HERE AND THERE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21906, 15 September 1934, Page 9 (Supplement)

HERE AND THERE

Lord David Cecil, who has written books on Cowper and Scott, is preparing a biography of Lord Melbourne, Queen Victoria's first Prime Minister.

Miss Pamela Frankau, daughter of Mr. Gilbert Frankau, has written her autobiography. The first chapter tells of her life at the age of 26, and the book ends with her childhood. Shaw's Puritanism has served him badly; for never having sinned, he has no sense of sin, a sense which gave Bunyan, whom he so much admires, such power over his readers.—Mr. Bonamy Dobree. Among English novels lately translated into French are Mary Webb's " Gone to Earth " (" La Renarde "). Charles Morgan's " The Fountain" ("Fontaine"), and Maurice Baring's " Comfortless Memory " (" L'Angoissant Souvenir "). There have been murmurs by novelists that their public is being lured away by biographers who bring fiction into real lives. The Times recommends that the novelists should meet the competition by bringing more real life into their fiction.

Zola's descendants have complained that " Nana," in the movie version, is not at all the same thing as their illustrious ancestor's story. American novelists whose works have been translated to the screen are said to regard the complaint as quaint. Miss Stella Gibbons has been awarded the Femina Vie Heureuse prize for her satirical novel " Cold Comfort Farm " The prize, worth £4O, is given each year by a French magazino to an English author whose work is thought to have received insufficient recognition. " When I first started my work on the Bench," wrote Sir Henry Dickens in his " Recollections," " I was strongly impressed with the view that a judge was not there merely to condemn but to save; and I have always attempted to keep that aspect of the case clearly in my mind."