Next Christmas season when our Gentile cousins start out to buy presents there will be one item that go down on every list, a copy of the “The Life of Our Lord,” written for his children by Charles Dickens. Part of each purchase price of this book will go back to the Jewish publishing house of Simon & Schuster who are going to bring out the volume in time to meet the holiday demand.
If you have been reading the papers lately you should know that this life of Christ is the literary news of the year. The book had been in manuscript form in the possession of the Dickern’s death and only now have publication rights been sold. Not only will the slim volume of 16,000 words appear in book form but it will be syndicated in newspapers by the United Press, which paid a small fortune for the rights.
The exact price paid by Simon & Schuster for the book rights is not known. The figure given to the public was £5,000 but I have reason to believe that aactually the boys in the Inner Sanctum paid a trifle less. How they acquired the book was very simple. Curtis-Brown, international literary agents, handled the rights. They practically auctioned the manuscript to the highest bidder. Publishers were called and asked how much they would pay as advance loyalties. Most of the larger publishers participated in the bidding. Viking Press, was an interested party as was one other Jewish firm. S. & S. finally won out with the most generous bid. It was the argest advance the house has ever made.
I believe that the acquisition was a clever move which will prove profitable. The book will probably sell somewhere between $1.50 and $2.00. It will be illustrated and it is my guess that within six months of publication it will hate sold at least 150,000 copies. Total cales should be between 600,000 and 1,000,000 copies.
As for the book itself, it is a nice, sentimental, orthodox life of Christ which almost any competent writer of today could turn out without too much effort. But the combination of an unpublished Dickens and a religious subject should make it irresistible to the public. Howeve, I still can’t quite get over the incongruity of a Jweish publisher issuing a life of Christ.
BERNSTEIN TO BE FETED
A reception in honor of Herman Bernstien, former American Miniter to Albania and editor of the Jewish Daily Bulletin, will be given at the Jewish Club Tuesday evening.
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