LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 17, 20 January 1934, Page 20

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

M. Ivan Buuin, the Russian author, who has been awarded the 1933 Nobel Prize for Literature, is rolated to both Tolstoy and Tur'geniev.

Mr. Siegfried Sassoon, the , author and poet, is shortly to become engaged to Miss Hester Gatty, daughter of the la'to Sir Stephen Gatty. Mr. Sassoon *s "Memoirs of a Foxhunting Man" won the Hawthornden Prize in 1929.

1 In the nine months ended October 30 the total number of books published in Great .Britain.'was 12,521. Fiction is at the head of the list with 3989; "children's books and minor fiction" next with 1254, followed by educational (847) and religion and theology (701).

Sir Philip Gibbs, whose "Tho Cross of Peace" has "just been published, is an author who can write under almost any conditions. Noise does not distract him in-the least—probably this is due to x his long training in Fleet Street and as a war correspondent.

Dickens first appeared in print as an author in the "Monthly Magazine," December, 1833, with a story called "Dinner at Poplar Walk," which he included under a different name iii "Sketches by Boz." It has now been reprinted as "Dickens: Positively the First Appearance," by Mr. Harvey Darton, the publisher, a great authority upon Dickens, and has been published by the Argonaut Press.

The "Bookseller" (London) understands that Mr. John, Masefield, the Poet Laureate, will sign copies of his books, and will inscribe on the flyleaf a line of his poetry, if the books are sent to him. accompanied by an offering of half a guinea. The money thus obtained will go to his fund for taking unemployed lads off the road an,d givng them , a fresh start ,in life.

The literary deaths' during 1933 include the following:—George Moore, George Saintsbury, and John Galsworthy, all in. January; E. Temple Thurstbn, T. Earle Welby, and J. M. Robertson, in March; Anthony Hope (July); Alfred Sutro and Mrs. A. M. Williamson (September); Sir John Fortescue (October), Augustine Birrell (November), and Stella Benson (December). ■■•■■■■■'. ':'. :

If the extraordinary interest now being taken in the life of Henry VIII, private and public, extends to his home at Hampton Court, which he received from Wolsey, the description of that lovely and stately, pleasaunce in Mr H N Wethered's new "Short History of Gardens" should be found very -instructive. Probably there are fewer changes there since the great Tudor's day than in any other garden of that time. .

In 1892 there appeared a three-volume novel entitled "Fan;" by an unknown author who called himself Henry Harford. It was a dead failure, and. Kwas duly "pulled," but a few copies survived. One, an ex-library copy in good condition; was picked up-a few years ago in a second-hand bookshop for ninepence. Subsequently it passed through various hands, and the other day was sold in London for £150. "For "Henry Harford" wUs W. H. Hudson.

A, well-known writer of [ books for young people, Mrs. E. E. Cowper, died recently in England at the age of 73. One of her sons is in New Zealand, and her eldest son, Mr. Frank Cadogan Cowper, is an A.R.A. Mts. Cowper wrote over a.score of popular'books, among the most^uccessful of which we're "The Moonrakers/* a tale of smuggling in Hampshire, and, "The House '■'.. with Dragon Gates." Her first book, a story with a New Forest setting, was published before she was twenty years of age; her last book—"The'Girls of Mystery Gorge"—was published last year,

One of Mark Twain's most famous jokes was his advice to a young man who wrote to ask if it was true that eating .fish was-good for the* brain, Mark Twain replied that it was, and recommended a whale. Less frivolously tho proverbalist has. stated that to acquire wit one should eat watercress, and now comes a medical man, Dr. Louis Berman, with a whole book on the subject, "Food and Character," seriously contending that by a wise choice of articles of consumption we can improve both our minds and hearts.

, A first folio Shakespeare, that had been in the family of Major Harcourt Vernon from shortly after its publication, was sold in London recently for £2800. It is slightly defective. The record price of £14,500 was paid by Dr. .Rosenbach for the late Lord Bosebery's copy. At the same sale an apparently unrecorded edition of "Pilgrim 's Progress,'' printed in Edinburgh in 1683, fetched £125. A French six-teenth-century "Book of Hours,".with t orty^three miniatures, went for £800.

There is an allusion to General Gordon's knowledge of Eastern customs in "Freeman of Stamboul," by Professor Freeman, who died in Melbourne while his book was in the press. Gordon asked the author:1 "How did the disciples know which man carrying a pitcher of water to follow in the whole city of Jerusalem?" Gordon had to supply the answer: "For the very simple rea»on that no man ever carries drinking water in Jerusalem. It's a woman 'a job." This, the author adds, was perfectly true; but no one would ever have thought of it except a genius liko Gordon. . •