AMONG THE ANNOUNCEMENTS

The August number of the London Bookman will contain a special fullyillustrated article on William tie Morgan, by A. St. John A'dcock. De Morgan's new novel, "An Affair of Dishonour," will be published' shortly by Mr Heinomann. It deals with duelling. Methuens are publishing a new novel of South African life, entitled "Flownof the Peach,'' the title taken from Browning's '' Fra Lippo Lippi." Mr Perceval Gibbon is the author.

Sir William Watson's new volume of poems, " Sable and Purple," has just been published by Mr Eveleigh Nash. The principal poem in the book is an ode on the death of the King. Perceval Gibbon, writing in tho London Bookman on A, F. Wedgwood's! " Tho Shadow of a Titan," published by Duckworth, says : ''It is something much better than a remarkable first book. It is an outstanding novel by any sandard the work of a man 'of fine genius and particular gifts. Ho comes upon the public as from an ambush full armed with the best .-assets of a novelist—a great story to toll, and a great manner of telling it. I liopo that in his capacity of a writer he lias come to stay.'' Louis Joseph Vance's ''Tho Fortune Hunter," is quite the best thing that writer has yet done. Unlike the "Brass Bowl" and "Tho Bronze Bell," it. is something moro than a melodramatic, sensation, : ' The Fortune Hunter " is a real man, and the life of a- email city in Americf. is capitally told. It is safe to say that " The Fortune Hunter," onco commenced, -will not easily he laid.down until the end is reached. It should rank as one of the best of recent American novels. Messrs Mucmilian liavo added to their very acceptablo editions of popular favourites the following:—" Mrs Lorimer," by Lucas Malet; " Dr Claudius," by F. Marion Crawford; "Tho Solitary Summer," by the authoi of "Elizabeth and' Her German Garden"; "Mamma,'' by Rhoda Broiighten; and " A Beleaguered City," by Mts Oliphant. In." The Crimson Gate," by (). Colmore (S. Paul and 'Co.), there is an attempt to combine the ordinary, kind of fiction with tho species which figures on the anti-vivisection platform, and . the mixtiiro is not always palatable. But fortius tho novel might be called an effective one, as it is crisply written and appeal's a curiously minute study of a woman's temperament

To his wonderful series of shilling reprints Mr Murray has added Mr Arthur Christopher Benson's -'The Houso of .Quiet." This is the thirteenth edition, or reprint, that has been called for since the book'was first published six years ago. "The Threat of Gold" is also obtainable in the same edition.

The July volume of Messrs Macmillan's new Library Edition of the Works of Walter Pater will be "Imaginary Portraits," to bo followed a month later by "Appreciations: with an Essay on Style." A new American book story if. told in the Book Monthly. A customer dropped into a department store and asked tho " sales lady " at tho bock counter for a copy of " Pepy's Diary." This was in the winter, which circumstance brings out tho point of her answer. "Sorry,,but our 1910 diaries are not in yet!"

Dorchester, which has been ma<ls famous by Mr Thomas Hardy, is not' (writes a correspondent) wildly concerned about the novelist. Very fow writing men, in fact, are heroes in their own towns. The country folk of Wessex, who ha-vo become famous tho world over by the types which Mr Hardy immortalised in his Weesex novels, are sublimely indifferent to their fame. They do not know that they have, been put in books, and thousands of them never beard of Mr Hardy.

A book from the firm of Mills and Bcon is by a clerical author well known for his writings on history, archeology, and architecture, as well as on quaint byways of ccclesiology liko " The Parish Clerk." The new volume is " Tho Parson's Pleusance," and therein Ilia author, Mr P. H. Ditehfield, descants in an agreeable and characteristic way of his hobbies and occupations, tho rectory ga-rden, books, and the ways of his respected predecessors, travel and the recollections of it, local customs and superstitions, and the pleasant ways of plain village 'folk. The boo!: is illustrated, and ought to revive in the reader's mind something of the 'spirit that went, to inform Mr Ditehfield's previous book, "An Old Time Parson.''

Mme. Yvett-e Guilbert, the self-created artiste who has risen from the drudgery of a sempstress and forged for herself a new line in interpretative art, has.lent her aid in the telling of her history, and this so fully that, in spite of the collaboration of Mr Harnld Simpson, the hook should rank as autobiography. She tolls how her family discouraged her, how she failed at the first- attempt in public, and how "•-the management that .in-.d takon fright at- her daring came a tew years later and offered her enormous salaries to be during once more. She had 'educated them, and th? public, in the interval, and this book should help the same process along. The title is : ' YveUe- Guilbert: Struggles and Victories," and the publishers, Si'cssrs Mills' and Boon, have given it a curiously original form by including her own contribution to the volume in its native French, with Air Simpson's translation, and a critical record of his own into the bargain Tfc is to be profusely illustrated' with portraits, facsimiles o f letters, caricatures, etc.

A great and worthy work wlrlclt has taken a now and deserved lease of life is Mr Puller Maitland's new edition of the •' Dictionary of Music,'' founded by Sir George Grove, and the fifth and last volume was promised early in duly by Messrs M.'tcmiikm and Co. It contains a great deal of new matter, as well as a thorough revision of the articles from tho first edition which are retained. It covers the letters from T to Z, and includes an appendix, which, besides including corrections and jiddition? to the other volumes, contains articles on a good many executive artists who have mads their name since the earlier volumes were issued, as well as a large number of the young English cohiposers whoso work has recently come prominently before the public. .The fascinating history of old songs written from the scientific joint

of view rather than the sentimental, is a prominent feature of tho appendix, in which _Mr Frank Kidson has described the origins and changes in a large number of familiar ditties, from " Ankl. law; syne" to "Ye banks and braes." Thero are important corrections and additions to the article on bells, by Mr W. W. Starmor; and short biographical articles on the many popular executive artists, who made their name since the dictionary was begun, such as JSonci, Caruso, and Destinn, A largo number of the younger English composers receive attention, and 1 there are, of course, copious corrections of the mistakes which inevitably creep into the earlier volumes, as well as additions rendered necessary by death or other circumstances. Deaths which occurred as recently as last May are recorded.