Radio was a fairly new technology when the novel Magnificent Obsession was published in 1929, and it was another of the factors that helped the novel become a bestseller. In an earlier post, I mentioned that at least one of the women who reviewed the book did so on radio. That was Mrs. Edward E. Draper of Troy, New York, who broadcast a weekly program called “Current Bookshelf” over WOKO, Port of Albany. There may have been other radio reviews, but that was the only one noted in Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession scrapbook.
Because the medium was new, local stations experimented with many different kinds of programming. One type of program was the reading of books over the air. This was done, for example, by Eddie Albright at station KNX, “The Voice of Hollywood.” The clipping below, from Douglas’s scrapbook (without the name of the newspaper or the date), gives an unflattering description of his program:
By his own estimation, Allbright had been reading books on-air for “six or seven years” before he did Magnificent Obsession in the Fall of 1930. But Douglas’s book stood out for him. As he told Douglas (see letter below), “I have said over the air, and I say it to you now, that the book will change the lives of all who read it. It has something which I have never hoped to find in a novel. Something that HELPS.”
That kind of enthusiastic radio endorsement was better than a commercial. And even if it was, indeed, only heard by housewives going about their work, it surely must have helped boost sales, especially just before Christmas, the major book-buying time of the year.
Douglas himself also spoke on the radio occasionally, and he would do it more frequently in years to come. While still a pastor in Montreal, he gave a radio address on July 20, 1930, in which he spoke at great length about the thesis of Magnificent Obsession and encouraged his listeners to do what Jesus talks about in Matthew 6. I am reserving the details of that speech for a subsequent post, but for now I just want to point out that the radio played a significant role in spreading the word about Douglas’s novel.
There were other influences that helped the book along, and some of them came as a surprise to Douglas. I’ll give you an example in my next post.
I am retracing the steps by which the novel Magnificent Obsession became a bestseller. I’ve already mentioned the support the book received from local newspapers and from people within the medical profession. Today we’ll see how those two factors intersected: a development in medical technology mirrored an important series of events in the novel, and this fact was reported in at least one newspaper.
In the novel, Dr. Merrick is trying to decrease mortality during brain surgery by inventing a tool that simultaneously cuts brain tissue and cauterizes the area around it, preventing bleeding. He has the general idea, but he can’t quite figure out how to place the vacuum tubes. This is all crucial to the plot because, as he meets the requirements of Dr. Hudson’s “theory” (or in other words, does what Jesus teaches in the opening verses of Matthew 6), he has a moment of clarity in which he sees the details that have been eluding him. Not only does he build the device and revolutionize brain surgery, but he also experiences the reality of God in the process.
Douglas didn’t make this up off the top of his head. In an interview with the Montreal Gazette (reported 11/25/1932), he said, “I started Magnificent Obsession while I was in California, before I came to Montreal. There I knew Dr. Carl Wheeler Rand, who is considered the most eminent brain surgeon on the west coast. I went to him and told him I had a strong desire to have a character in my book invent some surgical device and asked him if any work was being done along that line. He said that tentative experiments had been made with an electric cautery, but they had never been successful. He added that if I used the idea, it was possible there would be a few surgeons who would be interested in the fact.” Then he added, “Dr. Rand gave me nothing by way of detail, and when young Dr. Merrick thought in his dream of rearranging his vacuum tubes, it was my own idea.”
The Gazette interviewed Douglas because of a news item that had come to them over the wire from Des Moines, Iowa, where a man named Paul C. Rawls had demonstrated for local surgeons a device just like the one Merrick invents in Magnificent Obsession. The Gazette quoted the dispatch from Des Moines as saying, “Paul C. Rawls, the inventor who was granted a patent yesterday, explained how the use of vacuum tubes enabled him to obtain higher frequency electric current, thereby making possible the new knife.”
In their headline, the Gazette claimed that Douglas had “the Jules Verne touch.” They were referring to the science fiction writer whose novels anticipated many technological breakthroughs.
Below is a copy of the first page of Mr. Rawls’s patent. Click here for the link to Patent Number 1,945,867 on Google Patents. Below is an image of the diagram included with that patent.
What mystifies me about all this is that, in 1926, three years before the publication of Magnificent Obsession, Dr. Harvey Cushing invented a device which (if I am not mistaken) fits the same general description. As Elizabeth H. Thomson notes in her biography, Harvey Cushing: Surgeon, Author, Artist (New York: Henry Schuman, 1950), Cushing realized as a medical student at Harvard in 1894 that bleeding would have to be controlled before brain surgery could be done successfully (p. 62). By 1910 he had begun using silver clips (p. 171), which helped somewhat; but he kept working on the problem.
