MISLEADING BOOK TITLES.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 27 November 1924, Page 3

MISLEADING BOOK TITLES.

TRAPS FOR THE UNWARY. ' « , “Here’s another hook back with a letter of complaint!” growled a bookseller the other day. “ ‘Queens’ Gardens’ again. The woman who ordered -t says that she thought it was a book about, gardening— not ‘ improving essays. That has happened more times chan I can remember.” ' ; " “Ruskin,” lie continued, “is the worst offender among the perpetrators of misleading titles. Ruskin seemed to specialise in them: The most notorious trap was volume, ‘Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds,’ which, far from any technical interest for fanners, is a plea for the! reconciliation of Protestants and Papists. Naturalists have ordered ‘The Eagle’s Nest,’ economists have ordered ‘Kings Treasuries,’ geologists have ordered ‘Stones of Venice,’ gardeners,ordered ‘Queens’ Gardens’ and ‘Sesame and Lilies’—only to find that, they are treatises on subjects quite- other than what they purport to deal with.” Purley’s “Diversions” has ‘‘taken in” ‘ nan y people who , never expected to •ihd it a very stodgy old book of gra-m----mar brightened up with Latin notes. ‘lrish Bulbs,” bv Edgeworth, and •‘Yeast,” by Charles Kingsley, have cooled many a farmer; and printers nave sent postal orders for McEwen’s ‘On the Types”—only to discover that the work, far from' having any technical, interest for them, is a hook of sermons. At one time there was quite a run m “Urban Bees” by city dwellers who thought they would like to. raise their awn honey. Sad was their disillusionment when they found it consisted of a oiography of once celebrated Romans who flourished under the pontificate of Pope Urban 11., whose, family device was' a bee-. Ouida’s “Moths”' has always been, and probably will always be, in steady demand at free libraries .among boy naturalists, as is Besant’s ‘Golden Butterfly.” Stephen Leacock’s ‘‘Behind the Beyond” has appeared in the travel sections oFybooksellers’ catalogues, and a tatalogiie once got so confused between folin Stuart Mill, the philosopher-eco-nomist, and George Eliot’s “Mill on the Floss” as to contain an entry:— Mill on Representative Government, and ditto on The Floss. “Aggravating Ladies” is another j ■ryptic title. Few people would guess that it .was merely Ralph Thomas’s list ind description of 150 books of last .entury, the authoriship of which was iiionymo'usly attributed merely to “A Lady.’’ Few book buyers again would guess that ‘‘Hobson Jobson” (by Dr. Burnell uid Colonel Yule) was the am using title of a very weighty and efficient glossary of Anglo-Indian words and phases.—“ John o’ London’s Weekly.