BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3861, 13 March 1928, Page 74

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Mr Beverley Nichols is at present lecturing and enjoying a holiday—as best he may—in the United States.' * * * Air A. A. Milne’s “ Now We Are Six,” published in the middle of last October, was in its 94th thousand in the middle of December. * * * Miguel de Unamuno, the famous Spanish philosopher, banished from Spain in 1920, is now’ living in France near the borders of his native country. * * * The official life of Lord Curzon which Lord Ronaldshay is writing will fill three illustrated volumes. * * * Mr R. H. Mottram, author of the great “ Spanish Farm ” trilogy, has now retired from his post in Barclay’s Bank at Norwich to devote himself exclusively to literature. * * * . The Norwegian Government is issuing a special stamp this year to commemorate the centenary of Ibsen’s birth. It will bear a portrait of the famous playwright.

That brilliant caricaturist, Low’, has made a selection of his caricatures. The book will be published under the title “ Lions and Lambs.” * * * Mr William Soutar writes in “ The Bermondsey Book ” the following “ Epitaph on a Vegetarian who was Cremated — Death smil’d at treason here, and saidf “ ’Tis meet That such should give the worm no flesh to eat. * * * Air Roy Bridges has achieved the distinction of cheap editions. His “ Mirror of Silver,” published in the middle of last year, is announced as a cheap issue, and this will be the fourth edition of the novel. “Gates of Birth” is also being reprinted. * * * Air Francis Everton, the author of “ The Dalehouse Alurder,” is in private life an engineer, like that other famous author of crime stories, Air Freeman Wills Crofts. His favourite books are “ Pride and Prejudice ” and “ Jane Eyre,” and, though he is not at all fond of reading, he l |a s a taste for detective literature. . It is his opinion that most detective stories are too full of incident. * * * Few literary visitors to America seem to come back impressed with the romance of its cities—rather the reverse. But Jan and Cora Gordon, that pair of artist-and-author vagabonds, who are now touring in the Land of the Dollar, have already decided that the title of their book about this piece of vagabondage is to be “ Romantic America.” Romance, like beauty, is always in the eye of the beholder. * * * Upton Sinclair, who long ago showed up, in “The Jungle,” the mysteries of the tinned meat business, and more lately tried to do the same thing for another American industry in his -novel “ Oil,” is now in Boston gathering material for a novel—to be called “ Boston ” —based on the Sacco-Vanzetti case. Air Sinclair, always a rebel against convention and authority, may be relied on to take a new’ and very individual view of that scandal. * * « A novel with a New Zealand setting, entitled “ Jean of the Tussock Country,” is about to be published in London bv Alills and Boon, Ltd. The author is Air Walter Smyth, an Englishman resident in Christchurch, who possesses a first-hand knowledge of New Zealand. Letters recently received from the publishers confidently express the opinion that this novel, which deals with life on a sheep. station in the back country, will probably have a large sale in England. The story, which is of the romantic-mystery type, is said to contain a considerable amount of adventure intermingled with comedy. Copies of the book should reach New Zealand shortly.

London Punch quotes from a theatre criticism in an unnamed New Zealand newspaper: — For sheer, passionate beauty parts o£ “ Romeo and Juliet ” have never been surpassed. Take, for instance, Romeo's last soliloquy in the tomb : “ Here, ..ere will I remain And shake the yolk of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh.” The fashion of throwing eggs at “ inauspicious stars.” comments Punch, is no longer followed in the best upper circles. * * # The three-and-sixpenny reprints of worth-whi] e books, other than novels, seem to have captured the favours of the bookbuying—as apart from the book-bor-rowing—public. Every week brings news of some new series. In the latest, The Phoenix Library, it will be possible to buy Lytton Strachey’s “ Queen Victoria ’ and “ Eminent Victorians,” two iiovels by Aldous Huxley, and David Garnett’s “ Lady into Fox ” and A Man in the Zoo ” in one pocket-sized volume. Another three-and-sixpenny series to be welcomed is a beautiful little pocket edition of the novels and tales of de Maupassant. * * * A cable message states, that Signor Vicente Blasco Ibanez, the Spanish novelist, has died at his beautiful villa at Mentone, on the French Alediterranean coast. Sorrow at the prolonged exile from his native land is believed to have undermined his constitution. Recently he divided his time between his garden, which he intended to bequeath to the writers of the world, and a new book which he intended to name “ The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” For this he attended th e last Assembly of tho League of Nations at Geneva to obtain local colour. H e wished to be buried at Mentone. saying that he did not want' his body to be taken to Spain so long as the present regime existed. Ibanez, who was born at Valencia in 1867, was a novelet of considerable descriptive power. He began with pictures of Spanish provincial life, and afterwards developed a realism in the manner of Zola. He first became widely known to English readers bv “ The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” with its pictures of the unsettled state of the world caused by the Great War. The book, translated as “ Blood and Sand,” is a remarkable description of incidents in the career of a bull-fighter. “ Sonnies ” tells 4>f the life of ancient races. “ Mare Nostrum ” (“ Our Sea ”) de-‘ scribes the days of fisherfolk and others. Ibanez expressed political opinions freely from his. youth, and more than once ha suffered imprisonment for the expression of his views. In recent years he was opposed to the regime in Spain, and he lived chiefly in France.