BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3870, 15 May 1928, Page 74

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Mr W. B. Maxwell’s next novel is to be called “We Forget Because We Must.”

Mr E. F. Benson, the novelist, is making another excursion into biography with a “ Life of Alcibiades! ”

Dr Hamblin Smith, who has written “ The Right to Kill,” is the medical officer at Birmingham Prison.

We are to have from Mr H. G. Wells next year a book of a very different kind from anything he has written since the days of Kipps and Mr Lewisham.

Captain Maurice G. Kiddy, whose first novel, “ The Devil’s Dagger,” has just been published, is the secretary of the Institute of Structural Engineers. * # #

Katharine Perris, the daughter of George Perris, the editor of the Daily Chronicle, is shortly publishing a first novel, which is called “ The Gateway of the World.”

A collection of short stories written by Vere Hutchinson before the serious illness which has kept her silent so long is to be published shortly under the title, “ The Other Gate.”

Mr Cecil Roberts, who used to be the editor of a Nottingham newspaper and is now a popular novelist, has left

for Venice and Dalmatia to supervise the making of a film version of his last' novel, “ Sagusto.”

Ward Muir, who died not long ago, left the MS. of a completed novel, which he had called “ The Bewildered Lover.” This, the last novel of an author whose untimely death is lamented by everyone who knew him, will be published this season.

“ It’s Smee ” is the apt title given to his. reminiscences by George Shelton, ■whom thousands of grown-ups and children will remember as the terrible pirate in “ Peter Pan.” Smee’s reminiscences of his piratical career, and of his life in theatreland before he was sworn under the Jolly Roger, will be published shortly.

Mrs Henry Dudeney, whose new novel, “ Brighton Beach,” is being published, has a passion for restoring old houses. She has just bought the old seventeenthcentury poorhouse of St. John-sub-Lastro, Lewes, and is undertaking restoration work.

The controversy over the recent SaccoVanzetti case will give particular interest to a book by Sir Maurice Low on the methods of the American judicial system. His opinion of those methods, after long investigation, may be judged from the title of his book, “ Lawless America.”

An extraordinary picture of Russia since the Revolution is said to be presented in “ The Diary of a Communist Schoolboy,” by a Russian author named Ognyof, which will be published presently. The author, who is an antiCommunist, shows how Communist Russia appears to a boy who has known no other form of government.

A great deal of discussion is likely to be aroused—and not only in Church circles—by a Life of Christ written by Emil Ludwig, the historian, under the title “ The Son of Man.” For the author frankly avows that he is concerned only to write history, to present a portrait of Christ as a human figure with no “ theological incrustations,” and that he has therefore made no mention in this book of any “ supernatural occurrences ” • —in other words, the miracles.

One of London’s leading booksellers is in the habit of circularising a mailing list of his customers from time to time, suggesting various works in which he thinks they may be interested. In his last circular he made a number of classifications, after having examined his stock, and noted what books were not selling as well as he thought they deserved. He headed this classification, “ Novelists Who Ought to Sell Better.” When the circular came back from the printer it appeared: “Novelists Who Ought to Sell Butter.” A warm dispute is now in progress as to whether the actual mistake was made by the bookseller, or the printer, with no lack of champions on the side of the printer.

Mr Peadar O’Donnell, the author of “ Islanders,” a novel which has won the universal praise of the critics, has led an amazingly exciting life. Once when he was an organiser for the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union he was asked to cut off the food from a mental home in support of a strike there, but as he says in his own words: “ I couldn’t feel it in me to cut off food from lunatics, so I passed on that difficulty to the committee by taking possession of the building and shutting out the committee. Over 200 police surrounded the building, but it was barricaded as though for a siege, and nothing could be done. Relatives of patients were allowed in, and conducted through the building to see that all the staff was carrying on as usual. After 12 days, peace terms were agreed on.”

Commenting on the lament of Lord Gorell at the Authors’ Club recently, that the novelist has driven the poet out of the field in modern literature, “ Alpha of the Plough ” in the London Star says it is a fact that admits of no controversy. There has never been so much reading done in the history of the world as is being done to-day; but it is equally true that there was never less poetry read. For the bulk of us “reading” means novel reading, and it is probable that for one person who has read “ Paradise Lost ” there could be found 10.000 who have read every novel of Edgar Wallace, and for one who has read Shakespeare’s . Sonnets there are at least a thousand who have devoured “ The Way of An Eagle.”

