr at Scribner's. On January 6, Putnam's would sell Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, Brentano's, Donald Evans's Sonnets from the Patagonian, and Scribner's, Webster's Dictionary. Naturally, the other bookshops and the libraries would also make capricious decisions about the books of the day. This would all appear to be very strange, no doubt, and probably all of us would stop buying books, because the particular book we wanted would never be on sale on the day we wanted it,
- ↑ Written before the Machen vogue began.
