AMONG THE AUTHORS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16372, 28 October 1916, Page 4 (Supplement)

AMONG THE AUTHORS.

Between the ages of 19 and 27—about eight years— Strange Winter "wrote 42 novels, some of them of three-volume length, besides numerous short tales and sketches," The statement is made by Mr. Oliver Bainbridge, her biographer. It represents a prodigious amount of work, and it must be allowed that as literary work it was, in the circumstances, uncommonly good, Mr. Arnold Bennett and Mr. H. G". Wells, two writers whose names are often linked together, will both give us novels this autumn. In Mr. Britling Sees it Through," Mr. Wells deals with many social aspects of the war period. Mr. Bennett, in " The Lion's Share," grapples with the woman question; the problem of woman's future. It is consoling to be assured that the story lies halfway between realism and humour. ilrs. Humphrey Ward lays the scene of her forthcoming novel, "Lady Connie," at Oxford, and in Jowett's time. The story has been running in Cornhill. Mrs. Ward's pen has been steadily going during the war. She has helped to.answer the question: "What is.England Doing?" for the specif.l benefit of America, and to that end spent much time travelling over industrial England- and in the war zone in France. She confesses that she finds writing novels a holiday, and a relaxation from war work and all the public and private anxieties of the time. Joseph Mary Plunkett, who was shot for his share in the Irish rising, was a poet. Thomas MacDonagh was another. The two poets were friends, and two volumes of their work are to be published almost simultaneously. Lieutenant C. H. Dudley Ward, a winner of the Military Cross, is the author of a novel of slum life published some time ago, and called "Jenny Peters." Lieutenant Ward is in the Welsh Guards. Brother to Mr. W. Dudley Ward, M.P., he has himself contested three constituencies in the Liberal interest. Arnold Bennett's new novel, "The Lion's Share," is published by Messrs. Cassell. In America the complete Encyclopaedia Britannica is now selling at £12. This is rendered possible by photographic reduction of all the pages. The lady who writes as " Marjorie Bowen " began her literary career with a stirring, not to say sensational, romance, " The Viper of Milan." She has always been inteitsteu in Italy, and as Miss Campbell, her real name, she married an Italian, which made her Madame Constanzo. The point, however, is the admirable and creditable one that, having succeeded with a novel which appealed to the great public, she should in recent vears havo devoted all her talent to the higher historical novel. She has just completed tho fifth romance, "William, by the Grave of God." of her study of the Prince of Orange and the Netherlands. •It deals with the fortunes of both from their lowest depths till the establishment of the Dutch Republic and independence from Spain, and it has all " Marjorie Bowen's" power of writing.