The Weekly Trade Circular.

JANUARY 18, 1871.

THE WEEKLY TRADE CIRCULAR.

IN presenting the first number of the WEEKLY TRADE CIRCULAR, the editor frankly admits that it is by no means a fair sample of what he has promised to make it. He offers no other excuse than that it is the first number. The various elements of the publication will not allow it to take the desired shape until after the appearance of two or three numbers. It is not lack of material, but an oversupply in some departments, which makes others deficient. In a few departments, however, such as Music, Works of Art, Stationery, and Fancy Goods, the new year has not yet produced enough to make them prominent features. It will, moreover, require some time before publishers of music and manufacturers of stationery and fancy goods, who heretofore have not been adequately represented by an organ of their own, can be induced to supply promptly the information needed.

The promised lists of foreign books could not be given, as no record of foreign books issued in 1872 had reached this country at the time of going to press. Several other features, such as "Lists of Books Received," Catalogues Wanted and Received," and Dealers' Business Cards were crowded out by other matter which would not admit of delay, and which already exceeded the allotted editorial space. All these deficiencies the editor hopes to supply in a few weeks.

A prompt and full business record will always form the main feature of the "Weekly;" but it is the aim of the editor at the same time to make the TRADE CIRCULAR a representative organ of the spirit of the trade, by admitting any exchange of views, or discussion on trade matters, that may lead to a reform of abuses, to a better understanding between publishers and dealers, and to a more congenial spirit among the trade in general.

ment among the Publishers' Board of Trade, to include miscellaneous as well as educational publishers, and thus to form a Union, which must finally become a general Booksellers' Union, the editor will begin the series with an article on the German " Börsenverein," the oldest and best organized Booksellers' Union of the world.

In conclusion, the editor offers his hearty thanks for the prompt and cordial response with which the announcement of the WEEKLY TRADE CIRCULAR has been met.

CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY.-At a meeting at Plymouth Church, Jan. 8, Mayor Medill was authorized to appoint a committee "to prepare, without delay, such legislation as may be needful for the purpose of establishing a free public library in Chicago, and report such a bill at the earliest moment to a public meeting, to be called by them for that purpose, and also to take charge of any books that may be contributed for the establishment of such a library." The committee was yesterday announced to consist of the following gentlemen: Thomas Hoyne, Chairman; Judge Henry Booth, W. E. Doggett, E. C. Larned, S. S. Hayes, James Warrack, D. L. Shorey, J. M. Walker, W. B. Ogden, Henry Greenebaum, Geo. S. Bowen, Levi Z. Leiter, Geo. Schneider, Edwin Lee Brown, Wm. Bross, John V. Farwell, C. H. McCormick, Julius Rosenthal, J. Y. Scammon, Carter H. Harrison.

A movement has been set on foot for this purpose, and an Honorary Committee formed, under the authority of Count Bismark Bohlen, the Germany Governor of Alsace, to collect such offerings as may he made in America towards the restoration of not only one of the oldest libraries in Europe, but also one of the most ancient cradles of literature. The committee include Prof. Noah Porter, President of Yale College; Prof. Joseph Henry, Smithsonian Institute; William Cullen Bryant, editor New York Evening Post; A. R. Spofford, Esq., Librarian of Congress; Edwin L. Godkin, Esq., editor of The Nation; Jno. A. Appleton, Esq. (Messrs. D. Appleton & Co., N. Y.); Andrew C. Armstrong, Esc., (Messrs. Chas. Scribner & Co., N. Y.); Melancthon M. Hurd, Esq., (Messrs. Hurd & Houghton, N. Y.); George W. Childs, Esq., proprietor of Public (Messrs. J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia); È. Ledger, Philadelphia; J. B. Lippincott, Esq., Steiger, Esq., New York; Michael J. Kelly, Esq., (Messrs. Kelly, Piet & Co., Baltimore); James R. Osgood, Esq., (Messrs. J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston); Augustus Flagg, Esq, (Messrs. Little, Brown & Co., Boston); S. C. Griggs, Esq., (Messrs. S. C. Griggs & Co., Chicago); Robert Clark, Esq, (Messrs. R. Clark & Co., Cincinnati); Col. M. Richards Mucklé, Ledger Building, 600 Chestnut St., Philadelphia, Pa.

RESTORATION OF THE STRASBOURG LIBRARY.—

Authors are invited to present copies of their works, and publishers selections from their lists. Reports of learned and reprints of publishing societies, and duplicates from libraries, will be wel

come.

LITERATURE IN AMERICA IN 1871. Introduction to the American Catalogue for 1871. 1.

