Maeve’s letter explaining how exactly she earned her new-found success

BACK in the early 1980s, Maeve Binchy wrote her first novel, Light a Penny Candle — and it made a huge amount of money at the time for a debut.

I was working on The Late Late Show when the book came out, and it was decided to have her on to talk about her new-found success. She had been on before so she was well used to the Late Late format and was a joy to work with.

There was no pussyfooting about with Maeve regarding the money she got — on the contrary, she sent me a letter before her appearance explaining all…

Dear Mary,

... I’m glad you thought it was a good idea if I wrote to you… I didn’t want to be intrusive or pushy… but I thought if I just gave you some background information then it might be a help for you to know what has gone before…

I was on The Late Late Show … on Saturday, March 20. It was in connection with the publishing of Dublin 4 [a short-story collection]. We talked a bit about why I chose that title and whether the people were real and if I actually put real people into stories, which I don’t.

Then the conversation broadened and Gay Byrne asked about some aspects of my work, the royal weddings — I said how much I had liked Charles’s wedding and hated Anne’s — about covering the election in Ireland and how I had been one of the very few journalists watching FitzGerald and Haughey on the night of the Great Debate… surprisingly I also found myself in conversation about Mrs Thatcher and admitting that I did not like her.

Now this time the most interesting thing about me is unfortunately all the money I’ve made. I don’t say ‘unfortunately’ that I made money… I’m obviously delighted about that… but it’s a fact of life that the money interests everyone so I thought I would tell you exactly what I got so that you would know the fact not the rumour. For writing the novel, which took a year, or 40 weekends to be more precise, £5,000.

The paperback rights were sold to Coronet Books, who paid a record £52,000. I get around 70 per cent of this. The publishers who found me get the rest so I get £34,000.

Then the Americans decided that they would like to buy it... Several publishers made offers so there was another auction and the highest bidder was Viking. This is for hardback rights only. Later there will be another ‘auction’ for American paperback rights. Viking are actually going to pay me $200,000.

Then it was chosen by the Literary Guild of America as their book of the month for next April. This means that it will be vastly publicised. They paid $50,000; Viking get half and I get half so from this particular deal I get $25,000.

Last week it was sold to a French publisher who is having it translated. They are paying 50,000 francs, which in English money is about £5,000.

To add the whole thing up, it comes to in English money round and about £163,000.

Out of this I will have to pay roughly half in taxes, maybe more. I will have to give 10 per cent to an agent but that will still leave me with about £70-75,000.

This may look very tedious and boastful but I thought it would be better if you knew the exact figures, then you could decide what was and what was not relevant.

Now the next question is what am I going to do with it? I haven’t really decided. I don’t want people to give me advice about making myself into a tax exile, a limited company, a discretionary trust…

Sadly the last page of the letter is missing — so we’ll never know what she proposed to do with the money. But we do know that Maeve enjoyed life with her beloved husband and many friends, and no doubt the money helped.