LITEEARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 96, 20 October 1934, Page 24

LITEEARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Mr. Hampden Gordon, who is writing the volume on the War Office in Putnam's "Whitehall Series," is a fifth great-grandson of John Hampden.

A new novel, with the fantastic title "Tea-tray in tho Sky," is by Mr. Graham. Shepard, son of Mr. Ernest H. Shepard, the illustrator of A. A. Milne books. ■

A first edition of Boswell's "Elegy on the Death of an Amiable Young Lady" (1761), was recently sold in London for £60. Only two copies of this "Elegy" are known.

. A street in Leipzig has been named after Karl Baedeker, the originator of the famous guide-books. Horr Baedeker was a native of Leipzig, and his publishing business is still carried on there.

Miss Margaret Kennedy is to receive £7000, plus royalties, for the film rights of "Escapo Me Never." Tho film rights of the play, "Clive of India," by B. J. Minney and W. P..Lipscomb, have also been sold for £7000.

Inv "Victoria the Widow and Her Son" Mr. Hector Bolitho denies the often-repeated story that when Victoria, as Princess, learned for the first time that she would be Queen, she said to her governess: "I will be ' good." The Queen herself, questioned about the story, declared: "Of- course I, never said such. a thing! How could I?".

According to Bobert Lynd, one of the great blessings we owe to the invention of-tvriting and printing is that they enabled men to enjoy an author's works without having to come into personal contact with him. It is a charming experience to meet authors outside their books; but we do not want them to read them aloud to us.

"Everest, 1933," is the curt and yet expressive title of Mr. Hugh Buttledge's book, published by Messrs. Hodder'and Stoughton. It is tho thrilling story of the fourth attempt, and Mr. Buttledge was the leader of the expedition. They failed, and. Everest is still unbeaten. There is a chapter by Mr. F. S. Smythe describing his experiences when, quite alone, he reached the'highest point ever reached by man.

Three novels and several" repertory plays had been written by Mr. James Lansdale Hodsou before his new novel, "Harvest in the North," was published. This book is, a study of times of boom in Lancashire, followed by depression. Mr. Hodson was born at Hazelhurst, in Lancashire, in 1891. His previous novels are "Grey Dawn —Bed Night," treating of war experiences; "Tall Chimneys," and "North Wind."

A London message announces the death of Mr. Archibald Marshall, aged 68 years. In addition to writing^ a number of novels, Mr. Marshall. was an author of biographies and of other work, including the humour of "Simple Stories" in "Punch." He visited the Commonwealth and wrote a descriptive book, "Sunny Australia." Mr. Marshall married in 1902 Helen, daughter of the late Mr. Joseph Pollard, of Queensland.

In a letter of 1925, published in "H.H.A.," Lord Oxford wrote of Dean Inge: "We have had-at lunch the Dean of St. Paul's and his wife. He is a strange, isolated figure, with all the culture in tho world, and a curiously developed gift of expression, but with kinks and twists, both intellectual and temperamental, which make him too freakish to be a real power. But he is tho only ecclesiastic in these days who is really interesting.".

The following books were in demand in London last month: —Fiction: H. A. Vaehell's "The Old Guard Surrenders," Edward Shanks's "Tom Tiddler's Ground," E. F. Benson's "Bavens' Brood," Francis Brett Young's " This Little World." Miscellaneous: Lilo Linke's "Tale Without End," Glorney Bolton's "The Tragedy of Gandhi," Count Hermann Keyset-ling's "Problems of-Personal Life," "The Old School," edited by Graham Greene.

In discussion of the finding of a Shakespeare folio with annotations, it is recalled that Mrs. Humphrey Ward met in Spain in 1883 Senor Gayangos, who in youth visited a librarian at an old "palace" in VaJladolid. He saw there among a pile of eld books laid aside for destruction a Shakespeare volume, dated 1623, in excellent preservation and copiously annotated in a seventeenth-century hand. The book, he learned, bad belonged to Count Gondemar, himself a man of letters, who arrived in England three years before Shakespeare's death. On reaching England Senor Gayangos mentioned the matter to Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps and others. He was implored to return to Spain to rescue the treasure. But the library had been cleared, the librarian was uncommunicative, and no trace of the volume was to be found. It had, no doubt, been burned with the rest.