LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 94, 22 April 1933, Page 17

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

'■ Mr. H. V. Marrot has been entrusted .with Jhe official biography of the late Mr. John Galsworthy.

A bookshop at Times Square, New York City, remains open 24 hours a day, and does the best business between midnight and 1 o'clock.

A report from New .York says that tho "best-sellers "in the United (States j ;last year .were Mr.CharlcS' Morgan's "The ' Fountain,?'- Mr,'- Somerset Maugham's '^Of Human Bondage," and Mr. Ely Culb'crtson'a books,! on bridge. A set of tinker's tools, said to have belonged to John Bunyan,- i are,for sale. They include a T iron, shears; hammer, two pairs of pliers, and ■ a''roundhead soldering iron, and all "bear his name or initials. Th'o present owner's..greatgrandfather bought them over a hundred years ago from an innkeeper at Elstow, Bedfordshire, Bunyan's birthplace. ; . ,

A Polish girl in'a 'New' York school, slimming up, the difference between an educated man and an intelligent man, said: "An educated man gets his thinks frpm". someone else, but an intelligent man works his own thinks." This story is told by 11. E. Fosdick in "Twelve Tests "of Character."

The centenary of tho Norwegian poet and dramatist "Bjornstjerno Bjornson has been marked by the issuing of a special edition of his works. Bjornson was a nationalist at a time when Norway needed more faith in itself, more knowledge of its inheritance of the sagas, of tho artistic and poetic beauty of the people's fairy tales, and also the p6ssibilities of Norwegian peasants' and their culture. As a nationalist he gained his end through his' poems,".peasants' stories, and historic dramas. Of the peasants, who had not then a, high reputation, he said: "I saw, what-i: Toyed, and .thousands learnt !to lovp, what I saw."' His "Synnovo Solbakkerf," for instance, has been translated into sixteenjanguages. His poems have a fine simplicity, and among them are some of the finest in the world's literature.

Ronald Colman, the" film' actor, is a lover of beautiful women on the screen, and a great lover offino books in private life. His library ■ contains fine editions of the works of Shakespeare, Shelley, Milton, and Keats. Ho possesses a set of the works of Oscar Wilde and many of tho works of G. B. Shaw. Jean Hcrsholt possesses a first folio of Shakespeare, a fino copy of the first edition of Boswell's "Johnson," besides a wonderful collection of modern first editions. His collection is insured for £6000. Douglas Fairbanks, with a library of well over 7000 fine books, has agents both in London, New York, and Paris on tho alert for rare books. Charlie Chaplin buys any books dealing with Napoleonic times. He has a fine collection, o£ classics. Probably Mr. Chaplin has ono of th<? finest collections in the United States of books dealing with Napoleon. It is said that he is shortly to produce a film in which ho himself will take tho part of Napoleon.