LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXIV, Issue 152, 24 December 1932, Page 7

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

' The former Poet Laureate of Egypt, Shawki Bey, has died at Cairo. Herr Ludwig Lang, artistic organiser of the Oberammergau Passion Plays since 1575, has died at the-age-of 88. '■'' The tenth anniversary of the death of Marcel Proust, the famous Erench novelist, is to be marked by the inauguration of an Avenue Marcel' Proust at Autcuil, a suburb of .Paris. Sir Owen Seaman has retired from the editorship of '.'Punch" after a service of twenty-six years in the chair and thirty-five years on the staff. Mr. !E. V. Knox, who has delighted many readers with contributions under the pen-name "Evoe," has been appointed editor. ~ The\ '' Memoirs of Prince Blucher,'' the'eldest great-great-grandson of the famous German who ,'fought at Waterloo, has been edited by his wife, an Englishwoman. "The Prince, after his return to England after the War, gave it as his opinion that England and Germany are the only countries iii Europe the co-operation of which can bring an everlasting peace. He died at Bournemouth last yfear.; '~ / Mr, Hugh Walpole recently recommended .that "Marius the Epicurean" should be rea*-" page by page and word by ; .word./' > "Speaking for'ourselves," 'Lord-David -Cecil irpjiically comments, '"wejljaye found,this-tSeimost desirable plan in reading :any .book.' .To read alternate pages and every, fifth word only leads tp.confusion..".;)^ ~.,,' , : ,1:, , Mr. ';'. Com.pton .Mackenzie's' ,'book, ' 'Gree^E _Mom6i'ies,_" was published one day and'/vfithdfa^vn on the,Jnext.' Such copies as'-ljavVfqund theiriway.-ihto circulation willv'€e'|ome;ya|ii;iis(.' Several books have been'suddenly-with drawn of recent years,1 some> Of them being1 irecalled even from reviewers: -A collection of such barred, books.would indeed be something worth having. • An apparently apocryphal but characteristic story of Queen Victoria is told by Doris Arthur Jones (Mrs. Thoi;ne), the daughter -of Henry Arthur.Jones, the. dramatist, in her book "What a Life!":— ■■'■■ . ' ■...-. I;-^ ; t'i One of the Queen's ladies-in-waitirig oncesaid.to her: "Think, ma'am, when we i|ie and go to1 heaven how /beautifu] it .".Will bo not only to see'tfur loved ones,- but the great figures of the Bible, Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, and' David, the sweet, singer of the-Lord."' There was a long pause, and the Queen said firmly: "I will not meet David." In her "Adventures of "a Novelist" Miss Gertrude Atherton gives an example of Mr. Winston Churchill's repartee. After he had left the Conservatives to become a Liberal, Mr. Churchill was taking a young lady in to dinner, when she looked up at him coquettishly and said: "There are two things I don't like about you, Mr. Churchill:?' '. "Oh, indeed,, and pray what are they?" "Your new politics and your new moustache." "My dear young lady,"' Teplied- Mr.•-■- Churchill suavely, "pray don't disturb yourself. You are not likely to come into contact with either." , The area on the; south-of the Thames between Blackfriars and, Southward, which the L.C.C. proposes to. clear for the erection of modern flats, contains many literary associations. Here stood the Marshalsea Prison,,where Dickens used to visit his father and afterwards immortalised in "Little Dorrit," and the district is mentioned iii "David Copperfield," "Barnaby Rudge," and elsewhere. ' In Borough High street, too, was the Tabard Inn, from which Chaucer's pilgrims set out on their way'to Canterbury. ,The old Tabard was burnt down in 1676, and an inn called the Talbot took its place. And in a Bankside street Shakespeare lodged in IGO9. Mr. Sinclair Lewis has not published a novel since ho was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1030. His new novel '' Ann Vickers'' will, therefore be looked for with intense- interest. • It will be published "in England during January simultaneously with publications in America, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Italy, Japan, and Russia. We imagine that no other novelist has ever achieved simultaneous publication in so many languages. "Babbitt," "Martin Arrowsmith," "Elmer Gantry," and "Dodsworth," Mr. Lewis's four previous best sellers, all have a man as their central character. Now he has written a novel about a woman. "Ann Vickers" portrays the modern business woman, the social worker, the successful feminist whose development and emancipation is one of the most striking phenomena of the last thirty years.