BITS FOR BOOK LOVERS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13835, 23 February 1907, Page 4

BITS FOR BOOK LOVERS.

Maurice Maeterlinck's new volume of essays will appear in the spring. The title has not yet been announced.

It is riot generally known that, the late Baroness Burdctt-Coutts was the editress of a valuable work entitled "Woman's Mission." It consists of contributions by eminent writers on the philanthropic work of women, arranged and edited, with a preface written by the late lamented Baroness.

On January 11, 1907, Messrs Archibald Constable and Co. published the "Life and Letters of Lafcatlio Hearn," by Elizabeth Bisland, in two handsome volumes (price 24s net). Lafcadio Hearn died just when England and America were awakening to the fact that, he was one of the men of the nineteenth century who will live on. Hearn had a wonderful power of observation and of giving pictures of things in poetical flashes—lie lives in a. place a short time, writes to some friend about it, and whole books do not give one such vivid impressions as a few of these letters. It is sad to think that when English and American universities were beginning to call to him for lectures about the Par East—specially about that Japan which he knew better than any other foreigner, though he modestly says he "knows nothing of Japan," after years of study—it is-sad to think that he was suddenly struck down by death. His strange life and warmhearted, frank letters are fascinating reading—far above the biography of the ordii nary celebrity.