Thomson writes: “In the autumn of 1926, Cushing used for the first time an electric cautery apparatus in a brain operation. In general surgery and in genito-urinary surgery, high-frequency currents had been used for some time in dealing with both benign and malignant growths, but it was Cushing who established their value in neurological surgery. With the cooperation of Dr. W. T. Bovie, a physicist with the Harvard Cancer Commission who had previously developed apparatus for dealing with cancerous growths, he experimented with currents and equipment until they had one current that would cut tissue without attendant bleeding and another that would coagulate a vessel which might have to be cut during the course of an operative procedure” (pp. 247-248).
There is no mention of vacuum tubes, but the device itself sounds very much like the one Merrick invents in Douglas’s novel. This in no way diminishes Douglas’s reputation as a novelist, but if we’re going to talk about the real-world invention of this device, it seems to me that Dr. Cushing beat P. C. Rawls. However, based on Douglas’s conversation with Dr. Carl Wheeler Rand, which I presume took place in 1928 when Douglas was writing the novel, Dr. Rand and his West Coast associates had so far been unable to reproduce Dr. Cushing’s work with complete success.
What this means for Douglas is that he was aware of the problem that brain surgeons were trying to solve in the last years of the 1920s, and he built that problem and its likely solution into his novel. This made his novel current and fresh and based on facts – something you don’t normally get from a novel.
Below, also from Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession scrapbook, is a clipping about a doctor in Boston demonstrating a similar device. This clipping doesn’t say whether it’s the one invented by Harvey Cushing (in Boston) or the one invented by P. C. Rawls, or maybe a third invention. At any rate, it’s another instance that shows how current Douglas’s novel was, and why so many health professionals were interested in his book.
I’ve been talking about the reasons the novel Magnificent Obsession became a bestseller after its release in the fall of 1929. One very important reason was the fact that it was a medical drama. We’re used to that sort of thing now; it seems like there’s always, at any time, at least one current TV series set in a hospital. But in 1929, it was rare for novelists to be able to write authoritatively about the lives of doctors and nurses.
As Reader’s Digest editor Charles Ferguson would later write in Cosmopolitan Magazine, “So authentic and convincing are the medical passages in the novels of Doctor Lloyd Cassel Douglas that not a few of the thousands of letters he receives each year are addressed to him as a medico. These letters detail the clinical histories of people who have suffered many things and now come to him as a last resort. Nor is this surprising. Every reference he makes to a disease or its treatment is invariably checked by the best authorities. Moreover, while Lloyd Douglas never studied medicine, he has read avidly on medical topics since early college days when the hankering to be a doctor first laid hold on him” (Charles W. Ferguson, “Lloyd C. Douglas, Cosmopolite,” Cosmopolitan, November 1938, p. 8).
And doctors noticed.
The magazine, American Medicine, printed a review of Magnificent Obsession. “This is one of the most unusual novels we have read in a long time,” the reviewer said – and it must have been unusual, indeed, for a novel of any kind to be reviewed in a medical journal. The reviewer explains why it seemed appropriate: “The setting for the story is medical throughout, and remarkably true to life, even to the accurate description of the latest technique in blood transfusion…. Whether one regards this book as a theme story or as a human-interest novel, it is well worth reading, especially for those in the medical profession or associated with it. The present reviewer, in fact, picked up the volume one night after dinner, and could not bring himself to put it down until he had reached the last page many hours later.”
Another medical journal, The Canadian Lancet and Practitioner, also gave the book a positive review.
And doctors wrote to Douglas. On one occasion Douglas compiled some blurbs from his fan mail and gave them to his publisher for possible use in advertising. (This can be found in the Jewell Stevens File, Moore Library, Special Collections, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.) Here is one of those comments:
“From a prominent physician in Oklahoma City: ‘I have read this book through twice; parts of it several times more. The medical references are correct; excellent! What percent of this book is fiction?'” (That question at the end must have made Douglas smile.)
As I mentioned in earlier posts, Douglas was well-connected with the faculty at the University of Michigan Medical School during his days in Ann Arbor, from 1915 to 1921, and he stayed in touch with some of them. One was Dr. G. Carl Huber, who was Dean of the University of Michigan’s graduate school when Magnificent Obsession came out, but for many years before that was a respected faculty member at the medical school, well known for his work in neurosurgery. Carl Huber makes an appearance in Chapter 8 of Magnificent Obsession. Bobby Merrick, who is going through medical training, gushes about his Anatomy professor, whom he calls “old Huber.” He tells Nancy Ashford:
“And old Huber’s a prince! He handles those poor cadavers as if they were our relatives. I’ll bet if some of them had been given as much tender consideration while alive as Huber gives them in the lab, they might have lived longer… Buries their ashes, Huber does, at the end of the semester… conventional interment – bell, book and clergy… Contends that these paupers and idiots and criminals, however much they may have burdened their communities while they lived, have so completely discharged their obligation to society by their service in the lab, that they deserve honorable burial… A fine old boy is Huber, believe me!”
