LITERARY NOTES.

Southland Times, Issue 19458, 24 January 1925, Page 11

LITERARY NOTES.

A new revised edition of our English Bible—the story of its origin and growth, by Dr. H. W. Hoare, is to be issued shortly by Mr Murray at 6/- net. It contains specimen pages from Old Bible, a Bibliography and three half-tone illustrations. The publishing firm of Longmans, Green and Co., London, has just observed its twohundredth anniversary. The present Longman brothers who are directors of the company are the sixth generation of the founders of the business, which has always remained in the family. The original site, too, in Paternoster Row, is still in their possession. Five years before the original Longman purchased the bookseller’s business of William Taylor, the latter had published the first authentic edition of “Robinson Crusoe.” Longmans published Dr Johnson’s dictionary and it is on record in the diary of one Charles Wentworth Dilke that “Mr Longman wrote to me desiring my support to a periodical paper called the Times.” The pictorial jackets of new books are becoming a side line among book collectors, and people who are in no sense members of that class are collecting them. Mr John Lane, in his advertisements, gives the names of the jacket artists. A New York publisher, recently in London, said that in America the jacket was an important factor in the selling of a book. “But then,” he added, “in America you have books thrust at you everywhere. A visitor to London has to hunt for booksellers’ shops, there are so few of them.” In an Invercargill bookshop the other day I came across a cheap reprint of Ambrose Bierce’s “In the Midst of Life.” Ambrose made quite a name for himself by disappearing sensationally into the wilds of Mexico, after having given promise of a brilliant literary career. His short stories have attracted considerable attention. Like 0. Henry, Bierce is a master in the handling of plots, and has in addition a fine dramatic touch. His stories are not classics, as some assert, but they are well worth reading.