BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3899, 4 December 1928, Page 72

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Edgar Wallace has bought a permanent country home at Bourne End, on the Thames.

Joseph Conrad’s famous story. “The Rescue,” is to be made into a “talking” film, in which Ronald Colman will appear.

Cyril Maude, who is in London from his V\ est Country home, is collaborating with 11. A. Vaehell in writing a play.

Sir Hall Caine’s former horn - at Heath Brow, Hampstead, with its delightful old gardens, has just been sold by private treaty.

Tlie Prince of Wales has accepted the dedication of Hector Bolitho's forthcoming anthology of stories and verse by Empire writers.

A well-known British biographer is now in Madrid, where he is helping the Queen of Spain to write her autobiography.

A new play by Alfred Sutro will be seen in London at the New Year. Owen Nares, who is at present touring in the provinces, will take the chief part. * * *

Sinclair Lewis has bought a 295-aere farm in Barnard, Vt., about 15 miles from Plymouth, President Coolidge’s birthplace.

Professor H. W. Garred, professor of poetry at Oxford University since 1923,. has been chosen to occupy the Charles Eliot Norton chair of poetry at Harvard Unive sity in 1929-30.

Yoshio Markino, the famous Japanese author, artist, and lecturer, whose art is represented in the Luxembourg and in the collection of the Emperor of Japan, has gone to live permanently in England.

John Masefield has written a book of poems entitled “ Midsummer Night and Other Tales in Verse,” and deals with the times of King Arthur.

The birth of Baron Munchausen is to be commemorated by the erection of a monument at Bodenwerder, on the Weser. It will stand in the garden where the baron used to entertain his friends with his fantastic stories.

Jean Forbes-Robertson, the daughter of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, is to be* Peter Pan in the Christmas revival of Barrie’s famous play in London.

Housebreakers are now demolishing the entrance to Hanging Sword alley, just off Fleet street, where Jerry Cruncher (“A Tale of Two Cities”) lived. This wotthy worked at a Fleet street bank dur-’ ing the day and went body-snatching at night.

We are to have yet another translation of the Greek Anthology. This one is the work of Shane Leslie. His version differs from most of the others in that ho has rendered the Greek verse epigrams

into English prose, and so probably has ' avoided much of that straining inseparable from any attempt to translate verse into verse.

The death has occurred in Nice of Dr Frank Crane, the American journalist, whose syndicated writings, chiefly optimistic philosophy in “ popular ” tone, are known in most of the leading cities of the world.

Sir Hall Caine, the British novelist and dramatist, has been ordered to take a. voyage abroad immediately. He is suffering from loss of memory. Sir Hall Caine is aged 75 years.

“ The Life of George Chaffey,” by Mr J. A. Alexander, will shortly be published in Melbourne. Chaffey was iargely responsible for the establishment of the irrigation settlement at Mildura. His work in California and Canada is given in outline in the book, which contains many illustrations and maps. The Prime Minister (Mr Bruce) has contributed a foreword.

Mrs M. Forrest has learned that her novel “ White Witches ” has been accepted for publication. This is her fifth novel accepted in England. The novel is dedicated to Squadron-leader Kingsford Smith, who was passing along Queen street, Brisbane, at the end of his transpacific flight as Mrs Forrest was writing the last chapter in the Telegraph building.

* * * The life of the late Sir Edward Marshall-Hall, K.C., which is being written by M. E. Marjoribanks, a barrister, is to be published early next year, first in serial form. It will throw a surprising new light on certain aspects of the eminent counsel’s career.

H. W. Yoxall, whose lively new novel, AH Abroad,” has just been published, is a son of the late Sir James Yoxall, and like his father has a fine collection of antique furniture. At one time he was occupied in business with Central America, and in this way got the colour for his book.

Motor cyclists will certainly be interested in a book provisionally entitled -‘Wheels and Chains,” in which G. fitratil-Sauer tells how, in 1924, he went on two wheels all the way from Leipsic to Afghanistan. But even those with no experience of or desire for that mode of transport will find lively reading in the author’s account of his adventures, which, after exploration of the unmarked vzays of Armenia and Persia, culminated in a spell in prison in Afghanistan.

“ Whither Mankind ? ” The question Is answered in a book of that title which had the distinction of being chosen by the. American Book of the Month Club for distribution to its hundred thousand members. And it .is answered by a number of celebrated people, who give their ideas on the way the world is going; among them Bertrand Russell, Emil Ludwig, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, and Havelock Ellis. Their views on our present state of civilisation, and how much farther we may develop, will be available in an English edition of the book.

“ Private Suhren: the Story of a German Rifleman,” by Georg von der Vring, is a book which is likely to appeal as much to British ex-soldiers as it has, in its German version, to those who fought on the other side in the Great War. Private Suhren was an artist before he was caught up into the Prussian military machine; and it is from the point of view of the artist rather than that of the soldier that the author lias recorded his subject’s impressions of everyday life at and behind the front; his reactions to the horrors of the trenches and to the mere irritations and monotonies of life in barracks and billets.

. Mr John Cournos, himself a novelist, hag selected what he considers to be the best 15 short stories. Of the stories m his book he says: “ Each belongs to art which is ‘ a criticism of life,’ by reason of its art. Each has its own beauty, which is truth by reason of that beauty. Art is concentrated life, and we have here abundance of life in small spaces.” Mr Cournos considers “ Boule de Suif ” of Maupassant the greatest of all modern short stories. He adds: “ The distance which separates ‘ Boule de Suif ’ from a story like Gorky’s ‘ Twenty-six Men and One Girl ’ is not so great as one would suppose. Each shows an artist’s conquest over his material, each is lyrical in spite of the sordid life it describes.” Here are the 15 which Mr Cournos ■reprints: —“Boule de Suif,” by Maupassant; “The Hidden Masterpiece,” by Balzac; “The Procurator of Judea,” by Anatole France; “The Overcoat,” by Golgol; “ Bontzye Shweig,” by Isaac Loeb Perez; “The Tell-Tale Heart,” by Edgar Allan Poe; “The Torture by Hope,” by Villiers de I’lsle Adam; “Twenty-six Men and One Girl,” by Gorky; “Abyss,” by Andreyev; “ The Phantom Rickshaw,” by Kipling; “The District Doctor,” by Turgenev; “ Four Days,” by Garshin; « The Triumph of the Egg,” by Sherwood Anderson; “The Funnel,” by A. E. Coppard; and “A Lodging for the Night,” by Stevenson.