PUBLISHERS TO CARRY ON

Southland Times, Issue 23954, 21 October 1939, Page 10

PUBLISHERS TO CARRY ON

Black-outs Likely To Stimulate Reading

LONDON.

The publishing trade has decided, and rightly so, to carry on as it did during the last war. Black-outs are likely to send people back to the fireside and the reading of books, and publishers winter lists are likely to be heavy, writes Arthur J. Rees in The Herald, Melbourne. . Although the National Book Fair will not be held this autumn as usual, the National Book' Council, of which John Masefield is president and the Duke of Kent patron, will remain in being, and that is a good thing. \ The council, in its advertisements, expresses the hope that one effect of tliis prolonged tension may be to convert more people into book lovers. In addition to food, candles and equipment against the emergency which is now upon us, the council insists that a supply of books is as essential as any material sustenance, and will help civilians to win this war of nerves. The council cites Shakespeare: When wasteful war shall statues overturn, ■ , And broils root out the work of masonry ‘ ‘ No Mars his sword, nor wars quick fire shall burn The living record of your memory

The last war produced much pdetry that was fine. I recollect the boom in Rupert Brooke, and how eagerly the poems of Siegfried Sassoon were read. Wilfred Owen was killed seven days before the Armistice. T. S. Eliot’s

earlier poems were published in 1917, and inaugurated a new era in poetry. In fiction, Compton Mackenzie’s name was prominent, and John Buchan wrote “Greenmantle” somewhere in France. . The true war novels came later. Such books as “All Quiet on the Western Front,” “Journey’s End,” “Undertones,” and others of a similar nature brought the War of the trenches home to English readers with terrifying reality.

This war will produce new writers, but since the catastrophe of war has come the influence of writers of the past seems rather to outweigh the living writers of today, chiefly as to entertaining books to read now. What novels can be most read and enjoyed in war-time? Contributions and letters have appeared in various newspapers making suggestions. If you were limited to one or two books—the Bible and Shakespeare being excluded what book or books would you choose? Edgar Wallace does not appear in these lists. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes and the atmosphere of Baker Street, with Sherlock calling for “a fast hansom” when he was in a hurry, are recommended. Stevenson has his followers, but Dickens leads the way. James Agate, the dramatic and literary critic, votes for Dickens’s “supreme masterpiece—so the late Gilbert Chesterton called it—“ The Pickwick Papers,” as the first choice for a British soldier’s reading in the trenches, adding that the name of the Tommy who said, “Arf a mo, Kaiser,” in the last war, when he stopped to light his fag, was probably Sam Weller.

HITLER HAS A CLAIM There is no magic formula, or course, but it is rather curious that no work by any living author has so far been mentioned. Nor is Hitler's “Mein Kampf” included, although for some months past it has been a best seller in this country. “Autolycus,” in The Sunday Times, suggests that the English publishers of “Mein Kampf” have a sum of more than £l5OO due to Hitler for royalties. As direct payment of these royalties is forbidden under the Board of Trade regulations against trading with the enemy, they are making inquiries about the correct procedure. The publishers announce, however, that all royalties accruing on “Mein Kampf” since the beginning of the war will be given by them to the British Red Cross Society and St. John Ambulance.