Douglas sent a copy of the novel to Huber and received the following letter back, dated November 11, 1929:
“My dear Dr. Douglas:
“Thank you very sincerely for the copy of your novel, Magnificent Obsession. The book came to the laboratory and was taken to the house and read by Mrs. Huber before I had a chance to really see it. She, and other members of the family, pointed with real pride to a certain page on which you referred to me. It is nice of you to think of me in this way, and although I have a recollection that I once stated that you might refer to the incident if you did not use my name, that was long ago, and I will pretend that I have forgotten, as I see you did forget. I am taking the spirit of it as sincere.
“I enjoyed the book as a whole very much. I found it quite worthwhile reading. Your characters are not all creatures of the imagination – I have met them, and all have interest. The entire novel is worked out very nicely, and I enjoyed it more knowing its author and having recognition of his worth.”
That last paragraph is especially interesting, since it tells us that other characters besides Dr. Huber were based on real people at the University of Michigan Medical School.
Incidentally, Douglas mentioned Dr. Huber in an article in the Akron Times-Press. After briefly describing the passage in the book about him, Douglas said, “I had a letter from him the other day. He said he was surprised to find himself in a novel he was reading without a thought that the story had any relation to him. That would be a funny sensation, wouldn’t it?” I gather, instead, that Dr. Huber was a bit chagrined at seeing his name in a novel when he had probably just expected Douglas to use the incident in a sermon sometime.
At any rate, the medical connection helped boost sales of the book, not only because doctors and other health professionals became interested in it, but also because the general public liked such stories. As a reviewer in the Chicago Herald Examiner wrote, “Its story has many reasons for general appeal.” The first reason he gives is this: “It concerns the always fascinating atmosphere of medicine and surgery.”
But there is a more specific way in which the medical aspect helped generate interest in the book: in the novel, Merrick achieves a technological breakthrough in brain surgery that was actually occurring in real life at that time. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.
I’ve been explaining how the novel Magnificent Obsession became so successful after its publication in 1929. One factor that was especially serendipitous was the support Douglas received from Canadians.
As I noted in earlier posts, in the spring of 1929 Douglas and his wife Besse moved to Montreal, where he served as pastor of the St. James Church. This congregation was part of the United Church of Canada, a denomination that had been formed four years earlier from a merger of Methodist, Congregational, Presbyterian, and other churches in the Canadian provinces. As in earlier seasons of his life, Douglas’s influence spread well beyond the city in which he served. He was often invited to speak in Toronto and other cities in Ontario. He was well-received and was already well-known throughout that region of Canada by the time his novel was published in the fall of 1929.
Within the publishing realm, Canada was a separate entity from the United States. US publishers didn’t just distribute their books throughout the provinces as though they were extensions of the fifty states. Publishers had to form relationships with Canadian publishers and sign agreements with them to distribute their books within Canada.
As a small publishing house, Willett, Clark & Colby, the company that published Magnificent Obsession, had a very informal agreement with Douglas. There was no contract, per se. And they lacked any official relationship with Canadian publishers. So Douglas made his own agreement with the Thomas Allen Company in Toronto. Instead of just distributing the American version of the book, the Thomas Allen Company actually printed their own Canadian version. Although the text wasn’t different from the American version, the fact that the Canadian books contained the Thomas Allen imprint and said they were printed in Canada gave them the appearance of having originated within Canada rather than being an American import. And the misimpression this created turned out to be helpful to Douglas, for Canadians took special pride in what they perceived as Canadian books.
For example, in her column in The Sherbrooke Telegram, Anne Merrill was surprised that a local YWCA library in Sherbrooke, Quebec, didn’t have a copy of Magnificent Obsession on its shelves. She said, “Had this really great book been written by a man in the USA, high-powered salesmen would have been set to work on it, till it was pushed into the million class!” In other words, she thought it was a Canadian book written by a Canadian author, and she lamented that it wasn’t being hyped to the extent that it would have been if it had been published in America. In his scrapbook, Douglas drew a smiley face beside her comment.
A similar remark was made in the Calgary Daily Herald: “Seldom, if ever, has the fiction product of a Canadian author met with such sales success in the Canadian field in so short a time.”
As I said, this was a misimpression. Douglas was not a Canadian author. (Anyone who heard him speak would know instantly that he was an American. Having grown up in Indiana and northern Kentucky, he had that uniquely nasal Indiana twang.) But some Canadians thought he was one of them, and even those who knew better took pride in his connection with them as pastor of the church in Montreal. This boosted sales throughout the Canadian provinces in a way that did not ordinarily happen with American books.
