Free In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays (Original Harvest Book; Hb333) by Anaïs Nin Page A

hard work, patient work, to typeset prose, to lock the tray, to carry the heavy lead tray to the machine, to run the machine itself, which had to be inked by hand, to set the copper plates (for the illustrations) on inch-thick wood supports in order to print them. Printing copper plates meant inking each plate separately, cleaning it after one printing, and starting the process over again. It took me months to typeset
Under a Glass Bell
and
Winter of Artifice.
Then there were the printed pages to be placed between blotters and later cut, gathered into signatures, and put together for the binder. Then the type had to be redistributed in the boxes.
    We had problems finding a bookbinder willing to take on such small editions and to accept the unconventional shape of the books.
    Frances Steloff agreed to distribute them and gave me an autograph party at the Gotham Book Mart. The completed books were beautiful and have now become collector’s items.
    The first printing of
Winter of Artifice
was three hundred copies, and one publisher I met at a party exclaimed: “I don’t know how you managed to become so well known with only three hundred books.”
    Under a Glass Bell
was given to Edmund Wilson by Frances Steloff. He reviewed it favorably in the New
Yorker,
and immediately all the publishers were ready to reprint both books in commercial editions.
    We did not use the word “underground” then, but this tiny press and word of mouth enabled my writing to be discovered. The only handicap was that newspapers and magazines took no notice of books by small presses, and it was almost impossible to obtain a review. Edmund Wilson’s review was an exception. It launched me. I owe him that and am only sorry that his acceptance did not extend to the rest of my work.
    I had to reprint both books with a loan from Samuel Goldberg, the lawyer.
    Someone thought I should send the story of the press to the
Reader’s Digest.
The
Digest’s
response was that if I had to print the books myself, they must be bad. Many people still believe that, and for many years there was a suspicion that my difficulties with publishers indicated a doubtful quality in my work. A year before the publication of the diary, a Harvard student wrote in the
Harvard Advocate
that the silence of critics and the indifference of commercial publishers must necessarily mean the work was flawed.
    A three-hundred-copy edition of
Winter of Artifice,
press, type, and bookbinding cost four hundred dollars. The books sold for three dollars. I printed announcements and circularized friends and acquaintances. The entire edition of both books was sold out.
    But the physical work was so overwhelming that it interfered with my writing. This is the only reason I accepted the offer of a commercial publisher and surrendered the press. Otherwise I would have liked to continue with my own press, controlling both the content and design of the books.
    I regretted giving up the press, for with the commercial publishers my troubles began. Then, as today, they wanted quick and large returns. This gamble for quick returns has nothing whatever to do with the deeper needs of the public, nor can a publisher’s selection of a book be considered as representative of the people’s choice. The impetus starts with the belief of the publisher, who backs his choice with advertising disguised as literary judgment. Thus books are imposed on the public like any other commercial product. In my case the illogical attitude of publishers was clear. They took me on as a prestige writer, but a prestige writer does not rate publicity, and therefore sales were modest. Five thousand copies of commercially published
Ladders to Fire
was not enough.
    The universal quality in good writing, which publishers claim to recognize, is impossible to define. My books, which were not supposed to have this universal quality, were nevertheless bought and read by all kinds of people.
    Today, instead of feeling embittered by the