LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXVII, Issue 76, 31 March 1934, Page 16

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Schoolchildren in Canton, China, have been, forbidden by the education authorities to read fairy tales or "stories tending to arouse superstition."

Ilorr Ludwig Eouh, author of a striking novel called "War," has been imprisoned in Germany for writing an article "tending to corrupt 'army and police discipline."

Bristol seems to havo produced a rival to tho late Edgar AVallace in prolificness. Mr. James Corbctt has just had three novels accepted: he wrote them all, it is said, in three weeks. And now ho is engaged on seven more!

Amoug-recent gifts to the Bodleian Library,.Oxford, are the original typescript of James Elroy" Flecker >s "Hassan" and a copy of the first American edition of "Alice in Wonderland, " printed in New York in 1866.

Tho longest of recent novels, Anthony Adverse," was written on a plantation in Bermuda, where the author, Mr. Heryey Allen, lived for five years. As part of a varied life Mr. Allen, has been an instructor, at Columbia and Vassar-Universities.

. A memorial. to Charles Darwin is to be erected on Chatham Island, in the Galapagos Archipelago. ,■ It w.ill: mark the hundredth anniversary of Darwin's visit to the islands-in the Beagle.

: Knut Hamsun, the Norwegian novelist, ia in his seventy-fourth year, and ho has been writing for fifty years' His new.riovel, "ThoEbad Leads On " relates to V'Segelfoss Town," of which ho has written in other, volumes.

A novel Eussian view is that some of Shakespeare's plays can bo used as Communist propaganda, v" " Twelfth Night" has been chosen' ■ for the Moscow Arts, U'h'.eatro /as .a; powerful challenge to ''.saJietimonious bourgeois prudery." \' v ??"^ V-••.■,,

_ M-- Eric Linklater; whose new'novel is "Magnus Merrirhan,-'.' was wounded at the ago of'eighteen when \he was a private in the Black Watch. He enlisted three years earlier, but his age was discovered, and he was returned to school. Mr. Linklater has had experience as a medical student in Aberdeen, as an assistant editor in India, and as a lecturer _pn literature in Britain and America, He revealed the other-day that if he had not been short-sighted ho would have taken to the sea as a profession. His father and maternal grandfather were both master mariners. ... . .

■ vlt? is noted by, "Everyman" that the most^obvious characteristic of 1933 in literature was the increase in topical publications. The Nazi revolution lea to ; ,the production of many books on Germany.\,^<'The most sensational of these was *.■' The Brown ■ Book of the Hitler Terror/ the real value of which §*f, m, a?red by its propagandist tone. Hitler's' Mem Kampf ' appeared, somewhat mangled, in an. authorised translation.','- Among novels relating to loung Germany were "I Face the btars," by Geoffrey Moss, and "Little Man, What Now?" by Hans Fallada.

The Keats Museum at Hampstead, near London, has just been enriched by the gift of a miniature which was in the room iii Rome where Keats died, and was. frequently seen and handled by the poet, who admired it greatly This, is a picture of the father, mother, three sisters, and two brothers of the artist, Joseph Severn, who, as Dr. Gebrgo C. "Williamson states in his "Notes on the Severn Family," painted it in 1820 to take with him when he le^t.England, "with, Keats; for Naples in the. September of-that year. It is, therefore, one of the few links that remain connecting us with Keats's last journey. Apart from its " association" interest, it "is'a-fin© example of tho miniaturists's art, but has never been exhibited before. It has now been presented to the Hampstoad Corporation- for the Keats Museum, through the National Art Collections Fund, by three great-grandchildren of the artist, Mrs. Mary Unwin, Mrs. "Winifred Brooke, and Mr. Severn Stony' who have also recently . given eight, copies of old masters painted in Italy by Joseph Severn shortly after Keats's death. '

It was long ago discovered that' Cinderella's slipper was of fur and not of glass. The error of translation was probably due to a misunderstanding in dictation, the word "vair" being written as 'Vverre." In his "Eomanee of the Shoe/ Mr. Thomas "Wright claims that it is now proved that the original Cinderella was nq ragged slave with a mop and pail, but was ■ a captivating girl 'although a servant. Mr. "Wright's version of the story begins in 610 B.G, when Khodope was a fellow servant of Aesop the fabulist. Tiring of her position, and longing for brighter and better things, she drifted to Egypt. Thore tno .eligible young men of her day made A c*. Pjesents of: huge emeralds, With which"- she adorned her fur shoes. The shoes glittered brightly. An /eagle swooped down one- day ; ,while- she was bathing, and carried away one' of the shoes;, taking it to the King of Memphis.- .-. The/king-. was astonished at the fcmallness" of the shoe, and, like the fairy prince, ordered a search for its owner to be at once.' -