LITERARY GOSSIP

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXII, Issue 4806, 8 November 1902, Page 1 (Supplement)

LITERARY GOSSIP

The Ethel Tumor books are the most widely read of any Australian writer. Since the appearance of “Seven Little Australians” in 1894, a sale of nearly a quarter of a million Turner volumes has been reached. Her publishers, Messrs Ward, Lock and Co., state that the Turner books are exceedingly popular throughout the Empire, and have been translated into; Dutch, resulting in an extensive sale in Holland. While Melba is receiving the plaudits of enthusiastic audiences, Australia can also be justly proud of the writings of Ethel iSimer.

Mrs Humphry Ward’s dramatisation of her novel “Eleanor” will shortly be produced at a series of matinees at the Court Theatre. Miss Marion Terry and Miss Lilian. Braithwaito will probably have the parts of Eleanor and muoy respectively, and Mr H. B. Irving may play the role of Manisty.

Wo (“Literary World”) have often wondered how some of the modem classics would fare at the 1 hands of the modem examiner in English. A story for which the “Liverpool Daily Post” vouches shows how the examiner deals with English as she is written by John Rushan: —“A Civil Service academy journal recently gave a model exercise. The subject for essay was ‘Mountains and their Beauty,’ and a wily but suspicious reader copied out an essay in competition. Ho wrote it in the beautiful, stiff. Civil Service hand, with all the letters joined in the midale; he punctuated it carefully,, and made it, in every sense, a creditable production. Ho was awarded 41 per cent, for English. He was told that, his . English was rather stiff, and that his descriptions were not lifelike, and were too .‘journalistic,’ whatever that may mean. Also his sentences wore too long and his ideas lacking in originality. It was a very sad reflection to think that it was an extract from Ruskin’s Modem Painters’ on ‘Mountains and. Mountain Beauty.’ One candidate got 97 per cent., being twice as good as Ruskin, apparently.

Is the following paragraph from, the “Westminster Gazette” as artless as it looks?—‘Mr Hall Caine, we see from the ‘Times’ has written suggesting the erect ion of a memorial to mark the landing-place of the King and Queen at Ramsay last month. On another ■page of our contemporary is an interesting letter from the hon. secretary of the Society for Checking the Abuses of Public Adrertising ?"

A great deal has bean written about Tolstoi, a great deal too much, perhaps, but a book on the subject from the pen of M. Merejkowski is sure to be worth reading. Messrs Constable announce “Tolstoi and Dostojeyski: A Study,” by M. Merejkowski.