LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21139, 14 April 1934, Page 15

LITERARY GOSSIP.

In their latest circular P. K. Stephensen and Co., the Australian publishers, have some interesting things to say about the export of Australian writers to England. Australia, they point out, has given birth to an amazing number of first-class writers. For example, no less than five books by Australian authors (G. B. Lancaster, Helen Simpson, Mary Mitchell, Jack Lindsay, Philip Lindsay) have been the "choice" of the English Book Society during the last 12 months. The talent is born here, then exported to England, like bales of wool. A Government ban on the export of authors, as on the export of stud merinos, would seem worthy of consideration! Australian authors in England are asked, by publishers and agents, not to write about Australia, but about some other country more acceptable to English readers. We can put a stop to such effrontery only by developing our own literature, on our own soil, as the American people have done( and by presenting it as a fait accompli to the English, and to all the world. This means that we must keep our good writers here—"keep" them in the literal sense of the term by providing them with a living from royalties on sales.

Herr Ernst Toller's eloquent and stern autobiography, "Eine Jugcnd in Deutschland," is coming out very shortly from the Bodley Head in an authorised translation done by Mr Edward Crankshaw, says "The Observer." The English title, "I was a German," is a significant variation on the German. For Herr Toller, born of Jewish parents in a little town near the Polish border, grew up with a passionate love of Germany in his heart, served his Fatherland with arm and pen, brain and imprisonment, and at last finds himself, under the new regime, an exile. His prologue gives as its date, "the day my books were burnt in Germany." The epilogue, written in 1933, in exile, looks forward with incurable faith to that to-morrow, when "you will be the People, the true Germany." 32G—DOYLE (A. Conanj, "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes." 1894. £lO. The Earl of Roscbery's copy bought by him on publication when he was Prime Minister of England and with his 10 Downing Street bookplate. At the end of the book he has written "again March, 1395, again Feb. 18, 1901." This item appears in El kin Matthews' latest catalogue. George Bates's latest catalogue also has something of interest to Conan Doyle collectors. It is a threevolume novel, "The Fate of Frenella'* (1892), which was written by ,24 authors; Doyle did chapter four. Among the others were F. Anstey, Mrs Trollope, and Bram Stoker. Incidentally, Mr Bates touches on a moot point—was the correct title of a famous story, "The Sign of Four" or "The Sign of the Four"? According to Bates it was first issued in Lippincott's Magazine (February, 1890) as "The Sign of the Four" and later in book form without the "the." According to recent reports from London H. G. Wells is about to embark upon his first film. He is planning a portrayal of civilisation a century and a half from the present when the machine will be supreme, and gigantic forces will be released at the turn of a switch. He has taken as a tentative title "Whither Mankind?" The spring catalogue of Faber and Faber lists a book that sounds exciting—"The Serial Universe," by J. W. Dunne (author of "An Experiment with Time," published several years ago). Of this book the English publisher says: "It is impossible to describe Mr Dunne's new book in language which does not wear the ' look of fantastic exaggeration. Either it is one of the major achievements of human thought, or it involves some astonishing fallacy. . . . Mr Dunne claims to have found an irrefutable proof of human immortality."