LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 110, 11 May 1935, Page 24

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

A portrait of Hans^ Andersen is to' appear on Danish stamps this summer to mark the centenary of his first book. Mr. Lloyd George has decided to conclude his War Memoirs with the fifth volume, which will probably appear in the autumn. Mrs. Sarah Gertrude Millan, the South African novelist, is writing a biography of General Smuts. He has given her much of the material. - The first volume will. appear early next year. In Eobert Lynd's opinion it is belter to find a number of books, re-readable and to read them again and again than to find everything readable and to read nothing more than once. A number of letters written by Sir Walter Scott to Charlotte Carpenter, his future wife, have been discovered in a secret drawer in a desk at Abbotsford. Previously it had been thought that Scott burned the correspondence. Having dealt with the private lives of the bee and the ant, Count Maurice Maeterlinck, the seventy-three-year-old Belgian author, has now turned to the Water Spider and a bird. His new book is called "Pigeons and Spiders." Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, sick of being a rich American, left his money and home and tried to make a living as a journalist. He failed. Messrs. Gollancz are now about to publish his. autobiography, "Farewell to Fifth Avenue," in which this story appears, among many others, in his experiences. \ "We' Have Been Warned" is Mrs. Naomi Mitchison's title for her first novel to be set in modern times. Those who have followed her work will not be surprised that it is a powerfully provocative novel of a political theme. It is set in Oxford, in an industrial part, in 1931-33. Parts of the action also take place in Russia and on the west coast of Scotland. The publishers, will be Messrs. Constable. The following books were in demand m London at the beginning of MarchFiction—Helen Simpson's" "Saraband for Dead Lovers," Josephine Johnson's .£? w,j? Nwember," William Saroyan's The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze," R. F. Minney's "Distant Drums.1' Miscellaneous— Desmond MacCarthy's "Experience," W. F. Chamberhn's "Russia's Iron Age," C. V. d>ofL^ ord'" Deaa^ >s _ There were 1156-books published in Great Britain in January, 1935. In the same month last year there were 966 books published.. At the end of the first month, therefore, this year sees an increase over last year's figures by nearly 200 books. This is the first year in which the January output has exceeded 1000 books. According to the president of the American National Association of Book Publishers the sales of books in the United States in 1934 were from 10 to 20 per cent, better than in 1933. An "AH Nations Prize Novel Competition" has been arranged by leading publishers of the United States, Great Britain, France, Spain,' Hungary, Italy Czechoslovakia, Holland, Denmark' Norway, Sweden, and Germany.. The competition opened on April 30 of this year, and will continue for. twelve months. The total amount of the prize will be some thousands of pounds The conditions .include a guarantee that the twinning novel will be published simultaneously in every competing country. Messrs. Ivor Nicholson and Watson will have the English, rights Mr. Hugh Walpole is chairman of the judging committee.