NOVELISTS AND SUNSHINE.

North Otago Times, 22 May 1909, Page 3 (Supplement)

NOVELISTS AND SUNSHINE.

A number of the most popular novelists work in the open air. Marie Corelli, at her home in Venice, has a wonderful "sunshine room." It is tho back piazza of an old Venetian house, with no screen except a mass oli trailing, leafy vines, delightfully reposeful and quiet; and here, in blazing sunshine, she wrote " The Master Christian." Mrs. Humphry Ward docs most of her writing on the roof-garden of her London house and Bret Harte, when possible, also, w'orked out of doors, and always while smoking. "My first line," he once said, "always takes a cigar, and sometimes two." Sarah Grand wrote "The Heavenly Twins" and other noted works In the sunny bay-window-generally wido openof her cosy den in the modest little grey house ne a r Tunbridge Wells, in Kent. Thesii pre but. a select few of tho leading novelists who claim to have done their best work in the open air.