$5-a-Word Dickens

When he finished writing The Life of Our Lord, A History of Our Savior Jesus Christ, in 1849, Charles Dickens gave the book, not to his publishers, but to his six children. When he died, the book went to his sister-in-law, Georgina Hogarth. She left it to Sir Henry Fielding Dickens, Charles Dickens' sixth son, stipulating that it must not be published until after his death.

Seven weeks ago Sir Henry Fielding died, after being hit by a motorcycle. Through Curtis Brown. Ltd., London literary agents, Lady Dickens last week sold world publication rights for The Life of

Our Lord to the London Daily Mail for $210,000.

First serial rights for North and South America went to United Feature Syndicate Inc., whose Syrian-Sheik General Manager Monte Bourjaily outbid King Features, Bell Syndicate, NANA, NEA. United Features promptly resold The Life of Our Lord to enough U. S. newspapers to avoid, giving first publication to a magazine. Book rights went to Simon & Schuster. The Life of Our Lord will start to appear in about 300 U. S. newspapers on March 5, continue in 13 installments of a little more than 1,000 words each. Had he published The Life of Our Lord in 1849, Charles Dickens would have received no such handsome price for it. For his first story, published in 1833, he got nothing. For Pickwick Papers, he got -L-15 an installment. His last book, Edwin Drood, brought the highest price Dickens ever received from a publisher: -L-7,500 for the copyright, -L-1,000 for the U. S. rights. A Christmas Carol was a financial disappointment. After two years, only two editions had been sold and the book had earned only -L-726, or 11-c- a word. At $210,000, the 14,000 words of The Life of Our Lord are worth $15 each, highest price ever paid for a newspaper syndicate feature. Highest price per word hitherto has been the $3,000 weekly that Will Rogers gets for his small daily column. The McClure Syndicate paid Calvin Coolidge $2 a word for 200 words a day. Arthur Brisbane gets $250,000 a year but not more than 25-c- a word. President Roosevelt has not written for newspapers since his election. If he did, he could probably ask and get $15 a word.

Wrote Westbrook Pegler who, at $35,000 a year, earns about 10-c- a word for his United Feature column: "The piece has been accumulating compound interest, so to speak, for more than 60 years.... I have heard of Mr. Tennyson that he made a contract to sell his entire output to one publisher at a flat rate of $5 a word, sight unseen, and that the publisher suspected him of bad faith when Mr. Tennyson wrote "Break, break, break On thy cold gray stones, Oh, Sea."

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