GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1095, 24 February 1893, Page 12

GOSSIP.

Dr Holmes considers ‘ In Memoriam ’ Tennyson’s greatest poem. Mr Rudyard Kipling has late’y bought up the right of republication in all his numerous contributions to the Allahabad Pioneer, the Indian paper of which he was once the subeditor, and will shortly republish them in collected form. Miss Hose Kingsley has been writing on the subject of 4 Hereward, the Wake ’ and his family. She has succeeded in tracing the descendants of her father’s hero. Mr E, W. Hornung, author of the ‘ Bride from the Bush,’ is about to publish a new romance, the title of which is to be ‘ Another Australian.’ Of course the heroine is an Australian, but she is unlike the one in his first story, inasmuch as she is a young woman of much refinement and polish. The novel will be published by Messrs Cassell and Co. Mr Clement Scott, the well known dramatic critic of the London Daily Telegraph, is now on a trip round the world, and hopes to be in Chicago for the opening of the Exhibition, He will ‘do’ the Exhibition for the Telegraph, and will then proceed to Japan and China. He was recently lucky enough to he left a handsome fortune by a lady who had conceived a great admiration for some of his poems, which are aEter the style of those of Mr George Sims’. Mr Arthur Symons, says The Bookman, is the son of a Wesleyan minister, Mr Rudyard Kipling’s grandfathers on both sides were also ministers of the Wesleyan persuasion. Miss Adeline Sergeant, the author of so many readable novels, is also the daughter of a Wesleyan minister. Punch has already fallen in with the modern method of so-called ‘ process blocks. ' If Punch could improve it’s jokes it would do well. It is said the new proprietors of the Pall Mall Gazette are going to produce a new review at the beginning of the year. Mr Dicks has issued a * people's edition ' of ‘ David Copperfield ’ at Gd. It gives the complete text of this novel in 328 well-printed pages, stitched in a green wrapper, which is a facsimile of the wrappers of the original monthly parts. _ The special feature of the edition is that it reproduces all Mr Hablot Browne’s original illustrations. .. Lord Wolseley’s 4 Life of Marlborough,’ is said to be iu an advanced state of preparation. _ Prom a literary point of view (says ‘ P.’ in the Globe), the biography is an almost

ideal one to write. 4 Here you have incident upon incident; a central character of fascinating complexity, and historical figtireu grouped round him at every important scene. Lord Woiseiey, who has as keen a love of letters as of strategy, ought to achieve a great book with this opportunity. The Society of Authors has taken counsel’s opinion on the following questions:—(l) Has a newspaper any right at law to criticise books not submitted for review ? (2) If a newspaper reviews a book unfavourably which has not been submitted for review, is there such a presumption of malice as would rebut a plea of privilege ? The opinions of Mr Blake Odgers, Sir Frederick Pollock, and M r J. M. Lely will be found set out at length in the Author. The answers are—to (1) an unqualified Yes ; and to (2) an almost equally unqualified No.

_ Notes and Queries has commenced a bib liography of Sir Gladstone’s writings, which covers the period between 1827 and- the present date. The first instalment reaches the year 1863. Mr Bret Harte (reports an interviewer) is just completing a new American story. He has one or two others on the stocks or in contemplation, and his hands are full up for a twelvemonth. He had a number of short stories to get through before Christmas, and happily, they are all finished. Mr Harte says ho has not, like some writers—Rudyard Kipling, for instance—the gift of rapid production. Perhaps the accurate thing would bo to say that lie writes slowly because t{e writes very carefully, scoring out and inserting time and again. Although the author of 1 The Luck of Roaring Camp ’ has lived long enough among us to kndw us intimately well, be does not contemplate an English story, ‘ No,’ he said, 4 let English people write of England and Americans of America. There is any amount of material in America to be worked into fiction, if Americans would only write. To write what you have lived is to begin with one secret of success.’ Mr Harte points to Miss Wilkins, George Cable, and Richard Harding Davis as examples of authors who have struck fine Veins of American fiction. He thinks himself that the fiction of the great war is almost all to write ; that there is a great field for the novelist yet in this page of American history. His own story, ‘ Sally Dows,’ which has been appearing serially, is ’the first of ■ several stories he is likely to write on what might be called the inside, the domestic i side of the war.