In appreciation of this fact, Douglas would remain loyal to the Thomas Allen Company for the rest of his life, insisting on signing separate Canadian contracts with that publisher for all of his novels, instead of letting his American publisher work out arrangements in Canada.
Sales of Magnificent Obsession also benefitted from Douglas’s special connection to another influential interest group: the medical profession. I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.
We’re still talking about the factors that made Magnificent Obsession a bestseller. Perhaps you’ve noticed that some of the factors mentioned in previous posts were picked up by the newspapers. The clergy preached about Lloyd Douglas’s book to their own flocks, but then their message was amplified by being repeated in the papers. Reading groups and women’s circles reviewed the book amongst themselves and enjoyed refreshments afterwards (one of them had hot cocoa and cake), but their influence was broadened as summaries of their meetings were printed in the local papers.
The press was an important factor in Douglas’s success all along, even in his earliest days as a pastor. I’ve mentioned again and again how he was the darling of the local journalists, mostly because he knew how to supply them with usable information about his sermons and speeches, complete with soundbites. He gave them “copy” they could easily print without much editing, but he also thought like they did and presented his ideas in a way that would be considered “newsworthy.”
In the course of my Lloyd Douglas research, I’ve read a lot of smalltown newspapers from those years (1903 to his death in 1951), and one thing that stands out is a shift in what was considered “news.” One hundred years ago, local newspapers chronicled the daily lives of the people in their towns or cities. The focus wasn’t on shocking the reader; it was on keeping townspeople informed on who was doing what. While Douglas resided in Washington, DC, for instance (from 1909 to 1911), the newspapers printed the names of women who were accepting “calls” that day – in other words, women who were available to receive visitors from others in their social class. It was useful information that also tells us a lot about who these people were and how they lived.
This feature of local newspapers (their ability to reflect their readers’ daily lives) was especially helpful in spreading the word about Douglas’s novel. As each city’s influencers reviewed the book, the newspapers recorded that fact and increased awareness to people who were not present at those events.
Many newspapers also had a Book Review section. Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession scrapbook contains a number of reviews of his book from newspapers in small towns and big cities throughout North America. And because he had made an impression on the journalists in each of the cities where he had served as pastor, the papers in those places treated the book’s publication as a newsworthy event in its own right.
Chief among these was the Times-Press of Akron, Ohio. Douglas was treated as a local celebrity during the years he served as pastor in Akron (1921-1926), and they still revered him and printed news about him for some years afterwards. When Magnificent Obsession was published in the fall of 1929, that newspaper purchased the rights to serialize the novel, beginning in December of that year. Here’s the announcement:
And, when they printed the book in serial form, they did it in style. They gave each episode a nice banner…
…and had a local artist draw illustrations: of Perry Ruggles trying to rescue Dr. Hudson from drowning…
…and of Nurse Nancy Ashford talking with Bobby Merrick in the hospital after his accident:
I’m not going to claim that the artwork was exemplary (the images of Nancy and Bobby are not quite how I would envision them), but I do think that the newspaper did its very best to present Douglas’s book to the Akron reading public in a positive light. And that was something Douglas greatly appreciated.
We’re retracing the steps that led to the success of Magnificent Obsession, and the attention of newspapers was certainly one of those steps. Another contributing factor was Douglas’s move to Montreal. I mentioned in an earlier post that he left Los Angeles at the beginning of 1929 to serve as pastor of St. James United Church of Montreal. As it turned out, that one little detail benefitted the book’s sales in a way that Douglas could not have predicted. I’ll tell you about that in my next post.
