LONDON LITERARY GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1190, 21 December 1894, Page 10

LONDON LITERARY GOSSIP.

From Our Special Correspondent. London, November 3. It is understood that Mr Froude died possessed of a considerable fortune, the proceeds of his books having been in vested to great advantage in the United States. His adviser in such matters was the eminent American advocate and leader of the New York bar, Mr Randolph Robinson.

One of the best novels of the spring season of ’94 -was H. S. Merriman’s “ Wiih Edged Tools.” I don’t know if there is a colonial edition. [Yea, there is in Bell’s Colonial Library, paper 2s 6d.—Editor N<Z.M ] If not, you should beg, borrow; or buy the new sixshilling one -just brought out by Smith Elder. This firm are also the publishers of Miss Lawless’ story of mediteval Ireland “ Maelcho," concerning which the G.O.M. has said kind things.

George Meredith’s new novel “The Amazing ‘ Marriage " will run through Scribner next year, and either that or another Yankee monthly has secured Barrie’s “ Sentimental Tommy." Stanley Weynun’a next tale will deal with the French revolution. It has been christened “ The Red Cockade," and Mr Jerome Has bought the serial rights for To-Day. Marion Crawford’s “Casa Braccio," which ho recently told an interviewer he considered his masterpiece, begins in the November Century; and Thomas Hardy commences another Wessex romance in the January Harper's.

The most successful story of the year in the States is Du Maurier’s “Trilby," of which Harper’s have sold 100,000 copies at a dollar and a-half in six weeks. Nevertheless the great American firm are very unlikely ever again to have the handling of a book by the Punch artist. They never even consulted Mr DuMaurier before writing their abject apology to Mr Whistler, and the first he knew of it was, seeing their letter in the “press. On dit Messrs Harper aspire to the reputation of a John Murray-like uprightness and particularity. They appear to have thought that by apologising with sumptuous generosity for Mr Du Maurier’s caricature they would cause people to say “ See how anxious these good and great publishers are to do right. They might well have passed over the sensitive James’ ridicu-, lous moans altogether, but instead they preferred to salvo his preposterous vanity and apologise ! ’

I fer, however, the public did not speak like this at all. On the contrary, they expressed amazement that a firm of standing should “go back " so scurvily on an old friend and contributor. “As a rule," said the public, “ people wait unill they are forced to rub their noses in the mud and don’t glory in doing so voluntarily."

One of the daintiest of the many dainty gift books of the present season is the Countess of Jersey’s pretty fairy story “ Maurice on the Hed Jar," which has

been beautifully illustrated by the very clever Mr M. Pitman and bound in a novel greeu bronze. All Australians with youngsters who have pleasant memories of Lady Jersey should —though it is rather an expensive book—manage to afford 6s for the “Red Jar."

The second volume of the new Uemy Kingsley’s re-issue “ Ravenshoe " has, by those unable from experience to gauge the merits of “ Geoffry Hamlyn,” been pronounced his masterpiece. It is undoubtedly a capital story and well worth reading if not buying. The new edition exactly resembles that of “Geoffry Hamlyn ” published last month.

“Seven Little Australians" is an Antipodean “Little Woman," only Miss Turner has not quite caught Miss Allcott’s faculty of painting unregenerate and yet delightful children. Still the story contains much that will sound fresh and entertaining to our English youngsters, and I should think your boys and girls would enjoy ifc too. The type is clear and ilusbrations numerous.

The latest additions to Messrs Longman’s Colonial .Library are Stanley Weyman’s exciting historical! romance “My Lady Rotha," which I strongly recommended to you a mail or two ago, and Mrs Walford’s “ The Matchmaker.” Mrs Walford’s books are always eminently suitable for family reading, and this one 13 no exception to the rule. It relates the adventures of. a London girl on a visit to Lord and Lady Carnonshie and their three daughters, Scotch folk, who vegetate all the.year round in their grim old castle in the north. Lady Carnonshie is so proud and faddy that suitors have never been able to get at her elder daughters and they are already hopeless old maids. The youngest, Mina, is five and twenty, but her mother still thinks of her and insists on treating her as a baby. Penelope is not long at Carnonshie before she discovers that the supposed infantine girl is carrying on an illicit love affair with a handsome shepherd. She thereupon devotes all -her efforts to nipping the unfortunate business finally without exposing the culprit. It w> hid not be fair to tell more, but I may tell you the story is capitally built up and the interest increases with every chapter right up to the last.

Mr Edmund Mitchell, whose “ Temple of Death" somehow fell rather fl it, has written a tale c .lied “ Towards the Eternal Snows," which is now running in the weekly edition 'of the Manchester Guard’an. It deals with Anglo-Indian characters and scenes and seems highly sensational.

There is not a ha’porth of Australasian colour in Miss Evelyn Everett Green’s “ Our Australian Cousin," a wishy washy girl’s love story of the orthodox type. For the purposes of the tale the hero might equally well have come from Lapland. Naturally he is tall and strong and gallant and (sub rosa) rich. The hero Ine’s friends want her to marry a saturnine person with a financial hold over her parent, but she refuses, and eventually “ Our Australian Cousin " haviug saved her life, claims her hand.

Mr C. Haddon Chambers has finally determined to call his new play, now in rehearsal at the Haymarket Theatre, “John O’Dreams."

The Sydney Bulletin seems to possess a happy knack of discovering genuine local talent. Incomparably the two freshest and most vigorously' written volumes of tales I have seen from your part of the world are Mr Ernest Favenc’s “ Tales of the Austral Tropics,” and Mr Louis Becke’s “ By Reef and Palm,” both of which originally appeared in the audacious organ of the rampant “Cornstalk.” The first named 1 some time ago recommended to your readei’3, and now 1 desire to gush discreetly concerning the latter. Mr Beck© volunteers no information as to his quarrel with “Rolf Boldrewood," hut Lord Pembroke in an introduction to “By Reef and Palm,” makes it plain the author was the hero of “A Modern Buccaneer.” I fear too there is no getting away from the fact that Mr Browne embodied the MSS. he bought from Mr Becke holus bolus or with only the slightest revision. Thatatleastis the conclusion I’ve regretfully come to after comparing the books. Presumably Mr Browne does not understand the ethics of authorship and thought that having bought the MSS. avowedly to use for fictional purposes, he was entitled to incorporate it in his story without further acknowledgment. That he meant wrong to Mr Becke or to the public I don’t even now believe, the blunder seems to have been too barefaced for that. To return to “By Reef and Palm," Mr Louis Becke is not a Kipling, but his stories contain several of the AngloIndian’s less admirable attributes—notably a vein of coarseness and of frank, almost barbaric brutality. His pictures of the little-known trading life in the South Seas,

*« Where every prospect pleases And only man is vile/’ are however wonderfully vivid and in places powerful. Men may read it all right, but such grim yarns as “ The Revenge of Macy O Shea," “Enderby’s Courtship," “ Methodical Mr Burr,” “A Truly Great Man,” and “The Fate of the Alicia,” are scarcely literary food for habes. “ By Reef and Palm " is the new

“ Autonym,” and published by Fisher Unwin at Is 61 In paper, and 2s cloth.

“ Bushigrams ’’ is lhe title of Mr Guy B. o hby’* volume of stories collected from the magazines which Ward Lock will publish, and the same author has written a short tale for Dent and Co., called “ Thursday Island : A Record of Ninety Days."

Miss Ethel Turner has completed a sequel to “Seven Little Australians," called “Growing Up," and another tale entitled “The Story of a Baby.”