in view of the harmonious whole which the authors had designed.  It is not often that circumstances permit of a result so happy.  “Fabian Essays” does not cover the whole field of Fabian doctrine, and in later years schemes were often set on foot for a second volume dealing with the application of the principles propounded in the first.  But these schemes never even began to be successful.  With the passage of time the seven essayists had drifted apart.  Each was working at the lines of thought most congenial to himself; they were no longer young and unknown men; some of the seven were no longer available.  Anyway, no second series of Essays ever approached completion.

[Illustration:  From a photograph By Savony of New York

MRS. ANNE BESANT, IN 1890]

Bernard Shaw was the editor, and those who have worked with him know that he does not take lightly his editorial duties.  He corrects his own writings elaborately and repeatedly, and he does as much for everything which comes into his care.  The high literary level maintained by the Fabian tracts is largely the result of constant scrutiny and amendment, chiefly by Sidney Webb and Bernard Shaw, although the tract so corrected may be published as the work of some other member.

Although therefore all the authors of “Fabian Essays” were competent, and some of them practised writers, it may be assumed that every phrase was considered, and every word weighed, by the editor before the book went to press.[24]

A circular inviting subscriptions for the book was sent out in the spring, and three hundred copies were subscribed in advance.  Arrangements with a publisher fortunately broke down because he declined to have the book printed at a “fair house,” and as Mrs. Besant was familiar with publishing—­she then controlled, or perhaps was, the Freethought Publishing Company, of 63 Fleet Street—­the Committee resolved on the bold course of printing and publishing the book themselves.  A frontispiece was designed by Walter Crane, a cover by Miss May Morris, and just before Christmas, 1889, the book was issued to subscribers and to the public.

None of us at that time was sufficiently experienced in the business of authorship to appreciate the astonishing success of the venture.  In a month the whole edition of 1000 copies was exhausted.  With the exception of Mrs. Besant, whose fame was still equivocal, not one of the authors had published any book of importance, held any public office, or was known to the public beyond the circles of London political agitators.  The Society they controlled numbered only about 150 members.  The subject of their volume was far less understood by the public than is Syndicalism at the present day.  And yet a six-shilling book, published at a private dwelling-house and not advertised in the press, or taken round by travellers to the trade, sold almost as rapidly as if the authors had been Cabinet Ministers.