In my last post, I told you how members of the clergy in North America helped boost sales of the novel Magnificent Obsession after its publication in 1929; but they weren’t the only ones spreading the word. Women’s groups were also helpful. In Douglas’s list of important influencers, he names twice as many women reviewers as he does ministers:
*Mrs. Ada Turnbull, Monmouth, IL *Mrs. Buena Mimms, Ocala, FL *Mrs. R. C. Richey, Memphis, TN (at home of Mrs. W. L. Meux at Whitehaven) *Mrs. M. R. Elikan, Bellaire, OH *Mrs. Abe Levin, Youngstown, OH *Mrs. J. H. Davis, Birmingham, AL *Miss Sue Reese, Salisbury, NC *Mrs. Charles Gilliam, Warsaw, IN *Mrs. Theodore A. Switz, East Orange, NJ *Mrs. Cox, Marion, IL *Mrs. Danna Sellenberger, Kokomo, IN *Mrs. Alex Woldert, Tyler, TX *Mrs. Judson Geppinger, Hamilton, OH *Mrs. Jerome Lewis, East St. Louis, IL *Mrs. John Whiteman, Ardmore, OK *Mrs. Harry W. McGhee, Brownwood, TX *Mrs. W. E. Smith, Elkhart, IN *Miss Althea Montgomery, Dean of Women of the Junior College, Washington, IA *Mrs. Leroy Flanegin, Peoria, IL *Mrs. E. N. Stone, Chickasha, OK *Mrs. Wm. B. Mathews, Newport News, VA *Mrs. Myrna Moore, Oklahoma City, OK *Mrs. John Garvin, Toronto, ON (Canada) *Mrs. T. G. Landers, East St. Louis, IL *Mrs. Lawrence Ely, member of the Westmoorland College Faculty, San Antonio, TX *Mrs. L. J. Wathen, Dallas, TX *Mrs. Telis Miller, Hickory, NC *Mrs. F. E. Ornsby, Cedar Rapids, IA *Mrs. W. P. Johnson (at Mrs. Frank R. Mayers), Lake Worth, FL *Mrs. Bessie Kagay, Effingham, IL *Mrs. Clyde Young, Fort Collins, CO *Mrs. Harvey Tuel, Rogers, AR *Mrs. Gable, Richmond, IN *Mrs. Sophyl Ozersky Levin, Youngstown, OH *Mrs. James S. King, St. Paul, MN *Mrs. Clyde Hickerson, Russellville, AR *Fannie Lou Morgan, Oklahoma City, OK *Mrs. Odell R. Blair, Buffalo, NY *Mrs. R. T. Fiske, Buffalo, NY *Mrs. Wm. B. Gramlich, Kenton, OH *Mrs. W. K. Royal, Portland, OR *Mrs. Edward E. Draper, Troy, NY (broadcast over WOKO, Port of Albany, weekly program called “Current Bookshelf”)
Some of the reviews were given at churches, others at libraries, still others at community groups. One was called “The Housekeepers’ Book Club.” Here are a few clippings about them from Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession scrapbook. Note that this first one makes a mistake on the name of his book:
Some of these groups were very much into culture, reviewing Douglas’s book in the same afternoon as a study of Shakespeare…
And not all of these reviews were positive. One said that, from an artistic standpoint, the book was “negligible,” but the subject matter was important. Another said that the novel was more “rational” than “Christian.”
Women also wrote reviews in local newspapers. Some of these were the paper’s usual book reviewers, while others were columnists who took time out to write about Douglas’s book. As you may have noticed in the list of names above, one woman in New York had a local radio program for book reviews, and she did a segment on Douglas’s novel.
I am especially impressed, however, with a review written by a woman for a denominational paper, The Western Baptist. Her name was Jennie S. Hill, and I’m impressed because she picked up on things that few others – even among male reviewers – noticed.
“There is no padding,” she says, “no unnecessary description, while every trifling incident is vital to the story.” (Some might disagree with her, but Douglas wouldn’t have. He tried very hard to write his stories in a way that condensation of any kind would damage its integrity. I credit Miss Hill with recognizing how important this was to Douglas, even if I can’t defend every little detail of the book.)
“Then there is no ‘villain’ in the plot,” she continues. “One feels that the people are just ordinary people, some with more strength of mind than usual, but no single character so unusual as to be called impossible.” (Jennie Hill was the first person to acknowledge this fact in print: that Douglas found a way to make his stories suspenseful without demonizing any of his characters or turning them into villains. That is, in my mind, one of his great accomplishments, and very few reviewers seem to have noticed, even after he had written a number of novels that way. Many years later, a literature professor named Carl Bode would call it one of Douglas’s weaknesses, saying that his characters were too good. But Jennie Hill understood what Douglas was trying to do: portray humans as they appear to us in our own daily lives, not as “good guys” or “bad guys,” but as ordinary people trying to make their way in the world.)
Miss Hill also deserves credit for pinpointing one of the main weaknesses of Magnificent Obsession from the standpoint of communicating Douglas’s message: “The only criticism that could truthfully be made is that difficulties [within the story] are too often solved by the use of money. It is very human to conclude that money can do everything, and though that is decidedly untrue, the lessons that the author would teach would have been made more clear had not the possession of so much money really dimmed the motives of his chief character.” As she said a little earlier in her essay, the real point of the book is “the subduing of one’s own life in order to help someone else to raise his own standing. But to understand it, one must read the book.”
I’ve been analyzing what Noel Busch called “a publishing miracle,” telling you step-by-step how Magnificent Obsession became so well-known. This is one of the steps: women talked about it within their social circles and helped create “buzz.”
But their efforts were amplified by the local newspapers. In the early twentieth century, the life of the community was considered newsworthy in a way that is no longer true in the twenty-first century. I’ll discuss that in my next post.
