Untitled

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20669, 6 March 1937, Page 12 (Supplement)

The American publishing firm of Appleton-Century has just Issued a record of its activities, including those in which its forbear—for the house of Appleton-Century did not come into being until 1933—D. Appleton and Co., was engaged. And it gives us the name of the world’s best seller in the English language—excluding the Bible. That book is the Webster Speller. The spelling book—written in 1782—0 f that remarkable schoolmaster and lexicographer, Noah Webster, was a best seller on the Appleton lists from 1855 onward. Between 1855 and 1890 the Appletons sold over 35.000,000 copies of the “Speller,” and in one year—lB66 —the sales reached the figure of 1,590,000.

Another story has come from the pen of that gifted writer, Princess Paul Tronbetzkoy. with whose “Storm Tarn,” “Jonlys,” and other novels many readers of fiction are familiar. It is published by Robert Hale, and its title, “Spider Spinning,” describes it more aptly than some titles of novels that have recently come from the press It is a tale of a girl from the southwestern mainland of England, who is married to a flower farmer on one of the Scilly Isles, of his brutality, coarseness and drunkenness, of her humble friend, the hired man, and of the last witch on the island. It is the latter who is the “spider” who spins a web intended to destroy both Ann and her husband. There are several other characters, including a French sailor, who figure in the story, and all are made real to the reader, as well as the people on the Scillies in general, the flower growing, and the scenery.