Fault of our Authors

From The Arthur Conan Doyle Encyclopedia

Fault of our Authors is an article published in The New-York Times on 10 february 1895, including an Arthur Conan Doyle point of view entitled "Conan Doyle's Impressions".


Fault of our Authors

The New-York Times (10 february 1895)

The text below only shows the Conan Doyle part


Conan Doyle's Impressions.

"I really know nothing about this question. My impression in America was that things have not adjusted themselves yet, and that the books with which the stalls were crowded were mostly pirated copies of works brought out before the act. It will be ten years, I think, before the new system has a fair trial. No one can travel through the States and notice the great interest in literature, and also the gradual growth of a leisured class, without being sure that a great crop of native authors must spring up. At the same time, I suppose that the best English work will always be as welcome in America as the best American is in England.

"I think, by the way, that it would be a very excellent thing to have an international congress for the determination of the correct spelling of our common language. When an Englishman reads such a sentence as 'Taking an ax in one hand and a saber in the other, he left his plow, and dove from the center of the bridge,' he can hardly realize that 60,000,000 of people accept that as true spelling of the English tongue. If the tendency goes on increasing we shall only know each other's literature by the help of a translation."