ORDER OF MERIT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 54, Issue 3899, 10 May 1937, Page 14 (Supplement)

ORDER OF MERIT

The Order of Merit, the highest distinction in the gift of the Crown, was this year awarded to a best sell-

er, says the “New York Times Book Review.” The recipient however, was no popular novelist, but Dr H. A. L Fisher, the sales of whose “History of Europe” have brought so much satisfaction to the booksellers. Among other present members of the order, who are eminent in the world of literature or scholarship are Sir James Barrie, Sir J. G. Fraze.-, Sir George Grierson, J. W. Mackail, John Masefield and G. M. Trevelyan. As there are only seventeen members in all, this is by no means a scanty representation of the writer’s craft. When the order was instituted in 1902, it included only one man of letters, John Morley, among its original eleven members. The distinction has subsequently been held also by Robert Bridges, John Galswarthy, Thomas Hardy, Henry James, Montague R. James and Sir George Trevelyan.