Not only can you secure failure thus yourself, but you can so worry and badger your luckless victim, that he too will be unable to write well till he has forgotten you and your novel, and all the annoyance and anxiety you have given him.  Much may be done by asking him for “introductions” to an editor or publisher.  These gentry don’t want introductions, they want good books, and very seldom get them.  If you behave thus, the man whom you are boring will write to his publisher: 

   Dear Brown,

   A wretched creature, who knows my great aunt, asks me to recommend his
   rubbish to you.  I send it by to-day’s post, and I wish you joy of it.

This kind of introduction will do you excellent service in smoothing the path to failure.  You can arrive at similar results by sending your MS. not to the editor of this or that magazine, but to some one who, as you have been told by some nincompoop, is the editor, and who is not.  He may lose your book, or he may let it lie about for months, or he may send it on at once to the real editor with his bitter malison.  The utmost possible vexation is thus inflicted on every hand, and a prejudice is established against you which the nature of your work is very unlikely to overcome.  By all means bore many literary strangers with correspondence, this will give them a lively recollection of your name, and an intense desire to do you a bad turn if opportunity arises. {6}

If your book does, in spite of all, get itself published, send it with your compliments to critics and ask them for favourable reviews.  It is the publisher’s business to send out books to the editors of critical papers, but never mind that.  Go on telling critics that you know praise is only given by favour, that they are all more or less venal and corrupt and members of the Something Club, add that you are no member of a coterie nor clique, but that you hope an exception will be made, and that your volume will be applauded on its merits.  You will thus have done what in you lies to secure silence from reviewers, and to make them request that your story may be sent to some other critic.  This, again, gives trouble, and makes people detest you and your performance, and contributes to the end which you have steadily in view.

I do not think it is necessary to warn young lady novelists, who possess beauty, wealth, and titles, against asking Reviewers to dine, and treating them as kindly, almost, as the Fairy Paribanou treated Prince Ahmed.  They only act thus, I fear, in Mr. William Black’s novels.