LITERARY GOSSIP

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1715, 11 January 1905, Page 15

LITERARY GOSSIP

Another contribution to the literature of the ‘‘Celtic Renaissance” is to come from Messrs Blackie and Son, Limited, who will publish shortly a work by Mr Charles Squire on the ‘Mythology of the British Islands-” Mr Squire’s work forms an introduction for English readers to the myth, legend, poetry, and romance of the earliest inhabitants of Britain who have left uo written record —the Gaelic and the British Celts.

Messrs Whit combo and Tombs, in a note to us, observe that “all colonial readers of fiction will have become familiar with writers hailing from the American Continent, and as in other things the American is determined to push his wares in the British markets. Already names such as Gertrude Atheston, Winston Churchill, and Owen Wister are being recognised as writers whose books are pressing many of the best English living novelists, while the sales of their works are running into five figures. As many of these books are nob known, except by name, to the colonial, for some time after they have obtained their popularity in other coun-tries,-wo have determined to anticipate the demand by making arrangements for a selection of the best of such books as soon as issued, and to be sold at the same rates as the above colonial libraries, though being the original American editions usually advertised at a dollar and a half.” From the firm we have to acknowledge the receipt of a specimen copy of the latest of the series entitled “The Cost,” by David Graham Phillips.

Professor Gregory, in the November “Leisure Hour,” once more points out how persistent is the error as to the influence of the Gulf Stream upon the climate of the British Isles and NorthWestern Europe generally. Scientific geographers have shewn over' and over again that the belief has no foundation in fact.

“The Gulf Stream (we are told) cannot be distinguished from the rest of the Atlantic anywhere east of Newfoundland, so that it disappears long before it reaches British shores. The stream is, in fact, only an incidental part of a great system of circulation of the surface waters of the North Atlantic, and the drirt of water from. North America to Europe is caused entirely by prevailing winds. Those moist south-westerly winds possibly derive some heat from the great mass of Atlantic water which they keep in circulation, but in the main the warmth is due to the fact that the wind itself comes from warmer regions.”