BASE BOOKS.

Manawatu Times, Volume LXV, Issue 1901, 22 April 1913, Page 6

BASE BOOKS.

HAGGARD'S ABHORRENCE.

MOSTLY BY WOMEN.

Frees Asm—By Telegraph—Copyright Sydney, April 21.

I Speaking at the Journalists' Association supper, Sir Rider Haggard I said he would not recommend any I young man to take up the practice of j writing. It was a heartbreaking trade. The very greatest names of [ the generation were quickly for- ; gotten. Therefore, he was proud to j know that the books he wrote thirty | years ago were selling better to-day j than when they came out. | Condemning base books, which, he was sorry to say, were mostly written by women —who, if they quite understood what they were doing would turn off the tap—Sir Rider declared that nothing wa« easier to write than books of that sort. He would undertake to write a book that would sell by hundreds of thousands, and yet avoid the law. "Not for a million pounds would I do it," he added. Explaining his reasons for turning farmer, Sir Rider said he came to a time when he was not with his output of Actional aud imaginative matter, and when he thought he would .like to do something practical in the world—something that would affect those who followed —he resolved to devote himself to preaching to the peoples of th# world that their safety lies only upon the land. If people desert the land for the cities, so surely will they bring upon the world the prophecy of their own doom.