wo or three formalists or two or three bigots among its thousands of
subscribers give it up for six weeks in a pet of ill-temper--and then
take it on again. Still, the effect remains: it is almost impossible
to get a novel printed in an English journal unless it is warranted to
contain nothing at all to which anybody, however narrow, could possibly
object, on any grounds whatever, religious, political, social, moral,
or aesthetic. The romance that appeals to the average editor must say or
hint at nothing at all that is not universally believed and received by
everybody everywhere in this realm of Britain. But literature, as Thomas
Hardy says with truth, is mainly the expression of souls in revolt.
Hence the antagonism between literature and journalism.

Why, then, publish one's novels serially at all? Why not appeal at once
to the outside public, which has few such prejudices? Why not deliver
one's message direct to those who are ready to consider it or at least
to hear it? Because, unfortunately, the serial rights of a novel at the
present day are three times as valuable, in money worth, as the final
book rights. A man who elects to publish direct, instead of running his
story through the columns of a newspaper, is forfeiting, in other words,
three-quarters of his income. This loss the prophet who cares for his
mission could cheerfully endure, of course, if only the diminished
income were enough for him to live upon. But in order to write, he
must first eat. In my own case, for example, up till the time when
I published The Woman who Did, I could never live on the proceeds
of direct publication; nor could I even secure a publisher who would
consent to aid me in introducing to the world what I thought most
important for it. Having now found such a publisher--having secured my
mountain--I am prepared to go on delivering my message from its top, as
long as the world will consent to hear it. I will willingly forgo the
serial value of my novels, and forfeit three-quarters of the amount I
might otherwise earn, for the sake of uttering the truth that is in me,
boldly and openly, to a perverse generation.

For this reason, and in order to mark the distinction between
these books which are really mine--my own in thought, in spirit, in
teaching--and those which I have produced, sorely against my will,
to satisfy editors, I propose in future to add the words, "A Hill-top
Novel," to every one of my stories which I write of my own