THE LUCK OF FAME

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 41, 16 August 1941, Page 15

THE LUCK OF FAME

If a modern Isaac Disraeli, were collecting the curiosities of literature, he would surely note the odd fashion in which a book sometimes comes into prominence. "Lorna Doone," for instance, caught the attention of the British public through the accident, that its appearance happened to synchronise with the wedding of the Marquess of Lome and one of Queen \ Victoria's daughters. People got it into their heads that Blackmore's novel had something to do with this marriage, and it had a big sale. Another example is just reported from the United States The title of Ernest Hemingway's latest work, of which half a million copies have been sold, is a quotation from one of John Donne's sermons—"For Whom the Bell Tolls." An immediate result of the popularity of his novel has been a run on copies of Donne's writings. The New York publisher of a one-volume edition of Donne sold out within a few days a stock of this edition that would ordinarily have sufficed for a whole yeai