In my last post, I talked about how The Christian Century advertised the novel Magnificent Obsession heavily and consistently from October 1929 (just before its release) onward. Because The Christian Century was read primarily by mainstream ministers and lay leaders, this was a good strategy. The Century’s readership was an audience of influencers – people who would not only read the book but also, if properly motivated, share their opinion of it with their own audiences. And in this case, many of them were motivated, not only by the fact that they were already Lloyd Douglas fans (due to his frequent articles in the Century) but also by the provocative way he wrote this book. As one prominent minister said, Douglas presented his material “in such a fascinating way, we do not know that he is talking about religion” (quotation from Rev. John Warren Day in article, “DAY REVIEWS BOOK,” name of newspaper not given, n.d. In Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession Scrapbook, Box 6, Lloyd C. Douglas Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan).
In that era, it was common for mainstream ministers to review noteworthy books in their sermons. Douglas himself did it quite often. In the case of Magnificent Obsession, however, ministers not only reviewed it from their own pulpits but also published articles in denominational magazines and gave presentations about it at diocesan conferences.
In Douglas’s private papers, I found a typewritten list of influencers who were especially helpful in spreading the word about Magnificent Obsession. (The list is in “Miscellanea [3],” Box 4.) Out of those several pages of names, I found 21 ministers:
*Rev. Preston Bradley, The Peoples Church, Chicago, IL *Rev. W. H. Upton, Davenport, IA *Rev. Dr. Ralph Welles Keeler, Goodsell Memorial Methodist Episcopal, Brooklyn, NY *Dr. Frank G. Smith, First Central Congregational Church, Omaha, NE *Rev. E. D. Hood, Terre Haute, IN *Rev. John Warren Day, Dean of Grace Cathedral, Topeka, KS *Dr. H. P. Dewey, Plymouth Congregational Church, Minneapolis, WI *Rev. F. G. Forrester, Nome Federated Church, Nome, AK *Rev. F. W. Kerr, St. Andrews Church, Westmount, Quebec, Canada *Rev. Rolla S. Kenaston, Fourth Street Methodist Church, Moberly, MO *Dr. Victor W. Thrall, First Methodist Church, Battle Creek, MI *Rev. Elbert Paul, First Baptist Church, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada *Rev. J. Whitcomb Brougher, Jr., Tremont Temple Baptist Church, Glendale, CA *Rev. Arthur E. Fish, Congregational Church, Keokuk, IA *Rev. Dr. A. P. Record, First Unitarian Church, Detroit, MI *Dr. Torrance Phelps, First Congregational Church, Kalamazoo, MI *Dr. L. Wendell Fifield, Plymouth Church, Seattle, WA *Rev. George O. Fallis, Canadian Memorial Church, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada *Rev. L. M. Rymph, Fairmount Community Church, Wichita, KS *Rev. Paul H. Krauss, D.D., Trinity English Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, IN *Dr. Newton Powell, United Church of Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
And there were others about whom Douglas didn’t learn until later. A friend told him that Dr. James Wise, Bishop of the Diocese of Kansas in the Episcopal Church, was preaching a series of Lenten Noonday Meetings in Chicago that spring (1931), and that he devoted one entire meeting to an enthusiastic review of Magnificent Obsession. The friend added that Bishop Wise told him after the talk “that he kept four or five copies [of Magnificent Obsession] in circulation through his Diocese in Kansas” (Jewell Stevens to LCD, 4/30/1931. In Jewell Stevens File, Morris Library Special Collections, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale).
Douglas would also later give credit to Bishop Robert Nelson Spencer of the West Missouri Diocese of the Episcopal Church and Dr. William Stidger of the Boston University School of Theology, both of whom remained enthusiastic supporters of his novels all through subsequent years.
As I’ve explained in previous posts, local newspapers gave much more coverage to churchmen in the early twentieth century than they do now. What a minister said in the pulpit made headlines, provided he was skilled at presenting the editor with usable soundbites. Because of that, when these pastors preached about Magnificent Obsession, they were influencing not only their own congregations but also the larger community. Here are just a couple of examples of newspaper clippings in Douglas’s Magnificent Obsession Scrapbook:
We can easily see how word spread about Douglas’s book. Many of the parishioners of these churches bought it and read it… and told others. And that leads me to another group of influencers that was, arguably, even more important than the clergy. On Douglas’s list of important influencers that I mentioned earlier, there are many more of these names than there are of ministers. I’m referring to women’s book groups, and I’ll tell you about them in my next post.
In a previous post I said that Lloyd Douglas must have felt he was going back to square one when he submitted his manuscript of Magnificent Obsession to Willett, Clark & Colby, a two-year-old company that was run by the same people who published The Christian Century. But it is safe to say that Douglas’s novel wouldn’t have been nearly as successful if it had been brought out by a name-brand publisher.