THE year 1871 has been one prolific of English literature, on both sides of the ocean which at once divides and unites the two great English-speaking peoples. Perspective demands distance, nor is the pattern of events rightly discernible at close sight; and years must go by before the relative importance of books and writers of to-day can be thoroughly determined. But so far as can be judged at the end of a year, it is one whose works will be remembered. All the great poets and most of the other great thinkers of the passing generation still remain to us, and have been during the year representatively productive, and there have been further develop. ments of the "new school," if such it shall prove to be. Tennyson, Robert Browning, William Morris, Swinburne, Robert Buchanan, Marston, Bickersteth, and Dr. Hake; Bryant, Longfellow, Whittier, Ellery Channing, Bret Harte, Joaquin Miller, Walt Whitman, and John Hay have published, in one shape or another, and these names include nearly all those of repute or disrepute in poetry. Charles Reade, Wilkie Collins, Mrs. Muloch Craik, the Trollopes, Charles Lever, Miss Marryat, and Farjeon; Mrs. Stowe, Mrs. Whitney, Miss Phelps, and Miss Alcott cover the fictional ground; and the year has also seen the beginning of Hawthorne's great posthumous romance and of a new novel from George Eliot. Darwin, Tyndall, and Huxley; Ruskin, Lowell, Holmes, Herbert Spencer, Froude, Beecher and most of the great theclogians, with Jenkins, the great satirist of the century, complete a list such as it will be found difficult to rival from any year of the past. Carlyle also has been busy at an important revision of his works, and a new volume from Emerson 1871 has but just missed. Curtis, our most graceful essayist, has been writing continuously, but not in book form. In fact, the literary activity of the past year has been exceptional. It may be that some day posterity will pronounce ours also to have been a golden age-yet lacking the glory of an one greatest name-though we know it not. For it is yesterday or to-morrow, always, that is to us most splendid.

It will be noticed that the year is further remarkable for this, that America has given to the mother country, in several departments of literature, not so much less than she has received. Indeed, the veer-about of English sentiment and the copyright muddle have been combining to produce a curious result-that American books should be first published and new American writers first find favor and fame on English soil, the rule holding also vice versa to a degree. There are causes which make the immediate future of literature in this country seem very bright, to which also the literary results of the year past may be in great measure traced. A great war, especially a home war, which goes straight to the heartnature of a people, has commonly given birth

to a revival in literature, and ours has been doubly effective in this direction. It has permeated our whole people with that glow of patriotism, that enthusiasm for truth and right and all that is glorious and Godlike, which is the very mother-heat of great deeds in literature as in life, formative in writers, sympathetically receptive in the reading public; and it has also brought to the surface that scum of society, the shams and shoddyites, which today reawakens righteous indignation, and in both politics and literature leads to a second. great uprising against the wrong and the false. Activities are quicker than in the former days, and we already feel the moulding results of our war in the world of thought. Simultaneously, our far West has reached that stage of progress, when men have rest from their first life-struggles with rough Nature, without forgetting what they have learned from the friendly foe, which is the genesis of fresh, strong, untrammelled thought, such as first finds expression as a rule in poetry and storytelling-the literature of observation, as that of a further progress is the literature of reflection. In short, it seems the time when the triumphs of two great wars-the one with Nature, the other with man-unite in a strong formative influence upon the literary activity of this new country, while the present peaceand security of most of our land, with the very highly developed culture of a large part of our people-evidenced by the wide sales of such scholarly and costly works as Jowett's "Plato" and Taine's " English Literature," and the fact that the pianoforte trade is now the third manufacturing interest of the United States-receptive of the highest order of work, unite on their part to produce appreciation, encouragement, and reward for all meritorious literary work. It is seldom in the history of any literature that so many favoring conditions thus conjoin.

To attempt some brief and necessarily imperfect review of the chief accomplishments in each department, giving as nearly as may be the tenor of the general critical estimate thereupon: In poetry the event which is perhaps of first importance is the totally unexpected publication of Longfellow's "The Di-vine Tragedy," the first portion of a trilogy upon which he had been twenty years at work, of which "The Golden Legend" and "The New England Tragedies" are respectively second and third. It is a reverent and noble rendering into elevated verse, preserving almost the very gospel diction, of the life of the Saviour, with the addition of traditionally suggested minor characters who throw light upon the main figure. The careful repression of self in the first part, and the characteristic beauties of this poet given in the second, are equally admirable. Bryant has given us the first volume of his translation of the Odyssey, a work worthily and gloriously successful, both as an English poem and as a rendering of Homer-a new and more complete collection of his own poems has also been publishedand we have also Bayard Taylor's translation of the mystical and perplexing second part of