LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Volume 14, Issue 2648, 14 December 1904, Page 69

LITERARY NOTES.

— Mr Fisher Unwin offers a prize of £100 for the besfc novel by a new writer which i« sent in to him between now and March 31 of next year. The story is not to be less than 70,000 wordls in length, and not longer than 100,000 words. —It seems that the late Lord Coleridge preserved! nearly every letter of importance whioh reached him. Thus he came to leave a perfect wealth of papers, for during his long life he corresponded with some of the greatest statesmen, lawyers, ecclesiastics, and men of letters of the past 50 years. His part in the Tichborne trial will also be reflected in the life of him which Mr Heinemann is publishing.'

— The latest addition to Messrs C. Arthur Pearson's "Romance" series is "The Romance of Modern Locomotion," by Mr Archibald Williams. The author describes in a popular style, free from technicalities, the development of the railway from the tune of the. Rocket to the latest train travelling at the rate of 130 miles an hour. Workshops, signal-boxes-, and- the fight against the hindrances of Nature are all de-. scribed. The volume is profusely illustrated.

—Mr Henry James, who, after an absence of 22 years, is now exchanging greetings with the newer New York, has decided to make a prolonged tour through the States, not returning to Kngland for eight or nine months. In the result we are to have a book about "America Revisited," by an observer of obviously unique opportunities. Mr James has an eye, and he is, in any case, the first writer familiar with the America of a past generation to write of the present one. Moreover, his long exile enables him to study "home" with almost the detachment of a European.

— When Thackeray visited America in November, 1852, to deliver his lectures on the English humourists, he formed the acquaintance of Mr and Mrs Baxter and their family, of New York, and' the acquaintance developed into a close friend6hip, which lasted, in spite of absence and separation, until his death. Thackeray, when he was in New York, was a frequent and welcome visitor at the "Brown House t "

as he termed Baxters' residence, &ri& charing his absence he corresponded regr.» larly with the family. A selection of hii letters, says the Athenaeum, arranged, with an introduction, by Miss Lucy W. Baxtor, will be published by Messrs 'Smith.. Eider, and Co.

— "Raiderland," described by it* wea'.oi, Mr Crockett, and sketched by Mr Joseph. Pennell, should make an interesting boo!.. Says Mr Crockett : "My business is witi* the Galloway of brown bent and red heather, of green knowe and grey gnarlci thorn, of long, low farm-town and wild gipsy raid, of levellers and love-making,.--o! seamew and whaup, and in particular anct especial it concerns, the Galloway o" a certain dreamy long-legged callant who, with a staff in his hand and a whang of sodascone in his pocket, left few of its farma unvisited and few of its fastnesses unexplored in hrs unhaltered boyhood cf 25 years ago." "Raiderland" will be published by Messrs Hodder & Stoughton

—Mr Douglas Sladen's novel. "Playing the Game," which is a sequel to his "A Japanese Marriage" (now in its eightysecond thousand), comes out at an^ opportune moment. Whether the Japanese are victorious or ~iot in their gig-antic campaign against Kou no one can dispute that the Japanese infantry have proved themselves, both in courage and discipline, the equal, if not the superior, of any soldiers the world has ever seen, while the Japanese Government have played .the game with a vigour that matches the 1 " glory of the-ir soldiers. Yet 10 years ago we regarded them as a toy nation. It is with the growth of English sentiment towards Japan in those 10 years that Mr Douglas Sladen's new novel deals. The same author's "More Queer Things About Japan," a sequel to his "Queer Things About Japan," which was published last January and is now in its fourth thousand, is to be brought out 'by Messrs TreJierne. Besides Mr Sladen's own matter and the 16 chapters by Miss Norma Lorimer, author of "By the Waters of Sicily," it will contain two contributions translated from the Japanese — viz., a Life of the Great Napoleon, written and illustrated by Japanese about 1840, and "The Yoshiwara from Within," written by a Japanese about the public harems of Japan. This last will be in a s&parate ap-'-pendix.—Field, October 29.

