Stray Leaves from Book World

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21186, 5 November 1938, Page 12

Stray Leaves from Book World

INTERESTING NEWS AND NOTES

A recent Issue of the German Government’s “Official Gazette” (“Reichsund Staats Anzeiger”) contains the following announcement: —“Hi agreement with the Reich Minister for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda, Dr Goebbels, and In accordance with paragraph 1 of the decree of the Relchspresident for the Protection of Folk and State of February 28, 1933, the sale of the book, “The History of Militarism,” is prohibited until further notice. The author of this book is Dr Alfred Vagts, a German scholar, who left Germany, finding himself out of sympathy with the creed and methods of Nazism, and now holds a post at Harvard.

A valuable addition to the collection of incunabula at the Melbourne Public Library has been made by Sir Stephen Gaselee, the librarian of the Foreign Office, who has shown keen interest in the development of the collection for some years. This incunable is a copy of Thierry Martens’s edition of the "Formula Vivendi Canonicorum,” printed at Alost about 1490. It is bound with some early sixteenth century' books, and was not included when Sir Stephen Gaselee gave his fifteenth century books to the Cambridge University Library. The six treatises with which it is bound were printed in Antwerp, Rouen, Paris, and Strasbourg between 1505 and 1511, and the volume is in a contemporary Oxford binding of fine workmanship.

A publisher gave me some good examples the other day of amusing requests for books from people who were a bit uncertain of the titles (says a contributor to “John o’ London’s Weekly”) . Mr Beverley Nichols's “The Fool Hath Said,” for instance, turned up as “The Fowl Hath Laid!” Others are “Deepest Fungus” (“De Profundis”), “Russia Pure French” (“Brush Up Your French”), “The Handsome Victorians” (“And So Victoria”), “A Little Girl Afraid of a Dog” (“The Adventures of a Black Girl in Her Search For God”), “Strong Zebra Ideals” (Strachan’s “Hebrew Ideals”). Some time ago, too, Mr H. E. Bates published a book called “Something Short and Sweet,” and his namesake,, My Ralph Bates, one called “Rainbow Fish.” Their publisher, Messrs Cape, received an order for “Six Bates, Something Fresh.”

“The Toowoomba Chronicle” directs attention to the fact that, while the Darling Downs has made a fair contribution to Australian literature, one “Downsman,” who is an Australian institution in the written word—Arthur Hoey Davis, “Steele Rudd”—has no memorial in the district in tangible form. George Essex Evans, who, though not a native of the Downs, developed his talent there, is remembered In the Essex monument in Toowoomba. Mabel Forrest, a native of the Downs, has left a memorial, apart from her published works, in the handsome reproduction of one of her poems in the Brisbane City Hall. So far Steele Rudd, who was born at Drayton, has no such monument. But Downs folk, and especially the residents of Greenmount, have recognised the duty of securing a permanent memorial to him, and a movement has been commenced to establish a fund to carry out the task. The movement was initiated by the Camboova Shire Council, in whose area Steele Rudd’s old home is situated. All lovers of “On Our Selection” willing to help in the worthy project of erecting such a memorial could no doubt obtain full information by writing to the council.

Myron Brinig’s life story of an indomitable woman of the working classes, bearing the title “Moy Flavin,” should be popular. It has all the right ingredients. May, the heroine, is an Irish-American; very shortly after she is Introduced it is apparent that a mixture of joy and tragedy is going to be her lot, she has an engaging Irish gaiety and passion combined with a great capacity for suffering and selfsacrifice. The normal reader could hardly ask for more. Yet “May Flavin” as a novel is not entirely satisfying, despite the indomitable May. There will be a percentage of readers who will be exasperated by Mr Brinig’s tooadrolt manipulation of events and circumstances so as to bring out the most admirable qualities in his heroine. He gives May a husband so that May can show her great capacity for love. Then, after endowing her with six children, he causes Mike, the husband, to desert her, so that she may demonstrate how she can work to feed hungry young mouths. He has her eldest son, Stanley, turn gangster, and be killed, just to show how she can survive even that blow, and then, at judicious intervals, presents her with other little woes so that the reader will be able to see she is tough to the end. In other w-rds, Mr Brlnig has become over-sentimental about his own creation. Reading the book you can feel the Impulse growing on him; the May Flavin of the last few chapters has run away with her author. This is a pity, since there is- material in the book to make a really first-rate story, rather than a first-rate secondrater.

