LONG CAREER

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23175, 22 October 1938, Page 15

LONG CAREER

BOOKS AND AUTHOKS .RETIRED PUBLISHER MEMORIES OF 60 YEARS FROUDE AND NEWMAN Intending to spend his retirement in Auckland, Mr. W. A. Kelk, until recently general manager of the London publishing house of Longmans, Green and Company, Limited, arrived by the Awatea from Sydney yesterday with his two daughters. Mr. Kelk, who has taken a house at Bayswater, has left England to be near his sons, Mr. G. L. Kelk, a farmer at Morrinsville, and Constable A. T. Kelk, who is attached to the Auckland Central Police Station. He has not seen them for 17 and 14 years respectively. Mr. Kelk entered the employ of Longmans as a boy, and when he retired a few months ago he had served only a little short of 60 years. Although he has not visited New Zealand before his business and literary associations with this country go back more than half a century. He has many recollections of J. A. Froude, the historian, and his firm in 1886 published the latter's "Oceania," an account of a touc through Australia and New Zealand, amply illustrated with wood engravings, which to-day add much in* terest to the text. Dealings with Cardinal Newman "That was before you lost your Pink and White Terraces," said Mr. Kelk yesterday, in recalling the book. Longmans, he added, had also published works on the resources and prospects of New Zealand by the late Mr. J* C. Firth. The latter is well remembered as the pioneer of large-scale land development in the Matamata district, but his books are almost forgotten.

Early in lys service with Longmans Mr. Kelk saw something of Cardinal Newman. A partner in the firm, Mr. William Longman, he said, was partly responsible for persuading Newman in 1864 to write his celebrated religious autobiography, " Apologia Pro Vita Sua." The work had its origin in a controversy between Newman and Charles Kingsley, and Mr. Longman was in touch with both at the time. The book was published in fortnightly parts, and Newman wrote almost night and day until it was finished. Most) oc his later works were published by Ilivingtons. but not long before his death in 1890 Longmans bought that firm's business and became his publishers. He well remembered the venerable cardinal visiting the office at the time of the transaction. Although Newman's works were now nearly all out of copyright, his literary executors, the authorities of the oratory which he had founded at Edgbaston, Birmingham, continued to draw royalties from them. Evolution of School. Bbqks Mr. Kelk's fine library, which he expects will arrive in about three months, contains a facsimile of the manuscript of Newman's poem, "The Dream of Gerontius," published many years ago and showing all the author's corrections and emendations. Much of Mr. Kelk's work has been concerned with education books, from , primary school readers upward. He recalls that Longmans once had a large sale for a series of readers prepared especially for New Zealand children. "I suppose you learned geography from a book with a red cover, and full* of coloured maps," he remarked, and the interviewer agreed that he had. This led Mr. Kelk to observe that the new methods of teaching geography had made such books obsolete. Children were no longer required to, learn the names of the rivers of India, but were introduced to the subject in a much more interesting and practical way. Australia and Copyright New Zealand was a very good bookbuying country, said Mr. Kelk, and it might be true, as New Zealanders were said to claim, that they spent more on books than any other people in the world. He did not know how far publishing was making progress in the Dominion, but during his stay in Aus-. tralia he had noticed that selfsufficiency was being sought in this industry, as in nearly all others. London publishers of late had cause to complain that large extracts from English copyright works were being freely used in Australian educational publications and broadcasts. He had had occasion to make several claims for payment of royalties on this account before his retirement, and he had no doubt that they would be met.