LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 84, 9 April 1932, Page 17

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

we think of Leo Maxse, we think of the 'NationaV Review,' " said the "Morning Post" leader when Maxse died early in this year. Maxso was editor of the "National Review" for nearly 40 years. He was a militant nationalist, who constantly warned Britain against the coming war with Germany."

An American book collector paid £750 at a recent London sale for a sixteenth-eentu'ry Tolumo oneo owned by Catherine de' Medici. A 1486 copy of Ptolemy's "Gosmographia" fetched

The fifth volume of tho "Official History of the Great War" is ready— eight years after the first volume. It will probably be another ten years before the tenth and final part appears. In the meantime, the cynic asks, won't tho Greater War be' on?

"The Universal English Dictionary," edited by Professor H. C. Wyld, is expected from the Broadway House in June, in a volume dealing with nearly 200,000 words and running to some 1450 pages. One of the features of the new dictionary is the attention paid to the history of words and their changes in meaning.

Helen Simpson, whose new novel is called "Boomerang," is the wife of Mr. Denis Browne, tho children's surgeon. Her three-year-old daughter is named Clemonce after her godmother, Clemence Dane. A novel and play, both written •in collaboration by Heljen. Simpson and Clemeuco Dane, will be published shortly.

Not many people are aware, probably, that the Poet of Empire, Kipling, has another name in addition to Eudyard. Mr. Kipling's school poems were signed "J.E.K." He occasionally, in early days, used the pen name "Tussuf,'.' which points to "Joseph." The name, in fact, is Joseph.

The case of Mr. William B. McIntosh, librarian of the Aquitania, who has retired after crossing the Atlantic 1300 times, has a certain touch of paradox, for. the function of dispensing books may be monotonous even in a state of perpetual motion. Just as a cabman's is a sedentary occupation, so the man who has covered four million, miles may find that he has lived an unadventurous life.

Lieut.-Colonel de Villamil Js revelation—in his book, "Newton: The Man "--that Sir Isaac Newton was fond ; of 'crimson, and lived in 'an atmosphere of crimson, will be Vof special' interest to modern psychologists* ..It; : will not surprise them, after reading, this, to learn that Newton had io sense of humour, and became irritable towards tho end of his life.

; Professor A. P. Newton is editing a series of lectures on. "The Great Age of Discovery," which will shortly be issued. Besides his introductory essay on,/',The Expansion of the Habitable World," the editor is himself: responsible for 'the paper on " Christopher Columbus and his Eivals." Other .contributors include Professor A. .Pastor, Professor Edgar Prestage, Professor E. G. E. Taylor, and Dr. V. T. Harlow. . ; , ..-.-;

An encyclopaedic work of thirty volumes on Scandinavian culture is being published in. Stockholm under the editorship of Dr. Sigurd Erizon, Keeper of the Northern.Museum. The contributors are chosen from among the leading Scandinavian scholars. To a largo extent the work is being financed by tho Swedish Clara Laehmann Foundation.

"John Halifax, Gentleman," still has friends who read that sterling romance which Mrs. Craik wrote in Victorian' days. A link has been severed with the past, in the little Cotswold town of Amberly, in Gloucester, where at "Eose Cottage" Miss Annie Guild has just passed away. She was the last member of the "little white-haired Tods" who were such endearing characters in Mrs. Craik'a story, and from whom the Guild family were her models. The book was written at "Bose Cottage."