— Professor Arminus Vanrbery's Autobiography has been issued by Mr Unwin, under the title of "The Story 'of My Struggles." Vambery's life has been an extraordinarily romantic one. Fatherless^ lame, and almost penniless, ho was compelled, when a mere child, to shift for himself, and up to the age of 18 his life was a constant struggle against starvation. Yet by the time he had reached his twentieth, year ' he had become one of the " most accomplished linguists in Europe. Vambery's most famous feat wasr his great journey through Central Asia. For this- he adopted the dress of a dervish, and travelled to Khiva with' a horde of fanatics, who, had they discovered him, would have torn him in pieces. He visited Bokhara, Samarcand, and all the Oxus country in complete safety. Vambery's personal friendship with the last three Sultans of Turkey and the last two "Shahs of Persia is as much a matter of notoriety as the> high respect in which he was held "by the late Queen Victoria — a respect which is fully shared by her son, King. Edward, who hae conferred upon him the Victorian Order.

— When Lord /Avebury mad© his seleotion of the Best Hundred Books, he did not expect his list to go without .criticism, not has it escaped severe handling in many quarters. The latest critic is Mr Clement K. Shorter, who, lecturing on the subject the other day, said: "Never, surely, was so foolish, ill-advised, and, indeed, mischievous a suggestion as was conveyed in, the recommendation of the so-called hundred best books." Of the first 30 in Loirct Avc-bury's list Mr Shorter would only allow four to stand : The Bible, the "Meditations of Marcus Aurelius," Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," and Plutarch's "Lives." Then the lecturer proceeded 1 to ask himself, not what were the best 100 books, but what he would take with him for a year's sojourn on a desert island, and these included 50 volumes by living writers, or by such as have only recently passed from among us. This list is certainly interesting, and I am glad to see included' in it a volume of short stories by that master cf the medium, George W. Cable.— T.P.'s Weekly.

—Mr Edward Marston, for much more than half a century an honoured name amongst London publishers and booksellers, gives us what he terms "Fragments from, the workshop of an old publisher" under the title "After Work." Sixty-five yeara of labour undoubtedly justifies him in claiming to have earned 1 the right of retirement, and there are thousands of good fishermen who know him as "the Amateur Angler who will be wishing him. a long period of leisurely enjoyment with his fly rod. Born in Shropshire in 1825, and passing his boyhood by the waters so well described in "By Meadow and Stream," he came to London in 1846 and entered the publishing house of Sampson Low, in which so many authors came to know him in our times as senior partner. It was Sampson Low who in 1836 established the Publishers' Circular, now edited by Mr R. B. Marston, and the publication was about 10 years old' when Mr E. Marston first took a hand in its production. The young man soon became familiar with the presence of such men as Macaulay, Bethell, the Pollocks, ana Warren, who were regular call&rs at Low's Library and Reading Room, in Lamb's Conduit street. When the name of Marston was inscribed as partner in 1856 there were Sampson Low the elder and his son, and the latter died in 1872, leaving his father to survive him till 1886, when he died in his ninetieth year. The delightful memories of a host of authors recorded in this volume by Mr Marston include those of Bulwer Lytton, Mrs Beeeher Stowe, Wendell Holmes. Wilkie Collins, Charles Reade, James Payn, Dr Cumming, "Victor Hugo, Tauchnitz, John Francis, R. D. Bladkmore, Elihu Burrit, Capern, W. Blaok, Froude, Sir W. Butler, Russell Lowell, Fred Burnaby, Jules "Verne, and H. M. Stanley, whose friendship with his .publisher is warmly proclaimed in the interesting letters given in the book. It was a_ close personal connection of 30 years*' duration, and was only closed at the graveside in May of the present year. Mr Marston gives a list of 131 important books of travel with which he has been associated) as publisher, and" the anecdotes respecting them and their authors maintain an unusxial) interest throughout the entire work. Indeed, it is all interesting and a valuable addition to the histoiy of modern literatvre, — Fields October 1&