IN BOOKLAND

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 17 March 1928, Page 8

IN BOOKLAND

• The English illuminated manuscript “Til© Miracles of St. Edmund,’.’ from the Holord collection, has been sold for £30,000. It will go to the United States. When it cam© into the possession of a member of the Holford family the price paid was £3OO.

Among memoirs announced by ■Messrs Victor Gollu-uez is “Dickens: A Portrait,” by Ralph Struas. A great deal of unpublished material has been placed at the author’s disposal.

Sir James Rarrie, Mrj Arnold Beunett, 3D. John Galsworthy, and other authors are making a public appeal for funds with which to' purchase Mr. iliontas Hardy’s birthplace at Rockhampton, Dorsetshire, to erect an obelisk on Egdon .Heath, and to establish a Hardy museum at Dorchester. Mr Hardy left an estate valued at £92,000.

Major Segra've, the racing motorist, ■who dares death at 200 miles an hour, has completed a book, which has taken all his spare time in the last two years, describing bis experiments and experiences on Hi© racing track and embodying the conclusions he lias drawn from them. The title is “The Lure of Speed.”

Robinson Crusoe’s Island, Juan Fernandez, has been made the subject of a scientific survey by Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt, of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington, U.S.A.. Dr. Schmitt thinks that Robinson Crusoe w:as to be envied, as the island is one of the mo.- u fruitful spots in South America. “Every imaginable plant seems to grow there,” says D'r. Schmitt. “One Frenchman was shipwrecked on the island 40 years ago. He likes it so much that he refuses to leave.” *

The London “Daily Teleghaph” states that Thomas Hardy’s widow is writing a biography of the author and poet, and another volume of liis verse also' is assured. Mrs. Hardy was married in 1914, being the second wife of the novelist. She is the daughter of Edward Dugdale and the author of many books for children, magazine articles, and reviews. She is a justice of the peace for Dorchester.

Mr. Alfred Hoys, while in a Toronto bookshop recently, looking through some volumes, heard a. pea) of laughter from his vile at the other end of the' shop. Later lie learned the reason. The assistant had come up to her furtively and whispered. “See that gentle man over there? That’s Mr. Alfred Noyes, the poet. 1 dare say if you bought one of his books he might autograph it for you.” “Yes,” she replied, “I expect he would; you see, he’s my husband.

The new English dictionary is practically complete, after more than 40 years of labour, and the whole set will soon be available at a cost of £SO/15/. Among the curiosities of the work is the word “syllabus,” which it seems is not a real word. The credit for this discovery belongs to’ Mr. Onions, the present editor in residence. He has discovered that the real word is “sittvbus.” ft occurred in one of Clicero’s letters, but became corrupted by a copyist into the ‘syllabus” we know so- well.

In the Christmas number of the “Bookman” Dean Inge writes on “Reticence in Fiction.” Discussing the typical modern novel, lie says:

it has, I believe, a very pernicious influence, not by its want of reticence, to which I do not object strongly, but by the mean and sordid view of human nature which it fosters . . . Most earnestly 1 plead for a return to the glorious and wholesome traditions of the English novel. Surely a novelist should select and idealise as a paintei does. There are some things which are too iocan and ugly to paint; and the same is true of human character and the incidents of life. A great imaginative writer should have a worthy view of the meaning and value of life in this world. He should interpret superficial events in the light of this meaning and value. If he has no vision of the eternal values —goodness, truth, and beauty, which give to the flow of events all the substance and permanent reality that they have—let him hold his peace, for -he has nothing to teach us, and bv painting experience in drab and dirty colours he is destroying the- faith, hope, and love which still glow in the hearts of the young, and by which alone this perplexed and troubled generation may hope once more to .set it feet on firm ground. “Where there is no vision the people perished).” To rob the young of their vision is a scurvy trick for anyone who professes to love his country and his fellow-men.

An autographed letter by Burns contraining his famous song “My Love is Like a Red, Ried Rose,” was sold at Sotheby's recently, for 22000, to Mr Walter. Spencer, of Oxford street. .There is another manuscript version in Ibe I fustic Collection in the British Museum. This price was a new record lor a Burns’ 'relic. The poet’s family Bible sold for £ISOO twenty-three years ago, and the highest price paid for a Kilmarnock Ruins was £I7OO in July, 1923. A copy of Kipling’s “Schoolboy Lyrics” "ill go to America priced at £701). That was the final bid of Dr. Rosenbach—that good genie of the impoverished families of Bi'.tain —on the 'same day. Aj few months ago, £-170 was offered in this country fur a first edition copy of Kipling's efforts at Lahore in 1881. tut more recently New York outbid with a final offer of £9OO.

Literary circles in America have recently been imposed upcm by the passing off of a supposed first edition by James Branch Cabell. The forgers have also made attempts to sell the book in England. It takes the form of “Poor Jack,” a. one-act purporting to have been printed at Richmond (Virginia) in 1.906, and is based on the Cabell short story “Love Letters of Falstaff,” published in 1905. The pamphlet numbers 32 pages, and is bound in brown paper. Booksellers in Philadelphia., Washington, and Boston were caught napping, the price generally paid being £l, although evidence of the fraud is to be to tin I in the misquotation cf a passage from Cabell’s “Jurgen,” written as recently as 1918,