Book Chit Chat

Free Lance, Volume XIX, Issue 993, 16 July 1919, Page 8

Book Chit Chat

By The Worm

AA NEW English poet of power and brilliance has arisen in the literary firmament. That is D- H. Lawrence, who in pre-war days fame as a novelist and dramatist. His greatest novel "Sons and Lovers" has had a considerable vogue m England. play "The Widowing of Mrs Holroyd," also made "a very, palpable hit. , ' And now his third book of poetry "Look I Wβ have come Through" is just out from the press and is attracting very high\ praise. One critic says, "There never' was a poet more bent upon saying things and less concerned with mere beauty of trapping. This beauty, which he has in abundance, is innate. 'Look! We have come Throughr is an amazing book. It is to my mind a greater novel even than 'Sons and Lovers' for all that it is written in a rather disconnected series of poems. '•'■*. * *

"The Honourable Gentleman" and Others. This is an interesting collection of short stories of Chinatown m New York 'by an Oriental writer named Achmed Abdullah. One of the stories "A Simple Act of Piety" has been pronounced to be among the best published in 1918. At any rate, Mr Abdulla has a style and snap all his own. „ o »

Patrick McGill, who has made a name for himself by his Irish sketches and particularly his graphic war stories is to the fore once more with another Irish novel, "Glenmornan." It charms and holds you by its very simplicity. He gives vou life-like pictures of the people of this Irish glen. It "is. not an exciting tale, but a vision of human life far removed from the cities and the world of fashion. Doalty Gallagher, the hero, goes away to London to push his fortunes. He makes his mark as a and by the time he is 23 he has won a position on the. literary staff of a big daily. He suddenly tires of the London life and comes back to his native glen, where he falls in love with beautiful Stella Bermod and a very charming: love story opens up. Patrick McGill performs his work with much artistry. .

■f'Christopher and Columbus." This is a new novel by the well-known authoress of "Elizabeth and her German Garden," and' its various sequels. "Christopher" and "Columbus" were only the nick-names of two girl twins —Anna Rose and Anna Felicitas Von Twinkler. This German name is the cause of many tribulations. For, although their charming Engh&a mother had made them thoroughly and entirely English m their hearts and feelings, their father was a brerman. They had been born m Germany, they looked like Germans, and rolled their r's in an altogether German manner, and they were German subjects—which they did not in the very least want to be. When the war broke out their father had been dead for some years, and their mother then took them straight to England. There she, too, presently died, leaving the twins to the care of an aunt and uncle—her sister and her sishusband. The book tells of their English experiences.

"The letters of Algernon Charles Swinburne (edited by Edmund Gosse, G. 8., and Thomas James Wise. This is a highly interesting work in two volumes. Swinburne was daringly outspoken and had wonderful power of rich and copious language as his poetry attests. In these letters you have revealed the poet's friendships and. animosities, his , views on books and authors, comments on the world's drama and poetry. He gives but slight attention to oublio affairs. The letters are deeply interesting because they are full of Swinburne's own personality. The three gods of his idolatry are Landor, Victor Hugo, and Mazzini. Among; poets he- idolises Shakespeare and pays generous ■hiomage to his contemporaries Browning and Tennyson. Of "The Ring and the Book" he writes: "What a wonderful work this is of Browning's. I tore through the first volume in a day of careful study, with a sense of absolute possession. I have not felt so strongly that delightful sense of being mastered-—dominated — %y <kn>other man's imaginative work since I was a small boy." In another place he says: "What a divine and transcendent poem is Tennyson's 'Rizpah'!" and , elsewhere he protests, "Not that I am disloyal to Tennyson, into whose church we were all in my tame born and baptised as far back as we can remember at all."

"The Cup of Fury," by Rupert Hughes. In view of the great success of his war story, "The Unpardonable Sin," Mr Hughes' readers, who are numerous in New Zealand, will welcome from hia pen another thrilling tale of the great conflict. In "The

Cup of Fury" he deals with a phase of the struggle quite different from that portrayed in the earlier hook. While the opening scenes are laid in London, the greater part of the action takes place in and around Washington, and the struggle between the hard-working, patriotic shipbuilders and the spies and anarchists who infested . the yards and did their very best to aid Germany, either by the extreme method of blowing up. the yards and planting bombs on the ships, or bv the less dangerous, but perhaps even more contemptible one • known as sabotage, forms the main theme of the book, though, of course, the customary love story stands out in strong relief. Marie Louise, the heroine, is decidedly unconventional. When her lover asks for some of the details of her autobiography she definitely and' openly skips a particular period, and later declares that "in the new marriage a. man must do what a woman has had to do all along—take the partner for better or worse and no questions asked."