Martin Eden’s literary breakthrough turns years of rejection into commercial success and public distinction, but it comes too late to restore his former hunger for recognition. The Shame of the Sun sells rapidly, Overdue follows it to the top of the bestseller lists, and publishers compete for his next work. The reversal is both material and social: Martin can now keep promises, offer practical help, and receive invitations from people who once dismissed him. Yet the books’ success chiefly confirms to him how much public respect depends on work already packaged and sold.

The publication of The Shame of the Sun

The Shame of the Sun appeared in October. When Martin cut open the publishers’ express package, six complimentary copies fell onto the table. He remembered the delight he would have felt only a few months earlier, and measured it against his present response: his pulse did not quicken, and the book’s arrival left him sad rather than triumphant. It might bring money, but even that prospect held little attraction. The publication marks the realization of an ambition at the moment when its emotional reward has largely vanished.

He carried one copy into the kitchen for Maria Silva. She was bewildered until he explained that he had written the book in his room and that some of her vegetable soup had gone into its making. He gave it to her to keep as a remembrance, not as a boast. The gesture makes the book’s meaning personal rather than commercial: Martin wanted to make Maria happy and honor her long faith in him. She placed it in the front room on top of the family Bible. Though she could not understand its lines, she regarded the book as great, a sacred token of friendship that softened her memory of his having been a laundryman.

Martin read the weekly reviews with the same lack of excitement with which he had received the book. Their reports made clear that it was becoming a hit, and that sales would add money to his savings. He could use the proceeds to provide for Lizzie Connolly, fulfill his promises, and still retain enough to build the grass-walled castle he had imagined. Success therefore supplied real means for his plans, even as it failed to revive the excitement that had once animated them.

From first edition to public controversy

Singletree, Darnley & Co. had begun cautiously, printing 1,500 copies. The first reviews prompted a second edition twice that size; before it was delivered, the publisher had ordered a third edition of 5,000. A London firm arranged an English edition by cable, and French, German, and Scandinavian translations were reported in progress. The work’s reach extended beyond ordinary book sales into a dispute over its attack on the Maeterlinck school. Saleeby and Haeckel defended it, while Crookes and Wallace opposed it; Sir Oliver Lodge tried to devise a compromise consistent with his own cosmic theories. Maeterlinck’s followers rallied to mysticism, Chesterton drew laughter with purportedly non-partisan essays, and George Bernard Shaw’s broadside threatened to sweep the whole controversy aside. The argument gathered lesser participants as well, turning Martin’s book into the center of a crowded public debate.

The publisher reported that more than 40,000 copies had already sold in the United States and Canada, with a new edition of 20,000 on the presses. Singletree, Darnley & Co. had spent $5,000 on advertising and acknowledged both that the book’s contributing circumstances had been unusually favorable and that the firm had helped create demand. Its letter offered Martin a contract for his next book, raising his royalties to 20 percent and leaving the subject open. It also proposed a possible ten-year arrangement for exclusive book publication of his work, but presented that as a matter for further discussion rather than a completed agreement.

Contracts, money, and a second bestseller

Martin worked out the financial scale of the opportunity by multiplying fifteen cents by 60,000, arriving at $9,000. He signed the new-book contract, wrote The Smoke of Joy into its title space, and returned it with twenty storiettes he had written before discovering his formula for newspaper short fiction. Singletree, Darnley & Co. promptly sent a $5,000 advance against royalties. The arithmetic, the title, the enclosed stories, and the check show the breakthrough becoming a working commercial arrangement: the publisher wanted more material, and Martin could now turn completed work into immediate money.

Overdue, issued by Meredith-Lowell Company at the height of Martin’s popularity, made an even greater sales success than The Shame of the Sun. For weeks, both books stood at the head of the bestseller list. Readers who had been drawn to the philosophical essay also took up the sea story, whose handling of its subject displayed the same broad, assured grasp. Martin had first attacked the literature of mysticism and then successfully supplied the kind of literature he had analyzed, establishing himself in public as both critic and creator. His recognition was no longer confined to a single essay or controversy: two different kinds of book confirmed his range.

Recognition and its belated value

Money and fame poured in, and Martin flashed through the literary world like a comet, more amused than interested by the commotion. With writing and studying no longer filling his days, he permitted interviews, offered opinions on literature and philosophy, and accepted invitations from bourgeois society. He even forgave the cub reporter who had painted him red, granting him a full-page interview with specially posed photographs. The easy forgiveness and willingness to be photographed register a changed relation to public judgment, but not renewed dependence on it; Martin had settled into a comfortable indifference.

One invitation particularly exposed the altered terms of his social standing. Judge Blount, whom Martin had insulted and treated abominably, invited him to dinner. Martin recalled meeting the judge at the Morses’ home on earlier occasions, when no such invitation had followed. He had not changed, and the work Blount now celebrated had been accomplished while the judge shared the general contempt for him, sneering at his reading of Spencer and at his intellect. Martin concluded that the difference lay in the work’s appearance between book covers: the achievement itself was not new, but its public form had acquired a fictitious value. He accepted the invitation, still puzzled by his own complacency.

At dinner, attended by half a dozen people who occupied high positions and their wives, Martin found himself treated as the evening’s central figure. Judge Blount, with Judge Hanwell’s support, privately urged him to allow his name to be proposed for the Styx, an exclusive club for men of attainment rather than merely men of wealth. Martin declined. The episode completes the breakthrough’s social reversal while withholding a conventional reward: the man once judged by his origins and unfinished work is now courted for his accomplishments, yet he neither mistakes the recognition for a change in himself nor accepts every institution that offers it.