LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 148, 20 December 1930, Page 21

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND, AUTHORS Mr. Q. B. Shaw is collecting and collating the criticisms he has written from time to time of the medical profession. He will publish them in a volume entitled "All That I Have Said About Doctors." Among the' latest books for transcription into Braille type are Mr. J. B. Priestley's "Angel Pavement,'' Mv. George Preedy's "The Rocklitz," Mr. Stephen Graham's "Peter the Great," and M. Andre Maurois's "Byron." They will be added to the National Library for .the'Blind, Westminster. ! All the parts that can be deciphered of the recently-discovered diaries and notebooks of the Andree Polar expedition will be published during the next few months in eight languages —Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, English, French, German, Dutch, and Italian. The Royal Swedish Geographic Society is to edit the book. Mr. Somerset Maugham vehemently repudiates the suggestion that a character in his new novel, ■ "Cakes and Ale," is intended as a portrait of Thomas Hardy. The London "Daily Telegraph" thinks it a great pity that he should have gone close enough to certain well-known facts of Hardy's later life to lead readers who know nothing of Hardy's earlier life to imagine that they can identify the character. From the "Illustrated Graphic," London:— Has it ever occurred to famous authors who are hard up (and there are not a few) to turn an extra penny by re-introducing the old practice of selling dedications? After all, should we complain of fine writers dedicating books to rich, uninteresting people for a consideration when wo leave uneondemned the fine painters who, for a consideration, actually paint whole pictures of them? Thomson's "Seasons" has a dedication for each Season. Young's "Night Thoughts" has a dedication for seven out of tlie nine "Nights." If Sterne had not helped to kill the custom by leaving tho usual dedicatory page a blank in "Tristram Shandy," save for the inscription, "To be lot or sold for fifty guineas,", modern millionaires might ho bidding against each other for tho favours of Mr. Hugh Walpole. Mr. Aldous Huxley, Miss Edith Sitweli and Co.