PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21994, 1 July 1933, Page 4

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED

The 1932 Year Book of the New Zealand Institute of Certified Secretaries provides a compact ’ and comprehensive record of the transactions of the organisation. The proceedings of the first annual general meeting at Wellington, reports and balance sheets, lists of officers and other relevant matters, including rules and chapter regulations, are given, together with a list of members. North Queensland is not bereft- either of-beauty or enterprise, to judge by ,the handsome booklet “ Townsville: the Queen City of North Queensland,” , which is issjied jointly by the Townsville Harbour Board and City Council. The town represented is clean, prosperous-looking, and exotic, and views of the surrounding tropical ' isles promise new experiences for the tourists whom, this booklet is expected to attract. .' The. quality of entertainment and instruction provided in Chambers’s Journal is uhvariable. The June issue contains the usual well-assorted, list of travel and popular scientific articles and; fiction, the writers including Nigel Hughes. ; A catalogue of nearly 2000 critical and early printed editions of Greek and Latin authors and works relating to classical antiquity is the latest issued by B. H. Blackwell, of Oxford.

Popular' Novelist'* Complain: Mr J. B. Priestley,: in a volume “Essays and Studies," by members of the English Association, voices an unusual complaint against contemporary book criticism:—“ Most. literary periodicals ' still treat fiction ns' if it ' was very lightweight ■’ stuff, and will herd it into a column of ' New Novels,’ when at the same time they will give acres of valuable apace to the consideration - of third-rate biographies, memoirs,, travel books, and even the productions of notorious hacks, all op which is still thought of as ‘ Serious Literature.' _ T.-myself have written .little books of criticism, done in a few weeks, that received six times as .much space from' reviewers as large novels of mine that 1 took months and months of, hard work. If you are lucky, .you can write novels and receiye for them a good deal of praise and a good deal of money, and I for one do not quarrel with either. But what an artist wants first of all .is serious consideration, and I doubt if any novelist at the present time is getting any serious consideration. And if you are ' popular’-—that is, if a great many people decide to buy your books-—then you may depend upon if that in certain circles, supposed to consist of people who are interested In literature, your last chance is ‘ gone. . The very term ' popular novelist’ is beginning to look like an insuit.” LG.'* Autobiography

An English writer Says: “Mr Lloyd George, l should judge from estimates I have heard made in a reliable quarter, should with reasonable luck clear £IOO,OOO from his forthcoming autobiography, which Ivor Nicholson and Watson are to publish. That, of course, is not a single fee. There is a question of the book rights, the serial rights and the instalment rights (i.e., for issue on .deferred payment terms by some concern .other, than the actual publishers) on both sides of the Atlantic. And in a case like this translation rights have no doqbt to be added. The Daily Telegraph, which is to publish selections in advance, will not have secured that privilege for much under £20,000.” A Study in Values

Mr Bernard Shaw is safe back in his own Hertfordshire now, and his achievements in the United States are,in a sense old. news. But as a study in values the New York papers that have, reached England simultaneously with Mr Shaw himself repay some slight examination. When G. B. S. speaks here he may with luck get five or six hundred words in the bourgeois papers' and a column in the proletarian Daily Herald. The New York Herald Tribune, which I have before me, gave its readers a verbatim, report of his Metropolitan Opera House 90minutes’ speech to' the tune of 10 solid columns, and several ’other of The leading papers. I believe, did the same. And every word of the speech was broadcast. An interesting question arises: Which is right about Mr Shaw—we or they? We, of course, know him a good deal better. — “Janus” in the Spectator. Books in Paris

A Paris correspondent, relating that the French book trade is extraordinarily quiet and authors as well as publishers are in a perturbed state, expresses the opinion that the trouble may be;due to over-production. He adds:—Writers are adopting the system of books in series, continuing the history of a family through generations. They warn us of their intentions beforehand. Blaise Cendrars in his, last two novels announced that he intended to give us 33 more volumes before he .finishes! Jean Giono, author of the “ Solitude of Pity,” and of a play recently produced, “ Sowers of Seed.” announces now that he has ten novels on hand and three plays, each in three acts. - -