BOOKS AND BOOKMEN,

Otago Witness, Issue 3829, 2 August 1927, Page 74

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN,

Air G. K. Chesterton and his wife have been visiting Poland.

A copy of the original edition of Colonel Lawrence’s “The Seven Pillars of Wisdom ” has been sold for £420.

Miss May Christie, the young novelist, who is off to America, is the possessor of an Edinburgh degree in philosophy. * * * Mr Walter A. Briscoe, who has written “ Horace the Hero ” for Mr Cecil Palmer, is the librarian to the citv of Nottingham. * * * Miss Christine Campbell-Thomson says that although her new novel, “ His Excellency,” will be about Borneo and Ceylon she has never visited these countries! *’ * * Mr Harold Munro, the poet and presiding genius of the Poetry Bookshop, has been suffering lately from overwork, and has gone to Italy to recuperate. * * * Mr John Galsworthy and Mr John Drinkwater were the English delegates to the International Congress of° the P.E.N. Clubs held at Brussels during the third week of June. * * * Mr Desmond MacCarthy, the wellknown literary critic, has gone to Switzerland—his first holiday for two years. He is said to be writing a biography of Dr Matson, Sherlock Holmes's friend!

Mme. Aino Kallas, the author of “ Eros the Slayer,” is the wife of the Esthonian Minister in London, and writes everything in the language of her native Finland.

Air Hilaire Belloc carries on the good work of revising our notions of history, and to current issues of the Universe is contributing a scries of articles on “ How the Reformation Happened.”

Sir John Ernest Hodder Williams, C.V.0., head of Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, publishers, who died in April, left estate of the value of £280,291, with net personalty £205,533.

“ The Beloved Vagabond,” bv W. J. Loeke. is to be produced as a’ musical play this season. The score is the work of a young Australian composer.

“ The Case-book of Sherlock Holmes,”' to be published immediately, is the last volume of a great series of stories. Here the long career of the great detective is completed.

There is soon to be published the work of a new and interesting poet, Miss Vera Arlett, to whom Mr John Drinkwater last year awarded the medal presented by the Panton Arts Club for the best unpublished volume of poetry.

That courageous traveller, Rosita Forbes, has returned to London from Africa, where she has been directing a film of one of her own stories about the Riff struggles. In private life she is Airs ArGrath.

Air John S. AL Ressich, whose “The Triumph of a Fool ” was a success of last season, has collected a number of the pungent essays he contributes week by week to a Glasgow newspaper. These are being put out under the title of “ Something I Want to Say.”

An exhibition, illustrating the art and craft of William Morris, was held at Fulham Central Library from June 4 to 18 inclusive. Lectures were given during the exhibition by. among others, Mi«« Alay Alorris. Air Holbrook Jackson, and Air A. R. Powys.

One who has read the book in German says that we may expect some startling levelations about modern Russia in Rene I'ulop-Miller’s “The Mind and Face of Bokhevisin’” which Mr F. S. Flint and k>. !’• r l'ait have translated.

* * * Miss Alargaret Irwin, me author of ’ Knock Four Times,” has just returned from Czecho-Slovakia, where she has been inspecting spas and health resorts. Among the other members of her party were Air H. de Vere Stacpoole and Air Heniy Baerlein, the novelist.

H :V 10 ” E, tlle I ' ew books a novel of that subtle craftsman, Mr J. D. Beresford. It will be entitled “The Decoy” and will have its scenes laid in the South of 1-rance and in Paris. Mr Beresford has been hving on the Riviera and at n f 1 So ? e yearS - He is at P lese “t in Switzerland.

* * * Air Robert Graham, of London, is a direct descendant of Robert Graham, of 1’ intry, wno was such a close friend ami correspondent of Robert Burns Mr Graham has now sent on loan to the Bums Aluseum at Alloway a number of valuable Burns MSS„ including 10 leHms of the poet and holographs of iam ° Shanter” and “Lament for Glenca irn.

Air T. Earle Welby, who is editing the complete works of Walter Sava-e Lanrr ° UF bestkn °'vn litcrarv J r-lists. He was formerly engaged in editing an important Indian news--18 ?, ow . cIos ely associated with the outurdciy Tleview.

H.o l • ltCr c ßlvers > proprietor of the Reading Standard, has given £lOOO ioi the purpose of strengthening the library of the new Reading Universitv, paiticularly in respect of books necessary for research in English history. Air Rivers lias made the gift in memory of his wife.

.* * * It is a little surprising to learn that c ll ru: Hodgson, of the well-known fit m or literary auctioneers, is an expert in the history of aeronautics. He has written a fine work on the subject, and has been elected on the council of the Koyal Aeronautical Society.

* * * Followers of his famous physical culture system will be interested to know that Lieutenant Aluller has written a volume of verses in Danish. They are said to have been largely inspired bv the. scenery of the Chilterns, in which Lieutenant Aluller has made his home.

