Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/460

420 420 SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND CO. limited the amount that was to be spent in advertis- ing to two or three pounds. As Simpkin, Marshall and Company were Mr. Brown's London agents, the metropolitan sale was entrusted to their care. With- out any further trouble or expenditure, the little venture was launched, and in something like a week had created such a furore that the printing had to be transferred to London, and Mr. Pullen is stated to have cleared a handsome sum from the extraordinary sale of his pamphlet, and the commissions gathered by the London and the country publishers were certainly unprecedented in connection with a little venture of this description. The London booksellers to whom it had been offered now began to bestir themselves, and in a few weeks there were no less than seven-and-thirty imitations of " Dame Europa's School " in the field, more than one of which are said to have been written by very high dignitaries of the Church. All of these have, however, already disappeared from circulation, though it seems probable that the marvellously clever illustrations to the original " Dame Europa's School," by Mr. Nast, one of the few really humorous artists that America has produced, will preserve it for a time from the usual fate of ephemeral literature.