NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18569, 19 December 1925, Page 15

NEW BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS.

ROUND THE EMPIRE. It was an excellent choice to entrnst Mr V. C. Scott O'Connor -with the task of describing the voyage of the Special Service Squadron of the Royal Navy which toured the Empire in Mr O'Connor is a descriptive writer of real capacity and insight, but it is not because he is a good writer that he was tho man for this task, but because lie is so excellent a traveller. Only a arery small proportion of those who circle the globe discover very much about it, and _a smaller proportion still can tell vou what they have discovered. Bui Mr O'Connor saw and felt and thought as tho great ship carried: him ind when he got home converted what would otherwise have been a bald official log into a lively, instructive, and artistically told tale. The fact that it is iust over two yeara since tho {Squadron weighed anchor at Dovonport ant! doithead would have been a reason why no ono could have followed its movements to-day if they had not been so admiralty described. It is true that wliai is said about New Zealand will not convoy the impression to most Deoole that New Zealand is half such an important place as wc think it js. It is mainly this kind of stuff: 'The Islands of New Zealand arc of great beauty and interest, full of lovely plaoca and of strange and wonderful things, such as volcanoes and geysers and hot springs and lakes of hot- water in tho midst of snow." Worse than that, what is said about Chris tdinrc-h will suggest to some readers that it isj tho place where- those people went to who had not enough intelligence t<> remain in J.yttelton —or rather Lyttleton —a seaport- with "a strange remote and lonely air"; and when ono litvls things like that said about the places ono knows, there is a little uneasiness about tho places one has never seen before. But it is impossible to continue uneasy with Mr O'Connor as Guide. When he says of South Africa for. example: "The greatness of Table Mountain, is indescribable. There is a brooding duality in it that distinguishes it from other high places in the world: someilling forlorn and elemental, as, of a spirit that needs to live apart" ;

or 'lt is tho charm of these old Butch, houses that they wcro meant to livo in ; they wcro not mado for show; and tboy still speak eloquently of the staying virtues of tho Dutch character," you feel that you aro getting tho truth oven though you have, no means of testing it. It should Lie added also t|iat the. bonk, which e-ven in this second edition is limited to MO copies, is illustrated —ns every book of tho kind ought to be—by photographs that arc so clear as to leave nothing uncertain, and yet of things so beautiful in themselves that they d'o not ever offend aesthetically. (Printed privately for tho author by Riddle, Smith and Duifus, 83 Krngsway, London.)

AN AUSTRALIAN SHAKESPEARE. It is pleasant to open a volume of Shakespeare plays that has been wholly set up and printed in Australia. At this time of year also, when we all feel a little waggish, it is pleasant, to have in ono volume of convenient size all tho plays in which the Pat Knignt appears. The editor, Mr Thomas Dondv&n, has taken some liberties with the text, or perhaps it should be said with the generally accepted text, for Mr Donovan is a (very learned; student or" Elizabethan drama, and his rearrangements and omissions are not the work of ignorance. There can be very little doubt that from the' point of view of representation on the stage it is an advantage to shorten Shakespeare occasionally, and especially to omit some of the grosser passages. Mr Donovan has done that and a little more, but the little more, the restoring of "Henry V"' to the form in which Mr Donovan ihinks it left the hands of Shakespeare, has been done for well-supported reasons. It of course requires courage to do such things, but then it is very little that anyone can do to Shakespeare without conrage. (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, Ltd.)

PHILOSOPHY OF SORTS. If you can read David Grayson yon can't got enough of him, and if yon can't read him you will not caro whether he has written another book or not. But thousands of people do care, and it is no use saying that their taste is not very solect. It is not easy to say in a sentence, who the people are for whom Mr Grayson was sent into the world to meditate. But they are a group who cannot bo ignored. They are at least earnost, simple, sincere people, and their meditations would shame no one —a queer mixture °£ Balph Waldo Emerson and Ralph Waldo Trine, with dashes of George Gissing, the "Roadmender," and, say, the Young Men's Cltristian Association. • And in this latest book, "Adventures in Understanding," Mr Grayson takes his followers back from the open air into the cities, and tells them, without a suspicion that he is being very solemn, superior, and unhumorous, that there really are people and things in town to fall in love with. But ten 'thousand people in this Dominion alone—if they know about it—will read it all to the last word and be stimulated by it. (Hodder and Stoughton, through L. M. Isitt, Ltd.) NOVELS. The fact that hinges are usually secured with screws was sufficient reason for George Tyson to fasten a pair with short, flat-headed nails, left over from tacking the tarred felt on the darkroom ho had just built. That is the kind of man Tyson is, in Ei(!hard Blaker J s "Oh, the Brave Music." He is a retired sea-captain, a meddler in business, and he stands for the type of man who, retired from, tho occupation which has held him for most of his life, finds himself cut adrift, with ample time to try any trade, any business venture, in the wide world. Pathetically selfconfident, Tyson believes he is capable of making a success of anything, and the author's task is to show that this confidence is ill-founded. The novel is a clear-cut character study, but it is much more that: it is a good tale, carefully written, and it can honestly be said that it makes really interesting reading. (London: Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd^)

When, an author, with criminal carelessness, allows her heroine to bo called "Flame" (even if her surname is Peterson), she must be prepared to take the consequences. Flame Peterson, the

heroine of "Ashes of Desire," by Pamela Wynne, gets sadly out of hand and falls away from even modern standards of respectability. In the beginning it was not altogether her fault; she was to be forced into a marriage with old Lord Lovcgrove. Her mother, a forbidding person, said. "Choose: Lovcgrove or the convent!" Flame's answer was to don her brother's clothes and sail for India. .So the anthor, -with a tenacious clinging to the obvious, now seeks to "create a situation." Flame found that those people who- wear men J s clothes sleep in men's cabins, and that the world is not inhabited wholly by Perfect Knights. (London: Phflip Allan and Co. Sydney: Dymock's Book. Arcade.) "Eve Mistaken," by L. G. Mobetky, though rather disjointed- in sty}*, is

nevertheless a readable story. Eve Hartwood, who runs away to avoid marriage with an undesirable suitor, is helped in her design by the fact that the train by which she travels meets with disaster, and that her name is included in the list of killed. Eve then assumes the name of the unfortunate young lady for whom she haß been mastaken, but in her endeavours to- maintain this deceit meets with numerous enough adventures to fill three hundred pages. (Mills and Boon, Ltd., London, through Sands and McDougall, Ltd., New Zealand agents.) There is crispness of style in "The Thing Ungaincd," by Philip Purneaux Jordan, but there ia also incident on occasion which could have been mellowed. It is, however, a "modern'' novel. Gabriclle Brave, on the discovery of an unpleasant fact concerning her parentage, becomes embittered, and, scprning to wed an eligible parti, rushes into financial speculation. Hero she uses the full battery of woman's wiles and attractions to achieve success in a big mining venture; and although she wins as huntress, it is not a victory that makes her happy. If it had been, however, Mr Jordan would have been cheated of his story. (Hurst and 3lackett, Ltd., London; Simpson and Williams, Christchurch-)