The Christian Century, having a vested interest in the success of Magnificent Obsession, advertised the book prominently and kept doing so – relentlessly – for the next few years. And since, as Douglas later said, they were taking the funds from one pocket of their trousers and putting it into the other, they could afford to do this. Douglas would later complain that Willett did very little publishing outside The Christian Century, but (as I’ll show in the next post) it was immensely beneficial to the book to receive such lavish attention from the Century.
Here is a full-page ad from the October 23, 1929, issue:
They didn’t include ads in every issue after that, but when they did, there were usually two of them: one from the publisher and another from “The Christian Century Book Service” (a book club tailored to the needs of clergy and lay leaders). Here’s the Book Service ad from November 13, 1929:
Ministers and laypeople who subscribed to The Christian Century were reminded again and again about Douglas’s novel over the many months that followed. And they kept it current, creating new ads whenever a prominent minister wrote something favorable about the book.
In the June 11, 1930, issue, under the headline, “LIFTED UP THEIR HEADS,” the publisher wrote, “In the rapid coming and going of many books, these books have lifted up their heads and will not be put down. The reading public discerns their value – and buys them.” Five books are listed, including Magnificent Obsession.
At this point, they were exaggerating. Willett, Clark & Colby was a very small fish in a big pond, and they had only been in business for a few years. Their claim to have published five books of importance was just hype. Even Magnificent Obsession wasn’t selling that well yet. Its first printing, in November 1929, was of 3,000 copies. Those sold quickly, so Willett ran a second printing of 3,000 that same month. But despite their claim in June 1930 that the book had “lifted up its head,” there were, at that point, only 6,000 copies in existence. It wasn’t until August that they ran a third printing of 3,000. After that, however, things took off. Their ads became increasingly newsy, announcing each new printing with mounting excitement:
Testimonials by respected ministers were printed. Reviews from increasingly important newspapers were excerpted. And now it was no longer just hype. In the April 29, 1931, issue of the Century, the publisher ran a full-page ad with the headline, “SUCCESSFUL!” Immediately under this, they printed the following quotation.
“A book which was published in November, 1929, has for some time been appearing on the best seller lists of mid-western stores, and this month its percentage brought it up among the leading twenty-five books of fiction. This is MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION, by Lloyd C. Douglas….”
from Publishers’ Weekly, April 18, 1931
“Publishers’ Weekly,” the ad explained, “is the recognized book trade journal. Its ‘best seller’ records are compiled from reports issued by bookstores all over the country.”
The ad continues:
“Hundreds of subscribers to THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY have already read this amazing story by the pastor of St. James United Church, Montreal, Canada. Ministers in all parts of this country have taken MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION into the pulpit and have broadcast its message to their congregations. It has become a best seller in many cities, and the demand for copies, after eighteen months, is increasing! (The average life of most books of fiction is but a few weeks.)”
This was all true. In terms of sales, most books do what they’re going to do within weeks of publication; or at any rate, publishers expect immediate results and do not give long-term support to most books. Magnificent Obsession surprised people in the industry by climbing up to the bestseller lists slowly, over the course of a year and a half. That was due, in large part, to the fact that the publisher kept hammering away at subscribers of TheChristian Century, reminding them about the book. The ad concludes:
“The publishers believe that every subscriber to The Christian Century, layman as well as minister, would profit by the reading of MAGNIFICENT OBSESSION. Order a copy from your bookstore today…”
And, of course, as the novel climbed farther and farther up the NY bestseller lists, the ads in the Century kept announcing that fact, along with news of subsequent printings:
“Seventh printing, May, 1931 Eighth printing, July, 1931, …and the current demand for copies is greater than ever before!” says one ad.
What’s ironic is that those “hundreds of subscribers” mentioned in the April 29, 1931, ad were the key to the book’s success. It all started with the advertising, but the “publishing miracle” was largely due to the response of Christian Century readers.
In November 1929, just after the crash of the New York Stock Exchange, a gaudy-colored book with an enigmatic title was released to the world by a little-known publishing company in Chicago, far from all the action. It would take a year and a half for the industry to notice its appearance, but another year later they’d treat the book as a phenomenon. Noel Busch, in an article for Life Magazine, called Magnificent Obsession “a publishing miracle.”
There was little about the book that would attract readers. The publisher’s description on the cover was completely unhelpful. “A novel of strong color and varied interests,” they said, “dealing with strange, transforming life forces.” If books are truly judged by their covers, this one might have turned off a lot of people. What was the book about? And why should we care?
The inside flyleaf was more effective. It elaborated on the theme of mystery…
“Within the first third of the book,” it said, “you come to this…”
‘I wonder what was on that page.’
