LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXIX, Issue 20920, 29 July 1933, Page 13

LITERARY GOSSIP.

A recent cable message referred" briefly to the sale at Sotheby's aL Lord Kosebery's library, mentioniniS in particular the Manley copy of th« First Folio of Shakespeare. It is no w 11 years since a perfect First Fate© has been sold by auction, said an American bibliophile, reviewing th« catalogue before the sale, and m the interim many of the surviving copies have passed, by bequest, permanently beyond the possibility of sale. This " supreme prize of all English-speaking collectors" is No. CXLVIL in Sir Sidney Lee's Census, bearing the armorial bookplate and signature of John Manley. Besides being perfect, the book is very clean, in good condition, complete. and one of the finest examples *•■» appear in the auction room. The writer also refers to the special richness of Lord Kosebery's library in association copies:

Such are the presentation first issue of Keats's "Endymion" to Leigh Hunt; the Greek Bible presented by Bolingbroke to Pope; Byron's copy of Horace. on which he inscribed in memory of C. S. Matthews, the friend who had given it to him: " Poor Mat !—l would have risked my paltry life to haw preserved yours—you were among those few who rendered my existence tolerable"; a presentation copy of Disraeli's "Coningsby" to the Emperor of France and of the same author's "Lord George Bentinck" to Lord stepfather, the Duke of Cleveland: Sir Christopher Wren's copy of Dugdale's "History of St. Paul's Cathedral"; a presentation Gibbon to Lord Sheffield, and of the same author*.* first book, "Essai sur l'Etude de la Litterature" to Walpole; and Swift* own copy of Pascal's "Les Provinciales." Among the manuscripts is the original of Jane Austen's ' Laay Susan," the only one of her literary manuscripts, except for a few rougn drafts, known to have survived.

Other items outstanding in the catalogue were the first printed Homer, the Huth copy of th« Authorised Version of the Bible, and the first edition of the " Imitatio Christi." Rosebery collected books in the grand manner—muc.-i as he did everything ; but there was. discrimination in his grandeur. His library was, decidedly, a "personal one, despite its scale, and reflected the spirit of a passage in one of his addresses :

There is no excuse for any man who has not his own private collection or books. ... I appeal to every person in this assembly to say whether ms own little shelf of books, even if it be merely a shelf, is not infinitely dearer to him than the whole collection or the British Museum.

Several London newspapers have recently used the offer of complete sets of the works of Charles Dickens in their circulation-boosting campaigns. The "Week-end Review'' in its literary competitions, invited entries of a sonnet, in the manner of Keats's "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer," by any Registered Reader on First Looking into Charles Dickens. The prize was won by the following attempt:

Much have I revelled in the stories By Ethel Dell, and much of beauty seen In Wilhelmina's poems; I have been . . . ' Enthralled by those ingenious senbeb who hold , The reader in suspense while they A tortuous answer to "Who Shot the Dean?" , . Yet on old novels I was far from Till I heard Dickens speak out loud Then felt' I like some follower of §e When he lias staked one pound and garnered ten; Or like Lord Beaverbrook, who lives to And a e e ducate the British public. He, with. 6 the aid of some momentous W the hearts of counties! Englishmen.

It is stated, on the authority of Mr Arthur Waugh, chairman of th« firm which has published Carlyle'a works from the beginning, that his sales have fallen off during the last fifteen years more completely than those of any other notable Victorian author. Mr Waugh thinks this decline is largely due to the fact that Carlyle was a prophet, most of whose prophecies have failed to come off. Moreover, he was tremendously obsessed by merman ideals which the war sentiment scattered. Among Carlyle* works "The French Revolution has always been the best seller, because of its wonderful portrait gallery of types of character and the vigour of its narrative.

In a " Spectator " review of u Tb* Star-Born" Mr Hugh Walpole is remarkably outspoken about Henry Williamson's recent books. "I hop« and trust," he says, "that not I alone, but a number of others will tell him that since « Tarka, th« Otter' he has permitted himself .to become a false, mushy, sentimental Marie Corelli kind of writer, that this is painfully evident to many of his once admirers, and that wun every successive book it become* more painfully evident."