"The financial history of these 'Best Poems of...' anthologies - which as a matter of fact are only commercially successful in the sense that they pay the publisher better than volumes by individual authors - is interesting: though no contributors are invited to pay their fee for inclusion, to become 'co-publishers' at six dollars a page, not many are given any fee other than their presentation-copy. There are, however, a few 'names' which must be secured in order to give the collection an air of respectability. Each 'name' is paid for according to the owner's awareness of its exact market-value."
Laura Riding & Robert Graves, 1928
