LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXVIII, Issue 31, 5 August 1939, Page 20

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

The residue of Lord Rosebery's library, sold by Christie's on March 30, included a fine copy of the first edition of Bolderwood's "Robbery Under Arms," three volumes, 1888, which sold for the surprisingly high figure of £66. Mr. Winston Churchill's "Arms and the Covenant," which has had only a moderate success in England, has been published triumphantly in the United States, The American publishers renamed the book "While England Slept." Objectionable books found In Leitrim (Eire) Council Public Library are to be burned in public. This decision was taken last month, when Mr. Andrew Mooney said that a book by an English author, circulated by the Leitrim Library Committee, was "one of the most ihiriioral productions I have ever got hold of." Two new volumes-are to .come from the pen of J. B. Priestley shortly. One, a novel, will bear the title "Let the People Sing.", The- other will be a sequel to Mr. Priestley's Riasterly book of reflections on life arid literature, "Midnight in the ,Desert." Messrs. Heinemann are the publishers. A new edition of Mr. John Parker's "Who's Who in the Theatre," will be published by Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. The new work will have 2000 pages, against the 775 pages of ' the first issue in 1912. Four hundred new biographies have been added, bringing the total to more than 3000. A quarter of a million newsagents want an official censorship of literature, says a London paper. Last month at Margate the conference of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, Booksellers, and Stationers unanimously approved a resolution urging the placing on the Government of the onus of banning obnoxious literature. Mr. Max Beerbolm, who is to become Sir Max at the age of 66, has so j mellowed with age that his pen and pencil have lost their venom. It is ten years since he published either prose or drawings. :. He is, however, j working on a book which, if it is ever finished, is likely to prove his most outstanding work. It appears from the Prussian Bible Society that, in spite of- the official insistence that every house shall have its copy of "Mem Kampf," the Bible is still the best-seller in Germany. Sales of the Scriptures are stated to have outnumbered those of the Fuhrer's book by some 200,000 copies in the course of a year. In view :of the international use of English and the part the 8.8.C. might play, suggested by "Quivis" recently in these columns, it is interesting to note that in "America Now," an inquiry into civilisation in the United States by thirty-six Americans, just published, one contributor speaks of the American radio announcers' "standardised unctuous pronunciation which they chose to call 'cosmopolitan English,'" and says that American announcers have been called more English than the English, and that "many Britishers heard on the air—the late King George V was a notable example—sounded more like Americans than Britishers." The idea will be new to most listeners to broadcasts.