IN BOOKLAND

Hawera Star, Volume XLVII, 28 July 1928, Page 18

IN BOOKLAND

Mr. Lloyd Osbourne, .Robert Louis Stevenson’s stepson, has written a new novel to which lie has given tlie challenging title, “Not To Re Opened.” A number of unpublished letters of Robert I.ouis Stevenson have just been discovered. Most of them are addressed to Sir Sidney Colvin, Stevenson’s literary executor. Much new material has been utilised by Edmund Blunden in “Leigh Hunt’s ‘Examiner’ Examined.” “Policing the Top of tlie World,” by Herbert Patrick Lee, will relate the experiences of a private in the Canadian 'Mounted Police within 400 miles of tlie North Pole. The second volume of Count Gorti’s “ House of Rothschild,” covering the period from 1830 to 1922, will he published simultaneously in German and titiglish before the end of the year. Dent’s are planning an OutwardBound Library, which will present hid, intimate and up-to-date accounts of the life of European residents under post-war conditions in the British colonies. It will open with “Tlie Australian Bush,” by Mary E. Fullterton, and “The New Zealanders,” by Hector Bolitho.

Mr. J. D. Gregory, who recently left the Foreign Office over the “francs” case is reported to be writing a volume of reminiscences.

Dickens will be the central iigure in in a novel, “This Side Idolatry” (Mills) which has been written by “Ephesian,” the author of lively biographies of Lord Birkenhead and Winston Churchill.

The .story of the final collapse of the German monarchy and the birth of the Republic is told by the last Chancellor of tlie German Empire, Prince Max of Baden, in a couple of volumes which will be published soon. The author, who held office during the chaos of the revolution, devotes much space to those days of catastrophe. He reviews his term of office, recalls the “weaknesses” of his conduct, and attempts generally to explain the cross-purposes and indefiniteness winch prevailed in his own party, and, to a certain extent, in his own mind.

Messrs John Long, Ltd., London, will include among their autumn publications the first novel of Mr. Monte Holcroft, a Christchurch journalist. A suitable title has not yet been found, but New Zealanders are promised a vigorous story, with action and suspense. and an unusual psychological study. The setting is in the South Seas, hut Mr. Holcroft has departed from the conventional atmosphere ancl deic ops a most original plot. Most o: Mr. Holcroft’s literary work lias been done in Sydney, where he spent some years in journalism. Since his Return to New Zealand he has been attached to the literary staff of a Christchurch paper.

Tlie title of “The Best Theatre Stories,” published by the Richards Press, suggests a- feast of good things. One of them is a- story of Sir Henry Irving at a rehearsal in the Lyceum. Irving criticised the thunderclaps heard while a storm scene was being rehearsed. “That won’t do. Not a bit like it,” he cried. “Excuse me, • Sir ’Enry,” said one of the property hands, “but I wasn’t rattling the sheet just then. That ’appened to be the genuine thunder outside.” “Quite probably,” replied Sir Henry, ‘‘but the Almighty’s thunder is not necessarily good enough for tlie Lyceum!”