BOOKS and AUTHORS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue XX, 14 November 1896, Page 43

BOOKS and AUTHORS.

A LITERARY CAUSERIE for COLONIAL BOOKBUYERS and BORROWERS. BOOKS marked thus (*) have arrived in the colony, and could at the time of writing be purchased in the principal colonial bookshops, and borrowed at the libraries. For the convenience of country cousins who find difficulty in procuring the latest books and new editions, the ‘BOOKMAN' will send to any New Zealand address any book which can be obtained. No notice will, of course, be taken of requests unaccompanied by remittance to cover postage as well as published price of book. It is requested that only those who find it impossible to procure books through the ordinary channels, should take advantage of this offer. The labour involved will be heavy and entirely, unremunerative, ns *ees or commission being taken. Queries and Correspondence on Literary Matters Invited. AU Communications and Commissions must be addressed

THE BOOKMAN,’ Graphic Office, Auckland

We read • The bowers with so much plea- < ‘Flotsam. , ■ , sure and strong approbation that we had formed high anticipations of the treat in store for us in Flotsam by the same talented author. These were, however, by no means realised. Flotsam is, indeed, ably written, but it possesses nothing distinctive in thought or style to differentiate it from the work of much less able writers than Mr Henry Seton Merriman. It is the story of the life of a young man who, possessing many admirable and lovable qualities, does not possess those others without which an individual becomes mere flotsam on the sea of circumstance. Against the name of Harry Wylam, the hero, is written the fatal sentence, •Unstable as water thou shalt not succeed.’ His mind is made up for him on any and every point by the last speaker, and he is completely under the influence of his immediate associates and surroundings. Obeying, apparently, the law of his nature, he squanders two fortunes and marries a worthless creature whom he does not really love, and leaves Miriam Gresham, the sweet girl whom he does love, to wear the willow for him all her life. In bringing about these and other undesirable issues Harry Wylam is largely aided by his evil genius, Phillip Lamond. Poor Harry, like others of his temperament, is rich in evil geniuses, but his evil genius par ex-

cellence, with intent and deliberation is Phillip Lamond. and in his conscious conflict with Harry’s good genius. Captain Marqueray, Lamond gets the best of it as far as Harry is personally concerned. Certain incidents of the plot are connected with the Indian mutiny,and we get one or two vivid and clear pictures of Delhi from within and without during the siege. Harry is ultimately cashiered from the army for looting, on I.amond's information, and goes home to England with his baby daughter, whose custody he has bought from his worthless wife for forty thousand pounds. He leaves his child with Miriam Gresham, and with kind-hearted Mr Gresham’s aid, starts life afresh in Cape Colony. But he drifts loose again, ond after five years of vicissitudes in the lower degrees of the social scale he dies, sick and homeless, in a waggon crossing the veldt. The story is an instructive one, interestingly told, and will hold its own with most of the better class of novels, but it certainly connot rank with Mr Henry Seton Merriman’s * Sowers.’ . „ . Tom Grogan is a stevedore of Staten * Tom Grogan. Island, New York, and a right good stevedore too. honest and upright as the day, well skilled to command and direct gangs of working men, an indefatigable and cheerful worker in the worst of weather, one who successfully beards offending depot yard masters, threatens dishonest inspectors, outwits unfair rival stevedores, and defies Labour Unions. The vision of Tom Grogan which the foregoing description will bring before the reader’s mental eye will, I am quite sure, be something very different, in outward appearance at least, from the real Tom Grogan in whom F. Hopkinson Smith manages to cordially interest us within the compass of these two hundred and fifty pages. For Tom Grogan is a woman—a woman who (for no verv adequate reason it seems to me, I must confess) prefers to answer to her dead husband’s name rather than to her own, so the reader’s mental picture of a big, burlv, heavily-bearded man must give place to that of a strong, fine-looking woman with a fresh rosy face, who can keep a tender mother s heart in her breast while she keeps able-bodied men in awe of her tongue and her hand. Sandwiched between the chapters that deal with the good and redoubtable Tom Grogan, * her triumphs and her wrongs, her vengeance and her mercy,’ is a pretty story dealing with the loves of her daughter Jennie and Carl, the big, blond Swede, Tom’s right hand man. Of course the love story ends as satisfactorily as Tom’s trials. The book is well wr.tten and well worth reading. *■ A Gentleman This collection of short stories and sketches by the same author does not, Vagabond. j n m y op i n j on approve itself the equal of ‘ Toni Grogan.’ The sketches all display, however, a considerable degree of ability, and the subject matter and locales of the various items that make the book are sufficiently diversified to offer a literary menu in which something will be likely found suitable to the tastes of a large variety of readers. The interest of some of the stories is somewhat flimsy, and in others the sentiment seems rather overstrained, and in one or two just a trifle mawkish perhaps. Writes our London correspondent:—‘Mr A. E. Fitzgerald, whose very readable, to me, * Climbs in the NewZealand Alps ' has a wide popularity in the Old Country, read a paper on the Southern Alps of the colony before the geographical section of the British Association of Tuesday week last. He pointed out that whilst the mountains of New Zealand were not so high as those of Switzerland, the snow line was much lower, and on the whole the conditions of climbing were very similar. The glaciers, however, were larger than those of Europe’ Mr Fitzgerald described some thrilling incidents met with by himself and his guide, and illustrated his paper with some very beautiful photographic slides thrown upon a screen.’

* Notes on Political Economy from a New- Zealand Point of View ’ by ‘A New Zealand Colonist,’ is the title of a work which Messrs MacMillan announce for next month.

Mr Louis Becke, whose new story, ‘ A Native Wife. ’ will be published on the 15th inst., has been elected an honorary member of the Athemeum Club (writes our London Correspondent). Though this compliment has been paid on several occasions to Australian sonants and politicians of first rank, I fancy Mr Becke is the first litterateur from your part of the world to attain into it. He seemed, however, when I met him, in doubt whether to avail himself of the privileges of this abode of decorum and ecclesiasticism. Bishops, he opines, are not much in his line.

’ Flotsam: The Study ot a Lite,’ by Henry Seton Merriman Ixmgmai • Green and Co.

•Toni Grogan.’ by F. Hopkinson Smith : Macmillan and Co. ■A Gentleman Vagabond.' by F. Hopkinson Smith: Macmillan and Co.