A summer miscellany

Press, 27 November 1982, Page 16

A summer miscellany

The Summer Book: A New Zealand ■ Miscellany. Compiled by Bridget Williams and Roy Parsons. The Port Nicholson Press, 1982. 152 pp. $19.95.

(Reviewed by

Stephen Erber)

In 1924 the Nonesuch Press published “The Weekend Book” which became its greatest commercial success. That book was a consequence of a walking tour during which Francis and Vera Meynell (the founders of Nonesuch) concluded that the carriage of numerous books was tiring and tiresome. They decided to publish a single book to meet all their needs. The book was to be a reader’s pot pourri. It was advertised as a “sociable anthology" containing among other things “Great ppems, Hate poems, State poems,” songs (for those who knew the Oxford Book of English Verse very well and walking songs far too well), games and a section on food and drink — a 319 page divertissement.

The book received a rapturous reception, except from Virginia Woolf: “The Hogarth Press (the Woolfs' own press) may not make money, but at least we did not publish ‘The Weekend Book’.” It went through ' many editions and supplements. Its success enabled its publisher to continue to publish fine books. I hope that "The Summer Book” meets with the same reception and the same fate.

To be sure, "The Summer Book” is only 152 pages long — or rather, short — but it is a book which no-one who likes reading and things New Zealand can really be

without. The only criticism is that there is not enough of it, but doubtless the Port Nicholson Press will remedy that in the future. Stories by Katherine Mansfield and Dan Davin rub pages with photographs by Brian Brake. There is bad verse and sad verse, history, birds, David Low, and Beaglehole on books. The standard of illustrations is outstanding and the design of the book itself by Lindsay Missen leaves nothing to be desired, except perhaps by the most maniacal

bibliophile. Lest it be thought that I have temporarily suspended my critical faculties let me say that it is not so. Some of the contents did not attract me as much as others, but this is, after all, a personal anthology or miscellany of the compilers, and the choice of contents, therefore, reflects their own idiosyncracies and taste and their belief that what they have chosen others will like. It is the looking glass of what they have read and liked. The touchstone of the worth of any anthology or miscellany is whether it gives pleasure to the reader and whether its contents, admittedly interesting to the compiler, also excite the reader’s interest. On both counts this miscellany succeeds and is another example of the very high standard of this new publishing house.. When Cyril Connelly reviewed the new edition of “The Weekend Book” after the Second World War he said that in it he perceived “a solid core of good taste and wide reading.” That same remark may be made of this book.