BOOKS WE READ.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 18918, 5 February 1927, Page 13

BOOKS WE READ.

TOO MANY BAD ONES. LONDON PUBLISHER'S OPINION. [THE PBESS Special Serrie*.] T AUCKLAND. February 4. "I have been unablo to make a close study of what the people of New Zealand read, but if the class of book onesees in the majority of shoi* is all . v criterion I should say the j>eople do not take their reading seriously enough, but merely pick up a uo °k t0 pass the time awav." . ~ Ihis is the opinion of 31 r Hugh »■ Dent, managing director of ilie wellknown London publishing house ol J. M. l>ent and Sons. Liiuitod, who Has just concluded a two months' holiday tour of New Zealand, accompanied by Mrs Dent, They will leave Auckland to-day for England, via Australia. 3lr' Dent said he was afraid a great mnnv people read books in the same way "that they spent an hour at Luna Park, and if this continued they wouiu lose their tasto for the better kind ot bosks. All reading should bo taken for pleasure, but there was a difference between the cowboy and detects o stories and. sav, the novels of Dickens and Conrad, two Admirable examples. In the one case there was an imagination of life, and in the other a real reflection of life. Hie proportion ol good books was increasing, but tiiej were far outnumbered by bad. Jno schools in England were now beginning to teach more seriously the luigusi language and English literature, and in the future a still Greater improvement could be expected. , Mr Dent was favourably impressed with the standard of New Zealand newspapers. He was unable to go closely into New Zealand literature, but while in Auckland he had had a fairy story submitted to him by an Auckland girl, aged 20 years. \Vhilo the work was not extraordinary the writer revealed a particular style, and ha was taking the work to England with him .with a view to publication.

situation, she returned to London and literature. In 1791 she made a veritable sensation with her "Vindication of the Rights of Women." In this famous work "her plea was for the little girls growing up to maidenhood. m unimaginative middle-class homes, bne wanted better things for them than she had had herself. She had been uneduoated, ill-treated, shadowed by illhealth. She had faced tho desperate struggle Jor a livelihood which'must be met by untrained women whose fathers made no provision for them and took no thought for their future. Mr Wollstonecraft, dissipating his fortune, was not affected by tho consideration that his threo daughters would have to battle against the world with a very poor physical and mental equipment. Mary hnd seen Eliwi driven to madness by a husband's tyranny, and Fanny Bipod paling and drooping at the caprice of Mr SUeys. All tho bittor memories of her childhood and youth crpwded about her during tho six weeks that she spent writing this grave, impetuous book." _

Mary was thirty-two years of age when she published the "Vindication,' and by all accounts she- was a beautiful wonmn; but in her love affairs she was doomed to disappointment. The proceeds of her book lifted her out of poverty. Her first romance was made memorable by Browning's poem, "Mary Wollstonecraft and Fuseli. He was a married man, and it is generally assumed that Mhry was in love with him, but there is no evidence that her affection was returnod. Mary Wollstonecraft visited Paris in December, 1702, about the time when William Wordsworth left it; and sho witnessed many of the horrors of tho French Revolution. Early in the Now Year she went to live at Neuilly, somo three miles outside the city, and there she met and fell in love with Captain Gilbert Imlay, an American, who had fought in the American War of Independence. Miss Linford's comments on this meeting are very much to the point:— Mary first met him at tho home of Mrs Christie, and at that time sho did not like him. This ii » fairly common prolude to lovo. Imlay himself was greatly attracted to Mary, and set about with much skill to wear down her prejudice, and then capture her heart. Every circumstance was in his favour. Mary was lonely at Neuilly, and eager to seize on tho relief of ft companionship more congenial than that of the kindly old gardener. Her affection for Fuseli had diod away, leaving a Toid that aohed for anothor interest. This first cxperienco of frustrated passion loft her conscious of her self and her loveliness in a way that her unawakened years had nevor known. Thoro was no homo influence to check or disturb hor. and no one to whom she could go for advice. Captain Gilbert Imlay broke through her solitude in the green, sappy woods, and * told her the first love story she had ever heard. She forgot her passion and her first instinctive dislike of him. She was no longer Mrs 'Wollstonecraft, unflinching vindlaator of the rights of women. She was Mary, talking pf lovo under tho benign shelter of the beech trees and returning home at night with her auburn hair tumbled and her eyes full of bliss.

It was the time of the French Revolution; aiorals were mixed, and ninny people really believed that the ceremony of marriage would bo abolished and replaced by free union. Elizabeth Robins declare* that it was because she believed rte was doing what was right that Marv went to livo with Imlay ns his mistress, first in Paris and afterwards in Havre. Her letters which have been published tell all that oan bo toty of her short-lived happiness, of the rapid transition from hnpny confidence, through unwilling suspicion and doubts, to final despair. For the sake of thoir child Fanny. Mary refused to give. Imlay up until his open infidelities left her no option. And twice she attempted suicide. Returning reluctantly to her literary life, Mary met William Godwin; he was forty, she three years younger. At first they did not marry. Why should they go through a ceremony in which neither believed. When Mary found that for a soennd lime she was to become a mother, she then decided to conform to the demand of society. Mary felt keenly Fanny's illegitimacy. It is ;i remarkable tbinir that while her informal union with Godwin estranged none of her friends, she Inst mnnv when she married. She died shortly after givine birth to Man- Godwin, who was destined to become famous as Mary Shelley.