The Stock in Trade: Light Fiction

Abstract

Grant Allen, author of more than thirty novels and much short fiction, was notorious for his derogatory opinion of that important part of his trade. He wrote fiction for money, he said, and nothing more. “I suppose no man ever took by choice to the pursuit of fiction,” he wrote in the self-punishing tone, which, in one mood, was habitual with him:

Fellows drift into it under stress of circumstances, because that is the particular ware most specially required by the market at the moment …the literary aspirations of an educated man generally lead quite elsewhere. It is only the stern laws of supply and demand that compel him in the end to turn aside from the Lord’s work to serve tables for his daily sustenance.¹