He laughed. ‘That was what Hudson wanted to know. Now it’s your question – and mine.’ He gripped her arm in strong fingers. ‘And – no matter how stiffly we revolt against this thing, we’re sure to be sneaking back to it.’
She nodded without looking up. ‘It’s likely to make us as nutty as he was!’
Bobby strolled to the window… ‘I can’t afford to dabble in such stuff! You can go into it if you want to. I’m out!’
Nancy’s voice was husky.
‘You’ll not be able to get away from it! You’re too far in! It’s got you! … A form of insanity, maybe; but you may as well come along – first as last!’
It reads like a detective novel. What have they gotten into? Sounds dangerous. And sexy. A man, a woman. He grips her arm. She has a husky voice. The whole thing has a seductive quality, drawing us in. What the woman says to the man is really meant for us: “It’s got you! You may as well come along…”
But first we have to become interested enough to pick up the ugly orange book and read the flyleaf. (Sorry. Maybe you like orange. Maybe it made people want to pick it up and read it. It certainly was “a book of strong color.” My own opinion, however, is that it would have appeared gaudy, especially since bookstores at first displayed it in their Religion section, where only ministers and very religious people tended to browse.)
The fact that the book became both a bestseller and a classic (and is still in print a century later) is indeed a “publishing miracle.” But thanks to Douglas’s scrapbooks and correspondence, we can analyze how it all unfolded. Over the next dozen posts, I’ll give a detailed explanation: the anatomy of a publishing miracle.
As I mentioned in earlier posts, in November 1928 (to be effective January 1929) Lloyd Douglas resigned as Senior Minister of the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles because there was a small but determined group of members who were opposed to him, and he refused to let the congregation fight over him. Unfortunately, that meant that he was out of work at a time when he badly needed funds. His daughters were studying in France, and he had to get money to them, either to stay there or to come home.
It took a few months, but in March 1929 he was invited to preach at St. James United Church of Montreal, and they ended up extending a call to him. It was a big change from sunny California to what his daughter Virginia later called “the Land of the Frozen North” (Dawson and Wilson, The Shape of Sunday, 220). But it was also a godsend. Despite the few members of his Los Angeles congregation who didn’t like his message, Douglas was at the height of his powers as a preacher, and the sermons he delivered in Montreal are some of his best. At any rate, he was glad to say farewell to “Loose Angels” (his words, not mine).
St. James was (and is) a big church. On April 1st, 1929, Douglas wrote, “Yesterday was a red-letter day at the church. Fully two thousand were there in the morning and at night hundreds stood around the walls after the place was packed. Large chorus choir of excellent voices led by superb soloists accompanied by organ, piano and orchestra. It was quite lifting” (Shape of Sunday, 222). And very much in synch with Douglas’s way of doing church.
“A most intelligent audience,” he continued. “I couldn’t flatter myself they came to hear me.” After the rejection he had experienced in Los Angeles, it was hard for him, at first, to believe that people wanted to hear him preach. But they did, and after a while he allowed himself to accept that fact.
Even his Sunday night services attracted crowds. As he told his Akron friends, the James Van Vechtens, on April 12, “my Sunday night mob here, as compared intellectually with some I’ve seen, are a lot of Platos, Aristotles and Einsteins…. They all looked pretty intelligent to me from where I stood. Of course, I can’t see very well. And I’m a stranger here. Anyway, it’s a lot of fun and I’m glad we came” (Shape of Sunday, 223).
In the meantime, since Harper & Brothers had rejected his novel Salvage, Douglas tried to find another publisher. George Doran of Doubleday, Doran had expressed an interest in Douglas’s writings as early as the nineteen-teens. (See my earlier post on Douglas’s manuscript entitled, The Mendicant.) Douglas sent Doran the manuscript of Salvage, but he declined it for the same reason he had declined The Mendicant: because it wasn’t religious enough.
Douglas tried one more time. With this next company he was a shoe-in and he knew it: Eugene Exman at Harper had suggested a newly-established Chicago firm called Willett, Clark, and Colby, owned by the same people who published the Christian Century. And Douglas was one of the Century’s favorite writers. “The Christian Century and Willett, Clark & Co. are all the same thing as to brick and mortar, men and money,” Douglas explained a few years later.
Although it was fairly certain that they’d publish the manuscript, Douglas was taking a huge step backwards. His first book had been published by the Christian Century Press in 1920, but afterwards he upgraded to more prestigious firms: Scribner, then Harper. Giving his book to Christian Century people was like going back to square one.
But he did so, and Willett, Clark, and Colby accepted the manuscript, bringing it to press in the fall of 1929. When he sent it to them, he had changed the name of the book one last time. He called it Magnificent Obsession.
The Lloyd C Douglas Page 