1899. Arnold Bennett writes in his journal and, as was his habit at the end of every year, sums up his working life:
“This year I have written 335,340 words, grand total: 228 articles and stories (including four instalments of a serial called Gates of Wrath of 30,000 words—7,500 words each) have actually been published. Also my book of plays—Polite Farces. I have written six or eight short stories not yet published or sold. Also the greater part of a 55,000-word serial—Love and Life for Tillotson, which begins publication about April next year. Also the whole draft (80,000 words) of my Staffordshire novel Anna Tellwright. My total earnings were £592 3s. 1d [the equivalent of about £63,000 today], of which sum I have yet to receive £72 10s.”
1930. Virginia Woolf notes in her diary:
“When we make up our six months accounts, we found I had made about £3,020 [£180,000] last year—the salary of a civil servant; a surprise to me, who was content with £200 [£12,000] for so many years. But I shall drop very heavily I think. The Waves won’t sell more than 2,000 copies.”
1946. George Orwell tells the literary magazine, Horizon, how much money a writer needs to live on:
“At the present purchasing value of money, I think £10 [£400] a week after payment of income tax is a minimum for a married man, and perhaps £6 a week for an unmarried man. The best income for a writer, I should say is about £1,000 [£40,000] a year. With that he can live in reasonable comfort, free from duns and the necessity to do hack-work, without having the feeling that he has definitely moved into the privileged class.”
1949. Raymond Chandler in La Jolla, California, writes to a friend:
“I have no idea what income I can count on. I am cutting my own throat by using up my time and energies doing things that have nothing to do with writing. But I can’t make any stable arrangements until I know where and how I am going to live. I don’t see how any writer except a writer of best-sellers, which I am not likely to be, can exist other than in the most modest way without either Hollywood money or a steady stream of serials in the big magazines. If I write a book a year I can probably depend on an income of $25,000 [the equivalent of £210,000], but that wouldn’t pay my way here. Gosh, when I think what that income would have bought when I was a schoolboy in England. A mansion standing in large grounds, three or four servants, a full-time gardener and coachman, a couple of fine horses for the Victoria and the Brougham, and so on.”
“This year I have written 335,340 words, grand total: 228 articles and stories (including four instalments of a serial called Gates of Wrath of 30,000 words—7,500 words each) have actually been published. Also my book of plays—Polite Farces. I have written six or eight short stories not yet published or sold. Also the greater part of a 55,000-word serial—Love and Life for Tillotson, which begins publication about April next year. Also the whole draft (80,000 words) of my Staffordshire novel Anna Tellwright. My total earnings were £592 3s. 1d [the equivalent of about £63,000 today], of which sum I have yet to receive £72 10s.”
1930. Virginia Woolf notes in her diary:
“When we make up our six months accounts, we found I had made about £3,020 [£180,000] last year—the salary of a civil servant; a surprise to me, who was content with £200 [£12,000] for so many years. But I shall drop very heavily I think. The Waves won’t sell more than 2,000 copies.”
1946. George Orwell tells the literary magazine, Horizon, how much money a writer needs to live on:
“At the present purchasing value of money, I think £10 [£400] a week after payment of income tax is a minimum for a married man, and perhaps £6 a week for an unmarried man. The best income for a writer, I should say is about £1,000 [£40,000] a year. With that he can live in reasonable comfort, free from duns and the necessity to do hack-work, without having the feeling that he has definitely moved into the privileged class.”
1949. Raymond Chandler in La Jolla, California, writes to a friend:
“I have no idea what income I can count on. I am cutting my own throat by using up my time and energies doing things that have nothing to do with writing. But I can’t make any stable arrangements until I know where and how I am going to live. I don’t see how any writer except a writer of best-sellers, which I am not likely to be, can exist other than in the most modest way without either Hollywood money or a steady stream of serials in the big magazines. If I write a book a year I can probably depend on an income of $25,000 [the equivalent of £210,000], but that wouldn’t pay my way here. Gosh, when I think what that income would have bought when I was a schoolboy in England. A mansion standing in large grounds, three or four servants, a full-time gardener and coachman, a couple of fine horses for the Victoria and the Brougham, and so on.”
