A year or two before I commenced writing for Chambers's Journal I began to contribute to two or three of the leading annuals, feeling gratified, as I am very sure many more experienced authors would have been, by being allowed to do so. I want to offer a defence of these publications, which it is now the fashion to sneer at and scorn. They fell out of favour, I am persuaded, not from deterioration of quality, but because the era of cheap literature was slowly advancing, and publishers could not pay distinguished authors liberally, and engravers such as the Findens and Heath, the high prices they demanded, and compete with five-shilling Christmas books, which were in a very few years to be superseded by shilling holiday numbers of magazines.

It was said that Sir Walter Scott received four hundred guineas for the short story he contributed to the first Keepsake; and, allowing for perhaps a little exaggeration, there is no doubt he obtained a large sum for the few pages from his pen which appeared. It is within my own knowledge that for many years authors were exceedingly well paid when writing for or editing the annuals. It is easy to talk of such and such an author giving but the “sweepings of his study” to these richly illustrated gift-books, but why should he have done so when the guerdon was so satisfactory? Brief the articles often were, but where goldsmiths work the dust is of value.