Page:The Story of the House of Cassell (book).djvu/265

 Barrie's. The first book of his to appear in the List was "Dead Man's Rock," which was in the "Treasure Island" succession, and bore one of the best titles which even "Q." has hit upon. "I began as pupil and imitator of Stevenson," he has himself admitted, "and was lucky in my choice of a master." But with the appearance of "Troy Town," in the following year, it became clear that as a story-writer he had found in the life of the delectable Duchy his true theme. A long succession of other stories from his pen followed. "Q." was on the staff of the Speaker from the beginning until 1899, but in 1891 he left London for Fowey, and thenceforward his work in journalism and literature was done there. "Adventures in Criticism" was the happy title of a collection of his critical contributions to the Speaker. In the years when he read MSS. for the House his bright and witty reports, written in his singularly neat characters, formed a delightful break in the business at the weekly meetings of managers. The reports were never lacking in sympathy, and the writer of these lines often wished that they could have come to the knowledge of young authors whose writings showed promise although they were not good enough to gain acceptance.

Max Pemberton published through Cassell's his first great success, "The Iron Pirate," and the List contains as many as twelve other books of his. The House published, in the last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of the twentieth century, some of the ingenious mystery stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and E. W. Hornung, the romances of Maurice Hewlett, Stanley Weyman, and Anthony Hope, and the novels of Mrs. Humphry Ward and Barry Pain. Novels, however, in spite of the presence in the List of the distinguished names that have been mentioned, were never one of the House's "leading lines," to use the trade slang, until Mr. Newman Flower became Chief Editor in 1913. Since then most of our foremost novelists have published through Cassell's. H. G. Wells came into the List in