[During the summer of 1913, subscription libraries had
sought to restrict the circulation of new novels by Hall
Caine, The Woman Thou Gavest Me; W. B. Maxwell, The
Devil's Garden; and Compton Mackenzie, Sinister
Street. Maxwell wrote to The Times to complain, and
sparked a debate.]
WHEN a publisher of the eminence of Mr John Murray comes forward
[in The Times] to defend the literary censorship of the
circulating libraries their case assumes a new aspect. It has
actually been affirmed that they have exerted the censorship for
the purpose of avoiding the overloading of their shelves, and that
they do not come with clean hands into the present controversy. Mr
Murray refutes that charge as a calumny, and maintains their action
has been based on a full sense of responsibility to their clients,
who, they have reason to know, rely upon the libraries not to issue
books which should not find their way into respectable and sober
households. This responsibility, Mr Murray remarks, is enforced by
the protests of many of their subscribers. In such cases the only
course open to the libraries is to trust to their own judgment and
experience. There is, of course, no fixed standard by which the
moral tendency of a given book can be judged, but the manager of
any library can without difficulty arrive at a fairly accurate
estimate of its fitness or unfitness for admission to the family
circle of his subscribers. We regard as senseless the outcry that
has been raised against the librarians for acting, as they clearly
have acted, within their rights. The fact that a book is published
and on the market does not compel a bookseller or a book-circulator
to stock it. That is entirely his own affair. He is not primarily
concerned with author and publisher, but with a particular public
for which he happens to cater, and it seems to us that he ought to
be left to manage his own business in his own way.