LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIV, Issue 69, 18 September 1937, Page 26

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

The Irish Academy of Letters has awarded the Harmsworth Purse of £100 for the best work of imaginative prose published last year to Miss Margaret O'Leary, for her novel, "The House-I Made."

As a contribution towards the celebrations of the anniversary of the Emperor Augustus, Dr. Alex Munthe has given his villa at Anacapri, "San Michele," which figures in his book, "The Story of San Michele," to the Italian Government.

Arrangements for giving prizes for the best poems written about the centenary of New Zealand in 1940 were considered at the last meeting 'of the Akaroa Borough Council. The Mayor (Mr. F. R. E. Davis) suggested that a prize should be given for the best centenary poem to be submitted before March, 1938. He had already offered prizes for pupils of the Akaroa District High School for a similar competition. Conditions for the competition will be drawn up at the next ineeting of the council.

English books are proving popular in the United States at the moment, says the London diarist of the "Evening Standard." The most remarkable evidence of this is that "Gone With the Wind" has dropped to second place among best-selling novels, and Virginia Woolfs "The Years" takes the lead. Somerset Maugham's "Theatre" is challenging "Gone With the Wind" strongly. Noel Coward's autobiography, "Present Indicative," presses it hard, and Geoffrey Dennis's "CSronation Commentary" is being widely read.

Everyone who writes a book about himself, says Desmond McCarthy, has first to decide whether he will set down only those things he could say to a roomful of people, or those he could tell only to his .friends, or those also that he would find it hard to tell even them. In-other words, is the book to ■be his reminiscences, his autobiography, or his confession? The value of a man's reminiscences, adds Mr. McCarthy, depends on the interest of the events in which he has taken part and of the people he has known; of his autobiography on the interest of his own character in relation to them; of his confessions, on the intensity of his inner life.

On leaving Cambridge, Sir Hugh Walpole spent some time as a master at Epsom College before starting on a writing career. This year he was invited to distribute the prizes at the anunal speech day. Recalling his early connection with the school, he mentioned that he left it in order to write his first novel, "The Wooden Horse." This book caused great indignation at Epsom. He received letters threatening that, if he came back, he would be thrown into a horse pond, and an order was issued that any boy caught reading the book would be severely punished. "It is a little commentary on life," remarked Sir Hugh, "and perhaps a little pathetic, to discover now that no one at the school, appears to remember that book."

John Farrow, author of "Damien the Leper," recently published by Sheed and Ward, was born in Australia, the descendant of an ancient Norfolk family which traces its descent back to Norman times. He was educated privately and unconventionally in England and on the .Continent, has been a soldier and a sailor, and has served through two South American revolutions. The South Seas are more familiar to him than any other part of the world, for he has traded iv the Islands and cruised among them in his own schooner. He has been a member of several exploring expeditions, and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. At present he is a film director in Hollywood.