Your anonymous correspondent who earned £1,500 for writing two books over a 10-year period (Letters, 16 January) deserves to join the elite of ill-used scribblers, alongside George Gissing and his fictional antihero Edwin Reardon (whose name was stolen for the radio sitcom I created with the late Andrew Nickolds). Gissing sold his novel New Grub Street to the publishers Smith Elder for £150 in 1891 while his alter ego, Reardon, received £75 for his.
Gissing is often characterised as the archetypal impoverished author, but £150 would have paid three years’ rent on his Marylebone flat. He could probably have built himself a house. Conditions for many freelance writers are worse now, and we are sometimes asked by salaried editors to work for nothing at all.
Christopher Douglas
London