In one of the windows of New Zealand House, in London, recently there has been an exhibition of books by New Zealand writers: Miss Jean Batten, Dr A. J. Harrop, "G. B. Lancaster,” Mr J. A. Lee, Miss Ngaio Marsh, Miss Nelle Scalan, Mr C. A. Wilson, and Commander Frank Worsley. Commander Worsley’s book. “First Voyage in a Square-rigged Ship,” has just been published.

Laurence Binyon, interviewed by “The News-Chronicle” on his seventieth birthday, said that he had been as busy as ever since his retirement from the keepership of prints and drawings at the British Museum. He is now working slowly on a long poem, which he has had in his head for more than 30 years.

Hollywood within recent years has been turning back the pages of history to find literary classics which have stood the test of time and are deemed suitable for filming. Thus we have had such notable productions as Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Thackery’s “Becky Sharp,” and, among others, R. L. Stevenson’s famous “Treasure Island.” That author has again made a screen reappearance with “Kidnapped,” a picture notable for the large percentage of English actors appearing in it, or perhaps more correctly, American actors with English accents.

Commenting on the issue of a new edition of ’Penguin Island’ for the Heritage Club, Edward Larocque Tinker recalls the circumstances in which Anatole France first became known to American readers: —“Anatole France got his initial recognition in the United States because a queer young GraecoIrishman wanted to go to Japan. In 1889 Lafcadio Hearn came back to New York from the West Indies, but was soon overcome by a yearn for the Orient. Turning this way and that to raise money for the journey, he suggested to Harper Bros, that he translate the book that made Anatole France famous. They agreed, and in the short space of two weeks Hearn made a wellnigh perfect English version of ‘Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard,’ for which lie was paid 115 dollars.”

The dispersal of the Comte de Suzannet’s magnificent collection of Dickensian letters and relics at Sotheby’s must have saddened many lovers of Dickens, for, as “The Times” puts it, such a collection is never likely to come into the auction room again. A series of 175 letters from Dickens to Thomas Beard, written between 1832 and 1867, fetched £BOO, and a total of £3,687 Was realised. Among the manuscripts sold was an album containing the original version of “The Ivy Green” (later incorporated in “Pickwick”) which Dickens wrote at the age of 18 or 19. The much-discussed miniature of Dickens by his aunt, Janet Barrow—the earliest known portrait —fetched the relatively small sum of £3O. Not all of Comte de Suzannet's collection has been scattered. An important part of it—valued at over £lo,ooo—goes to the Dickens House in Doughty street. The gift, handed over to the trustees by the French Ambassador, comprises a whole chapter of “Nicholas Nickleby” (39 pages), "The Schoolboy’s Story” (10 pages, and “Our Commission” (11 pages).

One of the greatest scholars of his age, one whose work has already been placed among the glories of French literature, Joseph Bedier, head of the College of France, poet and playwright, has this week been mourned all over the country by fellow scholars and students alike (wrote the Paris correspondent of the Melbourne “Age” on September 3). His death last Sunday even touched many of the laymen who, with no pretence to scholarship, had had the door to French medieval romance literature opened to him by Bedier’s exquisite reconstruction of the legend of Tristan and Iseult, which he wrote 30 years ago, and which has aroused the comment of a critic: “As long as a French literature shall exist this masterpiece of our medieval legends will be read.” It was as a student under another famous name in medieval studies, Gaston Paris, that Joseph Bedier developed his passion for the lovely dramas of the Middle Ages. After a brilliant career at the University of Paris he was successively professor at the University of Fribourg, at Caen, and at the Ecole Normale in Paris. Finally he succeeded Parts himself in the chair of medieval literature at the College de France. It was characteristic of the pupil that he rarely gave a lecture without referring in some way to Gaston Paris as “my much missed master.” But this brilliant authority on language and literature was no mere intellectual scholar. His reconstruction of all the varying legends of Tristan and Iseult gave the key to all the romance and warmth of his nature. Rarely has there been written a work which recaptured so perfectly the spirit of medieval literature, which expressed it so perfectly in phrases more akin to poetry than to prose. “The Romance of Tristan and Iseult” has been for years, and will continue to be one of the best-loved books of all who love French literature.