BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3867, 24 April 1928, Page 74

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Viola Garvin, daughter of Mr J. L. Garvin, will publish this season her first book—a volume of poems entitled “ Indication.”

English newspapers announce that Mr George Moore, the novelist and poet, is lying ill in a London nursing home. An operation was performed a few weeks ago.

Daylight saving has been made—it is believed for the first time—an important

factor in a murder story, “ The BeUamy Trial,” by Frances Noyes Hart.

Sir George Arthur, who was for many years personal and private secretary to Lord Kitchener, has written “An Impression ” of Earl Haig.

Mr D. H. Lawrence has translated from the Italian “ Cavalleria Rusticana,” by Giovanni Verga, the story upon -which Mascagni’s famous opera was founded.

Derek Patmore, grandson of Coventry Patmore,, and a poet himself, is now on the staff of the Century Publishing Company, of New York.

Mr R. G. . Vansittart, who has been appointed principal private secretary to the Prime Minister, is a brother of Miss Sibell Vansittart, whose novel, “Lover’s Staff,” was published last year.

It is interesting news that the official biography of Mr Thomas Hardy is to be written by his widow. There is also an assurance that another volume of verse from his pen will be duly forthcoming.

Among the most important announcements is “A Book of Words,” by Mr Rudyard Kipling, who has included in the volume the public speeches made by him in the last 20 vears.

Mr Lawrence G. Brock, C. 8., who has been appointed Chairman of the Board of Control, is a brother-in-law of the late Sir Ernest Hodder-Williams and of Mr Ralph Hodder-Williams of the firm of Hodder and Stoughton.

Those to whom Lord Riddell’s article. “To the Deaf,” particularly appealed will find much to interest them in “ Deafness Explained,” which was written by Mr Balbi, the honorary consulting electrical adviser to the National Institute for the Deaf.

Lady Benson, wife of Sir Frank Benson, and herself a former member of the famous theatrical company, has followed up her first success as author (with her volume of reminiscences) by writing a novel, “ Chimera.” It is the story° of an unhappy marriage, and it has not a stage setting.

Mr J. 11. Curie, author of “The Shadow Show,” “This World of Ours,” and “ To-day and To-morrow,” arrived in Melbourne on April 1 on the Euripides. He said that the purpose of his visit was to renew friendships which he had formed on previous visits to Australia.

Dorothy L. Sayers, known hitherto only as a writer of mystery stories—her next of this kind 'is to be called

“ The Unpleasantness of the Bellona Club ” —is also a poet, in which role she will appear as the translator of an old French romance, “ Tristran in Brittany,” into octo syllabic rhymed couplets.

There is no author of whose book on its appearance Simpkin, Marshall, the great middlemen of the British book trade, would to-day at once take 10,000 copies, as they used to in the case of Marie Corelli and Hall Caine.

We gather from a writer in the Architect’s Journal that Thomas Hardy, who qualified as an architect, won the R.1.8.A. silver medal in 1863 for his essay on “The Application of Coloured Bricks and Terracotta to Modern Architecture,” but the essay was not published, as is usual, because it was not considered to be good enough to print.

Mr John Galsworthy has accepted an invitations to serve on the sub-committee of arts and letters appointed by the international committee on intellectual cooperation of the League of Nations. This committee, which includes a number of leading writers, artists, and musicians, watches over the rights of authors and deals with matters relating to popular art exhibitions, the protection of natural beauties, questions arising out of translation, and other matters. Its next meeting will take place in July.

No fewer than three English authors, Norman Douglas, Francis Brett Young, and Louis Golding, have collaborated in the translation into English of a novel by Edwin Cherio, which is to be called “ That Capri Air.” And Norman Douglas himself has written a book about “The Birds and Beasts of the Greek Anthology.”

There is interesting news for Dickens enthusiasts. Forster’s great “Life of Dickens ” has been brought up to date and extensively annotated in the light of recent Dickens discoveries by Mr J, W. T. Ley, the founder of the first Dickens society in England, and for many years a collaborator in Dickensian research with that great authority, B, W. Matz. Mr Ley’s work adds some 400 pages to the “ Life,” which in its new form will be published by Cecil Palmer.

