IN BOOKLAND

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 7 January 1928, Page 16

IN BOOKLAND

Miss Rosemary llees, the New Zealand authoress and actress, has written another novel of New Zealand life, entitled "Wild Heart.” It is appearing as a serial in London, and will be published in book form in March.

A contributor to “The .“ Passing Show” (London) is not surprised ,to learn that Mr. Edgar Wallace/ writer of many stories ot. mystery, employs the dictaphone extensively in the making of his fiction,, and ' also that his secretariat includes a champion stenographer who lias won gold medals for speed. Mr. Wallace has been known to turn out 80,00.) words in six days. Mr. Compton Mackenzie, who is the editor of the "Gramophone,” says in a recent i?me of that journal that one of the ra.ost of modern records is that of James Joyce leading passages from nis “Ulysses.”

The literature of the English tavern has been enriched by “The Book of the Inns,” a collection ot 200 extracts trom prose and verse describing the Englisn inn irom the earliest times to :he coming oi tne railway hotel. Mr. Thomas Burice, the compiler, ma’de his reputation with “Ldmehouse Nights,” alter having devoted several months to exploring the recesses ot London’s Chinatown.

At the request of the Pasteur Institute, writes Mr. Eerdinand Ossendowski in “The Breath of the Desert,” tlie Trench authorities have forbidden monkey-hunting in. their colonies. Prior to this prohibition the Kabyles exterminated them because of the great damage they wrought in their fields. Now they are forced to adopt >i difierent course of procedure. Catching a monkey in a trap ; they sow on him a red vest with little bells attached and then elfe him loose. The unfortunate monkey hastens to his home, but his fellow-creatures, scared by the strange appearance of their Kinsman, flee from him so persistently that the district is soon relieved of their undesirable presence.

Mr. Upton Sinclair riots in words when he contemplates the odious rich. This passage from his ‘‘Oil” reads like a carefully manufactured and adequately lacquered outburst of temper: Large-waisted financiers with crumpled shirt fronts, hugging stout wives or slender mistresses, with naked backs and half-naked bosoms hung with diamonds and pearls, red paint plastered on their lips and platinum bangles in their ears, shuffling round and icund to the thump of the tomtom, the wail of the saxophone, the rattle and clatter of sticks, the banging of bells, and snarl of stopped trumpets. “She does the camel-walk I” shrilled the singer; and the hip and buttock muscles of the large-waisted financier would be alternately contracted and relaxed, and his feet dragged about the floor in the incoordinate reactions of locomotor ataxia and spastic paraplegia.

It is good to hear of the probable acquisition of Oakwell Hali, Birstall, as national property (says . a “Daily Chronicle” writer). It is a delightful old place, pleasantly situated, with tradilions gioing back through Tudor to Norman times. In addition, it is ,'amous as the original of “Fieldhead,” in Charlotte Bronte’s “Shirley,” Birstall there figuring as “Briarfield.” The last time I saw the hall it still . preserved the interior note of “pinkywhite” and the panelling to which Charlottee alludes. But. though I scrutinised every diamond pane, I could not discover that one on which it was alleged the great novelist had scratched her name.

Mr. Jjohn Galsworthy, in “The Book Window,” gives to an interviewer his list of 12 greatest works of fiction in the world. The opinion was prompted by Arnold Bennett’s dictum that the 12 greatest novels were written by Russians. With this Mr Galsworthy would not agree, great lover as he is of the Russians. This is his list: Cervantes: “Don Quixote.” Tolstoi: “War and Peace. 1 “Anna Karenina.” Dostoievsky: “Brothers Karamazov.’" Turgenev: “Fathers and Children.” ‘ "Smoke. ’ ’ Dickens: “Pickwick Papers.” “David Copperfield.” Dumas: “Three Musketers ’ series; or the ‘ ‘Reine Margot” series. Mark Twain: “Tom Sawyer.” “Huckleberry Finn.’Thackeray: “Vanity Fair.” A memorial panel in the porch of the village hall at Bishopsbourne, near Canterbury (England), erected by friends and admirers throughout the world as a tribute to Joseph Conrad, was unveiled in October by Mr R. B. Cunninghame Graham. Among the subscribers to the memorial were Loi-d Balfour, Mr. Thomas Hardy, Mr. Bernard .Shaw. Mr. Rudyard lvipling, Mr. John Galsworthy, Mr. Stanley Weyman, Mr Arnold Bennett, and Mr. Hugh Walpole, Canon Aslxton-Gwatkin said that, as Conrad helped them substantially with the erection of the village hall, it was felt that the most suitable memorial to his memory was an open-air loggia, with seats at the entrance to the hall, where the villagers#,could sit and talk and smoke, and the wayfaring man could find a rest — a kind of imormal village centre such as might have provided the opening chapter to one of Conrad’s own stories. Mr. H. It. Dent, "Conrad’s publisher, had subscribed £SO for the medallion portrait of Conrad.

A .controvery in the London Bookman upoji. Edgar Allan Poe’s* 1 title to be regarded as a genius provoked a discussion upon over-rated looks in English literature. Air Robert Lynd, the essayist- , wrote unhestitatingly: “Four that occur to my mind are ‘Moby Dick,’ Doughty’s Arabia Peserta,’ the poetry of Dryden, and Christopher Smart’s ‘Song to David.’ I am sure all these are works of genius but they seem to me to have been given a rather higher place among works of genius than they deserve.” Miss Marjorie Bowen, the short story writer said: “Man?" living women writers could do better ‘Jane Eyre’— who can lorgive St. John and Rochestei —and what romantic novelist of the present day but could do better with the gorgeous plot of ‘The Bride of Lammermoor’ than Scott? Jane Austen seems to me very over-rated, but I am forced ho believe that this is a matter of personal dislike!”