Publishers In Britain Still Carrying On

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 173, 24 July 1941, Page 6

Publishers In Britain Still Carrying On

LONDON, June 2. IT goes almost without saying that •*■ war conditions are hampering British publishers. Paper is scarce and expensive, and reserve stocks must be running low in more than one quarter. To add to these handicaps, enormous quantities of printed books have been destroyed in air raids. The great distributing firm of Simpkin, Marshall and Co. lost between five and six million volumes in the fire of London, and individual publishing firms have suffered losses aggregating further millions.

By Charles Pilgrim All the same, the many houses are showing great energy and resourcefulness. Inevitably, a large proportion of new books deal directly with the war in one of its phases. An increasing proportion of novels are war novels. But the other departments of literature are by no means neglected. Poetry, belle 'lettres, biography and history continue to come from the presses and find ready purchasers. And so far the quality of books, as to paper and binding, has not deteriorated distressingly. Of course, format is not what it was. In certain instances there is an absence of gold lettering on the covers and a falling away in the texture of the pages. But, unquestionably, the publishers are doing very well in the circumstances. Cheap Editions There is one branch of publishing for which the general reader has cause to be grateful at the moment. There is no lack of cheap editions and cheap reprints. Such well-known standard libraries as Everyman and the World's Classics are maintaining their life and their level. Even the firm of Dent have never issued two better volumes than have just come out in the Everyman series; almost the whole of the published work of J. M. Synge as one number and two complete novels by Anatole France ("At the Sign of the Queen Pedauque" and "The Revolt of the Angels") as the other. The readers of even cheaper books are even more freely catered for. The sixpenny Penguins and Pelicans continue to pour out from the presses of Mr. Allen Lane, and a combination of distinguished publishers have issued a fine series of paper-covered volumes at varying prices, at sixpence, ninepence and one shilling. War or no war, the country is not lacking in the best kind of food for the mind. English Countryside

It is a commonplace that England has long ceased to be a land of true countrymen, but stories of life in the English countryside are still the favourite material of novelists.

"Velveteen Jacket" (Faber and Faber), by Marjorie Mack, is such a story. It tells of one, Daniel Lee, whose father was a gamekeeper. Being a little boy in what was still feudal England, he was brutally illtreated by the squire because he did not find his soul's expression in scaring crows. But he had a friend in the squire's son. Johnny, who does not forget the boyhood friendship. This novel contains a good picture of the English country GO or 70 years ago.