£4000 Prize for a Novel

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7240, 21 August 1933, Page 2

£4OOO Prize for a Novel

A 26-year-old Scottish girl has won a £4OOO prize for a novel —her first — which she wrote in secret. Not even her parents knew she thought of writing it, and she has not told them of her success. They will first know of it, states a Scottish paper, when they read their newspaper. The writer is Miss Janet Beith, daughter of Mr. Donald Beith, managing director of the Manchester and County Bank, Sho has entitled her novel, "No Second Spring.” The prize, awarded by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, Ltd., of London, and tho Frederick A. Stokes Company, of New York, is the biggest ever offered for a novel. Miss Beith saw an advertisement, of the competition on the jacket of a novel. She sent off the manuscript secretly. The book will bo published simultaneously in Britain and the United States. After teaching hours, at Bcnenden, in Kent, and in the evenings at her parents’ home at Chinley, Derbyshire, she wrote her book, which is based on a diary kept by her great-grandfather, the Bev. Dr. Beith, who became moderator of the Free Church of Scotland. "My novel,” she said, “deals with the early nineteenth century, and the central .figure is a, minister.” Miss Beith was educated near London, and graduated B.A. with honours in English literature, at Cambridge. She is an. all-round sportswoman. She took, part in the Northern tennis tournament at Manchester, and plays lacrosse and golf.