Raymond Chandler Typed Letter Signed on The Simple Art of Murder

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RR Auction: Fine Autographs and Artifacts

By RR Auction

Feb 14, 2024

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• Lot Description
  TLS signed “Ray,” two pages, 8.5 x 11, personal letterhead, June 22, 1948. Letter to Edgar Carter of the H. N. Swanson Agency, in full: “David has given me your letter of June 16 and check for $45.00 representing payment by Rinehart & Co. for permission to use THE SIMPLE ART OF MURDER in their book ‘Toward Liberal Education,’ which it appears they have actually published. It seems to me there is no evidence of our having agreed to this payment. In a letter from you to me, dated December 11, 1947, you said that Miss Lonning of Rinehart suggested a fee of $40.00 for the article, saying: ‘This fee is in line with amounts requested for comparable material. Please let me know if you are willing to accept this figure.’ On December 12 I wrote to you that the price was perfectly ridiculous and entirely unacceptable, and that if they did not choose to deal on the basis of The Authors League terms for anthology rights, I was not interested. On December 18 you wrote to Miss Lonning, thanking her for her letter and saying: ‘Mr. Chandler is unwilling to accept the terms offered by you. He feels that if you do not choose to deal on the basis of The Authors League terms for anthology rights, he is not interested.’ So far as I know, this was the end of the correspondence until her letter to you enclosing the check.
  
  
  
  If the above is a complete record of the pertinent part of the correspondence, it seems to me that you should have returned the check to Miss Lonning, telling her there was no offer and acceptance and hence no agreement, and that she had no right to publish the material until there was such an offer and acceptance. The Authors League formula for the sale of anthology rights is, if I recall it correctly, that 50 per cent of all royalties, including advances, are to be allocated to the anthologized material and divided up among the various writers in proportion to the length of their contributions. This would require a statement from the publisher of how the figures were arrived at. This was the system followed by THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY in publishing THE POCKET ATLANTIC. I don't know just what to do about this. It may be that I am stuck, not for legal but for practical reasons, because of the smallness of the issue.
  
  
  
  I had a run-in with Doubleday not long ago over a comparable situation. They published a story of mine in an anthology, and about a year and a half ago offered Sanders $50.00 for the right to publish it in an English edition of the same anthology. I objected to the price and I don't know what Sanders told them. A year and a half passed and they then sent through their check, which Sanders accepted, deducted his commission and sent the balance on to me, and I refused to accept it on the ground that the lapse of time had destroyed any possibility of an offer and acceptance, and that the taking of the check by Sanders did not constitute an agreement binding on me. I finally forced them to take the story out of their English anthology. This probably cost me a couple of hundred dollars, if not more, in legal fees. But there was more at stake than in the present case, since the story had never been published in England, and there was a possibility that it might be published in England in a collection of my own stories. I'll hold the check until I hear from you. I certainly don't want to make myself unpleasant over this matter, but I feel that this is no way to do business.” In fine condition, with light corner creases.
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