LITERAY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 11, 12 July 1930, Page 21

LITERAY NOTES

"I doubt <says the editor of "Everyman") if there aro fifty persons in our population of forty-eight millions who are near to saturation point in reading.'' Fiction, reports a famous circulating library, is now the favourite reading of the middle-aged and biography of the young. That is how the pendulum has swung during the last three or four years. "The Failure of Federalism iv Australia (Oxford Press), by A. P. Canaway, K.C., of the New South Wales Bar, will demand the attention of constitutional lawyers for its challenge to the Federal system. - • One of the stories iv, "Mary Gladstone: Her Diary and Letters" (Methuen) is of .a dinner party at which 'the conversation turned on Hardy's novels. "And wlio may this Hardy be?" inquired Lord Kitchener. "A mart to whom His Majesty gave the Order of Merit as he did tv your Lordship," replied Edmund Gosse. ■A fine illustrated manuscript copy of "The Eubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam, comprising two hundred and six quatrains, has been found in the shoj of a Calcutta/ book-dealer. . It probably dates from 1505, forty-six years later than the.Bodleian Library copy, which is ih.o oldest so far discovered. Professor Ha'q, of Calcutta, has t.-ken photographic facsimiles of the whole manuscript,, and proposes to bring out a critical edition of it. Miss Edith Lytteltou ("G. B. Lancaster")' reports having had a good time while in New Zealand (says "The Post's" London correspondent). Since leaving the Dominion she has been travelling for nearly three months, and has now arrived at her home in Ealing. Miss Lytteltou did some flying iv Queensland and sonic rather rough riding in the mountains there, where the | scenery is well worth any discomfort, j In Bali she saw...mauy old Hindu temples, and also a cremation ceremony, which was extraordinary and fantastic. She had the good fortune to see many ports of the Dutch East Indies, and also did a great deal of motoring. Miss Lyttelton expects to spend a few months in England, and then to go abroad again.