EPHEMERAL FICTION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 21 February 1931, Page 9

EPHEMERAL FICTION

PROLIFIC PUBLISHING YEAR “The year 1930 lias been the most prolific in the' history of British publishing. The number of books issued was 15,393, compared with 14,086 during 1929. No doubt we could dispense with a proportion of each year’s publications, some or which are the books that are not books, while others would never have been printed but for the vanity of well-to-do authors,” the “Morning Post” remarked. “It is impossible to believe that all the 3922 novels, which were published this year, have even performed the function of a sleeping draught, much less helped anybody to kill time. Yet we must look on authors and publishers in general as a national intelligence department, which is indispensable to the spiritual and mental progress of an amazingly complex community. The mass of new fiction is really a sort of social historiography, in which all the activities of modern man are recorded and analysed. When you are inclined to scoff a? a common place novel, ask yourself the question: What would this be worth to us, if it were as detailed a description of life as it was lived in Ur or Knossos, in Memphis or Athens or Rome. What would it not bo worth to us?”