LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21258, 1 September 1934, Page 15

LITERARY GOSSIP

Mr James Hilton, whose "Lost Horizon" has won the Hawthornden Prize, was born in 1900. He took first-class honours in the History and English Tripos at Cambridge in 1921. His first novel, "Catherine Herself," was written when he was 20. Since then he has produced "Contango" and "Knight Without Armour." "Lost Horizon," which has a Tibetan setting, he wrote without . ever having visited India or Tibet. He is at present a member of the "Daily Telegraph's" reviewing staff, and conducts a regular survey of new books in the "British Weekly." At the presentation ceremony, Miss Alice Warrender, the founder and donor of the prize—which is of the value of 100 guineas and is awarded annually for the best work of imaginative literature published in the previous year by an author under 41—announced that she had now made arrangements for the prize to be continued after her death. Stella Gibbons (says an American columnist) had just taken off her shoes because they hurt when her husband came in and told her that she had won the Femina Vie Heureuse prize with her satiric novel, "Cold Comfort Farm." She was so surprised and delighted that she danced round the room in her stock-* ing feet until her hair came down. She writes to her American publishers: "Once I have the money I'll put it in the bank, not, however, before buying a first-class atlas, a dictionary and taking some friends to dinner and the theatre." Mr Charles Seymour, in his stuldy of "American Diplomacy during the World War," offers the following summary estimate of President Wilson: Whatever the apparent failure, Wilson's greatness remains. It DBS not in the control of circumstances, for he was the plaything of events, but in the attempt to mould evil circumI stance? so as to bring forth good. He set himself to maintain the neutrality of the United States, and he failed. Using war as a means to establish permanent peace, he fought for a new international order. Again he failed, at least for the moment. Perhaps the story is not yet told. Historians off the future may yet cite Wilson as the classic example of Brownings thesis of success through failure. Whatever the future may bring forth he wakened the world to a great vision. Hans Fallada's famous novel "Little Man What Now" has been dramatised in Denmark by the young Danish playwright, Jens Locher. The play has been well received and the rights have been sold in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Holland and Germany. Mr Neil H. Swanson, author of "The Judas Tree," etc., in an interview with the "Bookseller," says that his hobby for the last twenty years has been digging out exciting moments in American history and that he has made notes for his next 17 books.