English Books in France.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 3, 20 January 1909, Page 36

English Books in France.

There is an extraordinary run just now in France on English novels. For some years past the French novel has been built so much on the Bourget type —sacrificing the story to psychological analysis —that readers have have become a little

tired of it. The tide is changing, and many elever French writers are working hard now at novels with stories in them. But meanwhile the output of stories has been below the demand for them, and French publishers have bought largely from England and America. It is an extraordinary fact that in five of the most important papers in Paris to-day the •feuilletons should be translations from the English. The “ Temps ” is publishing “My Friend Prospero,” by Henry Harland; “ La Liberte” is publishing “ Lady Rose’s Daughter.” by Mrs. Humphry Ward; the “ Journal des Delia ts” “The Tangled Skein,” by Baroness Orczy; and the “Figaro” has just begun the publication of “ The Shulamite,” by Alice and Claude Askew. The French papers are not always quite accurate in their spelling of our British names, anct that, no doubt, is why the “ Echo de Paris” describes its feuilleton “ L’lle an Poison,” (which is the French for Mr. A. T. Quiller - Couch’s “ Poison Island,”) as adapted from the English of A. T. Quiller Quiou. It is, no doubt, the author’s pseudonym of “ Q.” which has misled th? French paper.