A- recent paragraph stated that Mrs Alary Hughes, of Tyissa Farm, Llangollen (Wales), who claims to have inspired the nursery rhyme “ Alary Had a Little Lamb,” celebrated her eighty-sixth birthday in Alay. It now appears that. Mary, her Jamb, and the authorship of the verses are claimed by the United btates of America. Air Henry Ford has taken a keen interest in the'history of the rhyme. Several years ago he' acquired the Wayside Inn at Sudbury, immortalised by Longfellow, and had it restored, and then he proceeded in the poetic atmosphere of Sudbury to research —not less interesting to him—the tracing of the genealogy of Alarv, the owner of the lamb, and “the boy-author of the poem who penned the origin il 12 lines of the verse when he was 12 and Alary 11.” Air ForJ bought “old Redstone Schoolhouse,” the school attended by Alary and the lamb, which had been conicited into a private garage, removed the building intact, and set it down near Longfellow’s inn. * * * A jilebiscite has been taken by the Spectator to ascertain who are deemed by its readers to be the eight foremost English, poets and the four best living poets. _ The eight poets elected by the plebiscite were: — 1. Shakespeare. 5. Keats. 2. Milton. g. Chaucer. . 3. Wordsworth. 7. Brownino4. Tennyson. 8. Shelley. ” The four living poets chosen were: — 1. Masefield. 3. Bridges. 2. Kiphng. 4. Yeats. c ,, Aßltol > received only five fewer, and Shelley 220 fewer votes than Shakespeare After the first eight poets came Spenser, c?? it than 100 votes fewer than Shelley. 1 hen came Byron, Burns, and (with a large drop) Pope. No living poet was considered sufficiently illustrious for a place on this list. Walter de la Mare was the fifth best living noct, according to the popular verdict, followed bv Thomas Hardy, Alfred Noyes, Drinkwater, and Sir Henry Newbolt. * * » The full charm of Darwin’s personality comes out in the letters lie wrote to Hooker, ’Wallace, and others while his book was going through the press and immediately after its publication. He wrote to Hooker in April. 1859 : —

You will think me presumptuous, but I think my book will be popular to a certain extent (enoug-b to ensure heavy losses) among scientific and semi-scientific men. Anyhow. Vurray ought to be the best judge, and. if he chooses to publish it. I think I may wash mv hands of all responsibility. X am sure Lyell and you have been extraordinarily kind in troubling yourselves on thj matter. And again to Hooker a few weeks later :

Please do not say to anyone that X thought my book on species would be fairly popular, and ztiave a fairly remunerative sale (which was the height of my ambition), for if it prove a dead failure, it would make me the more ridiculous. . . . Thank you for telling me about obscurity of style. But on my life no nigger with lash over him could have worked harder at clearness than I havs done.

The Forum magazine, which conducts each mouth a definition contest, to which various reader's contribute, submits a series of definitions of art in its July number. Among the most interesting are these: — A cherub, standing between the naked and the nude.

The prism of the human mind, receiving the one white ray of truth, and throwing it back on the screen of our imagination in a thousand shimmering reflexes of beauty. Petrified nobility. The image of accordant personal and universal consciousness. The expression of the universal in the concrete.

Ono pessimistic Forum subscriber wrote the following apostrophe to art: “ Art, thou art to be pitied in this year of our Lord nineteen hundred twenty seven ! To artists thou art a goofy combination of cubes; to musicians thou art St. Vitus dance or woozy Hawaiian moonlight; to Hollywood thou art a wow.”

Mr Max Pemberton recounts his memories of La Belle Sauvagez

Famous men went in and out of those ancient doors, and many an immortal vs oik was sold from that great counting house. Did not Robert Louis Stevenson tell us that he received ** a hundred jingling, tingling, golden-mounted quids for his ‘ Treasure Island *”; and did not an old clerk, scribbling at a desk, just as Rider Haggard was going to sell outright, also for a hundred pounds, the copyright of “ Solomon’s Mines” —did not this old clerk creep up in his chief’s momentary absence and whisper—- “ If I were you, Mr Haggard, I would take a royalty”?—a piece of advice which cost the firm £lO,OOO if it cost it a penny. Haggard I remember at Cassell’s ; and Stevenson when he was actually writing “ Treasure Island ” under the title of " The Sea Cook,” Farrar, also, was there in my time —subsequently the Dean of Canterbury, who was spotted when a mere curate by a director of the House who desired somebody to write a “ Life of Christ.” And Oscar Wilde came sometimes among us to edit a lady's newspaper, immaculately dressed, and wearing yellow kid gloves as he climbed our ancient staircase.

The publishing house of Cassell’s has been purchased by Mr Newman Flower. For 21 years Mr Flower has been in charge of the literary activities of the business. John Cassell, the founder of the firm, was a young carpenter of poor education, who went to London from Manchester in IS3G as a temperance speaker, says The Times. In order to further the cause of temperance he bought tea and was the first to sell it in packets. To print the tea labels he bought a printing machine, and in the evenings employed it in printing a small paper called “ The Working Man's Friend. >f Out of these tea labels came the publishing house. Cassell, who soon became a noted publisher of good literature for the masses, died of overwork at the age of 48, oir-the same day in ISGS as his friend Cobden. His two partners, Petter and Galpin, continued the. firm, and three years after his death they put into operation a project which he had originated—namely, the issue of the first halfpenny evening paper, the Echo. Cassell's National Library, under the editorship of Henry Morley, followed; Henley edited the “ Magazine of Art ” for Cassell’s, and Stevenson’s “ Treasure Island ” was published by them.