An interesting contribution to Shakespearian literature is promised in a posthumous volume by Dr John S. Smart, entitled “ Shakespeare: Truth and Tradition,” which has been seen through the press by the author’s succesor as Queen Margaret College Lecturer in Glasgow University. Chapters are included on Shakespeare’s life at Stratford-on-Avon, his family history, the baseless legends which have sprung up, and

the poet’s scholarship, with some conclusions regarding many disputed points. Of the four New Zealand cities Dunedin was the only one that linked up with the Australian Authors’ Week movement. Commenting on this in the London Mercury Mr Alan Mulgan, of Auckland, says: “Perhaps it is just as well that New Zealand has not been joined generally with Australia in this development of local patriotism, for she differs in character from her more assertive and more nationalistic neighbour (who inhabits a continent and not two islands the size of Britain), and, as it is, there is so strong a tendency in the outside world to regard New Zealand as a mere suburb of Australia that in New Zealand the use of the word ‘ Australasia ’ causes irritation, and is officially deprecated.” The Bible continues to be the world’s best seller. The Government of Mexico has published the New Testament as a State document, which it has freely distributed among the citizens of that country. The Gideons, a familiar name for the Christian Commercial Travellers’ Association, has placed nearly 900,000 Bibles in hotel rooms in the United States. The New York Bible Society reports that it, too, has placed a large number of Bibles in hotel rooms to give the traveller absent from home, if he is so inclined, a chance to read the sacred Scriptures. It comes with a shock of surprise to learn that there is an organised movement against it. It is reported that the “American Anti-Bible in its efforts to destroy confidence in the sacred Scriptures has begun a deliberate campaign to remove the Bible from hotel rooms and other public places. A large sum has been raised for the purpose of carrying on this campaign, and already literature adverse to the Bible is being sent to every hotel proprietor and to commercial travellers.

In connection with the West Australian centenary celebrations, which will be held next year, the State Centenary Publicity Committee has prepared conditions for an Empire-wide literary competition. The competition is for an ode to be set to music, and the prize of £5O is to be presented by the Perth Newspaper Proprietors’ Association. The adjudicator will be Professor Walter Murdoch, and the definition of an ode is to be that given in Webster’s Dictionary. It is provided that the historic significance of the centenary shall be the underlying motive of the ode, which is limited to a maximum of three verses of eight lines each, with refrain. The competitions are open, and the competitors are to keep in view the possibility of the ode being used as a national song. The copyright is to be vested in the centenary executive for the year 1929. The latest date on which matter may be submitted for competition is July 31.

Dr Rosenbach in “ Books and Bidders ” writes on one page of “the 14 or 15 Caxtons in my New York vault,” and in another of having in store there “ four manuscripts of Chaucer, two of Gower’s * Ccnfessio Amautis,’ several of Lydgate's ‘ Falls of Princes,’ and the famous manuscript of Occleve’s poems with a contemporary portrait of Chaucer.” In his private library he records the possession of a volume of eighteenth-century pamphlets, including the first edition of Gray’s Odes (also the first book from Horace Walpole’s press at Strawberry Hill) and the long-lost first edition of Dr Johnson’s Prologue recited by Garrick on the opening night of Drury Lane in 1747. This, while still an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania, he picked up at an auction in Philadelphia, under the eyes of the trade, for 4dol. During his post-graduate course a well-known collector dangled a cheque for 5000dol before his eyes; but, though he needed money very badly, he stuck to his book.

“ Meredith,” -writes Mr E. M. Forster in his “ Aspects of Fiction,” “ is not the great name he was 20 years ago. . . . His philosophy has not worn well. His heavy attacks on sentimentality—they bore the present generation. . . When he gets serious and noble-minded there is a strident overtone, a bullying that becomes distressing. . . What with the faking, what with the preaching, which was never agreeable and is now said to be hollow, and what with the home counties posing as the universe, it is no wonder Meredith now lies in the trough.” The criticism is not, of course, intended to be a finished estimate; but in its conversational sincerity it condenses accurately enough what is in the air when Meredith is mentioned. No, the general conclusion would seem to be Meredith has not worn well. But the value of centenaries lies in the occasion they offer us for solidifying such airy impressions. Talk, mixed with half-rubbed-out memories, forms a mist by degrees through which we scarcely see plain. To open the books again, to try to free them from the rubbish of reputation and accident—that, perhaps, is the most acceptable present we can offer to a writer on his hundredth birthday.”