Plaques have been placed in Albany, Piccadilly, to commemorate the residence there of Lord Byron, the first Lord Lytton, and Mr Gladstone. Apart from their having had at different periods the same Albany address, Byron and Lytton shared a series of similar conditions. Both began the literary career by romanticising pirates, highwaymen, debauches, and naughty folk of that kind; both were inoKlinately unfortunate or unsuccessful in marriage; and both were so completely ‘the children of their respective generations that their work is inadequately appreciated by a generation with a different spirit and outlook (says The Times). Neither stayed in Albany very long, and each left on the compulsion of matrimony, which was to give them reason to regret their departure.

The recent sale at Sotheby’s, London, of a second edition of Bacon’s “ Essays ” to Dr Roschbach for £7OO recalls a story associated with a copy of the same edition which was sold for £2OO to Alfred Quaritch, who, in 1912, sold it to Harry Widener., a young American millionaire collector. When Widener was leaving, he said to "Quai itch, “I have had an inside waistcoat pocket made for the ‘ Essays,’ so that they will always be with me. If I go to the bottom of the Atlantic they will go, too.” Widener, taking the precious volume with him, sailed for the United States in the Titanic, and perished in the disaster of April 15, 1912.

Of the three greatest names in England’s, roll of intellect, Shakespeare, Bacon, and Newton, only the last is inscribed on a Westminster Abbey tomb. Shakespeare has a monument, Bacon nothing. Tlfere are no monuments to Keats, Shelley, and Byron. Cowley is honoured there, but not Waller; Beaumont, but not Herrick; Denham and Drayton, but not Marlowe and Suckling. Milton's parodist, John Philips, was given a monument in the Abbey at a time when Milton’s own name was considered as an impossible “ pollution of its walls.” Some absences became too glaring to be endured. Robert Burns was given a bust 50 years ago; Scott a bust only about 20 years ago; and Coleridge’s bust was unveiled in 1885.

Mr George A. Macmillan, of the great London publishing house, has given to the public, through the Sunday Times, the text of the letter in which his father, Alexander" Macmillan, gave reasons to the young author Thomas Hardy for turning down his first novel, “ The Poor Man and the Lady.” Impatient young writers often declare that publishers and editors are really noi, interested in good stuff they should read the thousand words of close-knit criticism in which Alexander Macmillan set foi th his views. The gist of the matter was that, while Hardy s peasants were excellent, his pictures of society life in London were extravagant and his indignation against the idle rich excessive. All this the publisher set forth in detail, concluding: “I am writing to you as to a writer who seems to me, at least, potentially, of considerable mark, of power and purpose. If this is your first book I think you ought to go on.”

Our London correspondent writes:— “Mr St. John Ervine, playwright and dramatic critic, writing in one of the English magazines about Hugh Walpole, mentions his astonishment that the popular novelist was born in Tasmania. However, he adds: ‘ln America Mr Walpole •was nicknamed “ Apple-cheeked Hugh,” so perhaps there is nothing incongruous in the fact that he was born in Tasmania, where the nice apples grow.’ Mr Walpole, both in his looks and his books, is essentially English, but. as Mr St. John Irvine points out, ‘the further away from England an Englishman is born, the more certain he is to look as if he had been born and reared in Rutland.’ As many people in Tasmania will remember, Dr Walpole, now Bishop of Edinburgh, was teaching for a time in a school in their island, and it was during his stay there that the future author was born.”

Misprintings of the text have resulted in a great variety of Bibles known familarity by such names as the Breeches Bible, the Bug Bible, the Wicked Bible. Another kind is the sentimental association Bible. Dr Bosenbach, in “ Books and Bidders,” says this: “Among the hundreds of Bibles offered to me each year there is one type which blooms eternal. It is the. bullet-hole Bible; the Bible which saved grandpa’s life in the Civil War, or the Revolution—as you will. For a time I was shown such a succession of these that my very dreams were haunted by them. Many a night my jest would be broken when whole armies charged me, each soldier wearing a protecting copy of the Holy Scripture over his heart. Some people have fondly believed that a tale of sentiment, plus a dash of bravery, mixed with their own stimulated reverence, would bring value to the family Bible. The bullet-hole Bible has become such an old story that every time I hear a shot I think it is someone aiming at the old family Scriptures in the back yard.”

“ The Headmaster,” writes to The Times:— I have felt anxious to raise a question which I have believed would Interest the possessors of books generally. Both I myself and our school library have suffered through the well-known lack of conscience in the matter of returning books lent. The library can, to some extent, protect itself, and so can an individual if he conscientiously and regularly makes a list with the names of -borrowers, and can overcome the reluctance one feels to remind people that they have not returned a book. But how many of us are prepared to do this? The idea occurred to me that-* perhaps, under your auspices, an annual National Day for the return of books lent might be announced, and that day might not inappropriately fall during the season of self-denial, the very name of which suggests the trouble it is sought to alleviate. It is too late this year to choose the first day of bant'