In the last twenty years, many biographies and individual studies have discussed or even focused on the monetary and business aspects of authors’ lives and writing. As we shall repeatedly see in these pages, authors from Thomas Hardy to V. S. Pritchett and everyone in between paid careful attention to their financial affairs, for what is an author but a small businessman or woman? To be sure, the writer works with intangible materials –imagination, ideas, the possibilities of language. Beyond this, the needed materials are few – pen and paper, postage and access to a typewriter or typist are the minimum tools of the trade. From this combination of the tangible and intangible comes something that can only be called a product – a poem, story, article, review, novel, play, etc. Like any product, it must be sold, which means that it must find a manufacturer (publisher) and a market (readers). Writers are perhaps most like inventors, devising something new that requires the work of others to produce and market. In dealing with editors, authors may choose to be cavalier about prices, contracts or details of publication, in which case they are almost certain to be cheated. Or, if they do not want to attend to such matters, they may employ an agent – as most of them did – to oversee these matters. The 10 per cent agents charged was almost always offset by increased income and greater convenience. Even so, most authors did not trust solely to their agents but took an active interest in every phase of their business, from the prices paid for their works to the terms of their contracts and even the marketing and advertising strategies for their stories, articles and books.