LITERARY NOTES AND GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12129, 27 February 1905, Page 8

LITERARY NOTES AND GOSSIP

A French -journal recently complained of the number of English words with which French conversation is sprinkled. "L'Europeen" says that a Chicago monthly, published in French, "eVEcho dcs Deux Mondes," calculates that there are twenty thousand French words in the English language. The many friends of W. Hoi man Hunt, the veteran painter, will be pamphlet with a brilliant red cover and

pleased to learn that his long-promised history of the Pre-Raphaelite Movement is at last ready for the press.' Mr Rider Haggard's forthcoming book', "A Gardener's Year," is not a text-book, but a record kept through-, out the year of the various operations carried on in a Norfolk garden of moderate sise, in which a good many varieties of fruit-trees, Bowel's —including orchids—and vegetables are grown, h also treats incidentally of matters kindred to their cultivation. In an obituary reference to Miss Adeline Sergeant, a former member of the Authors - Society, "The Author mentions how after she had made her name she tried the daring experiment of publishing a book anonymously, and declares that it knows" of no other instance where the experiment has been tried with success. The book referred to was "The Story of a Penitent Soul," and we see that in "Who's Who"— where the notices are edited by the authors themselves—it is placed first among her publications, witn the words "best known." It was this book indeed tlajt made her name and not the earlier ones. We well remember (adds the "Literary World")'the case of another well-known author who tried the same experiment, and who was deeply chagrined to find his anonymous work almost entirely ignored. Afterwards a hint of the author's identity was given to some reviewer, and then the reviews began to appear, but that was small comloit to tn» disappointed author, who hoped to lie appreciated for his new work, and not on the score of the old, witn which, for some reason, he was out of conceit. But, for all that, he has gone back to it because, we suppose, he has realised that what the public wants is what an author .mioii <l supply, even it he thinks artistically ho might do better. Mr I. Zangwill, whose next work will bo a volume of philosophical essays, entitled "Latin Phantasies," on the Latin countries "where he has" lately been travelling, attributes tho present marked unpopularity of the volume of short stories to the fact that people are too lazy to appreciate it. "They don't want to get acquainted every twenty pages or so with a now set of people and with new situations. . . . People when they read apparently wish to sink into an easy chair and emerge about a week later. The "Academy and Literature" thinks that a sounder explanation is that the public is a creature of habit, and growing accustomed to reading its short stories in the pages of the weekly and monthly papers, objects to take them as serious literature in volume form.