LITERARY GOSSIP

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22509, 17 September 1938, Page 20

LITERARY GOSSIP

A correction. ... On the authority of the London correspondent of the ?'New York Times" the decease of the "Saturday Review" was recently reported in this column. He finds himself mistaken, having himself trusted another authority:

I must apologise for having given further currency to an erroneous report [in the "Yorkshire Post"], but there is nothing to withdraw in what I wrote about the former glories of the Saturday Review" or its recent decadence. I fear, too, that the news of its death, though "exaggerated," was not ' greatly exaggerated," as in the case of Mark Twain. This paper has disappeared nowadays from the tables of clubs and reading rooms where I used to see it, and most news-stands, as I find from my own inquiries, supply it only to order* In speculating about its chances of survival one must remember that, in England at any rate, a periodical publication —whether daily, weekly, or monthly—seems somehow to lack the j recuperative power of a business firm or an educational institution. When •once a decline has set in over a period of years, the administration of financial or literary oxygen seldom does more than postpone the funeral. Any ambitious person who seeks to acquire influence through the press will usually do better to start an entirely new publication rather than attempt to give fresh life to one whose health has long been failing.

In a recent article on this page Mr R. G. C. McNab reviewed a book in which M. Georges Duhamel expresses somewhat melancholy reflections on the future of literature, rivalled as it now is by radio and film. 'Readers who were a little encouraged by Mr • McNab's defence of books may draw further encouragement from Hilaire Belloc, who is himself fortified against the notion that the screen and the loudspeaker will supersede print when ho remembers and adduces certain facts. Books, he says, will always be of service as missiles, as supports for chairs, as furniture, and as weights for keeping down the corners of maps. '

Mazo de la Roche, author of.the "Jama" series, was recently awarded the Lome Pierce Medal for literature by the Royal Society of Canada. And Stephen Haggard, who was acting in, "Whiteoaks," the "Jalna" play, on the American tour, went back to England to receive the congratulations due to his first novel. "NYA." He is a great-nephew, of Rider Haggard.

One of the dangers of the English law of libel is that incurred by authors and publishers, who may be mulcted in damages by persons who successfully claim that, by name or description, they have been, or could be, identified with characters discreditably represented in works of fiction. (Mr A. P. Herbert's latest enterprise as Social Reformer No. 1 has been* to introduce legislation that may lift from .writers and publishers the risks of such coincidence, which have been proved fearfully heavy.) Great joy, therefore, reports the London correspondent of the "New York Times," has been caused in the literary world by the result of a recent action at law. One of the characters in a novel by Helen Ashton, "People in Cages," was' called Captain John Canning, and was described as a financier wanted by the police". Before choosing this name Miss looked into the London telephone directory to see if there was any John Canning in it, and found none. But a stockbroker called John Canning turned up, asserting that there were so many points of resemblance between himself and the fictitious character that it was possible for readers to infer his identity with it, and he accordingly claimed damages. In his summing ' up, in the Court of King's Bench, 'the Lord Chief Justice showed very plainly what he thought of this claim, for he suggested to the jury that there was no coin of the realm small enough to" indicate the damages Mr Canning had suffered. The jury returned a verdict for the publishers.

A new name, it appears, has been added to the short list—Neil Gunn, James Bridie, Eric Linklater, Catherine Carswell, -and a few more—of writers whose work has created the strength and credit of Scotland's contemporary literature. This is Fred Urquhart, whose first novel, "Time Will Knit," has been received with uncommon praises by very good critics. He writes, says Janet Adam Smith, of working-class life on the outskirts of Edinburgh, but he has not been billed as a "proletarian writer." He is not concerned to state a political case, with examples, but to give a picture of a community from which the reader can draw his own. political inferences. The title is taken from a poem by Harold Monro:

There'll be no great decision. Time will knit And multiply the stitches while we look.

John Dos Passos. cruising in the Mediterranean, has written a new novel, to be called "Adventures of

JOHN DOS PASSOS

a Young Man." For more than 20 years Dos Passos has roamed around the world, and many of his books were written as he travelled.

"How excellent," remarks Robert Lynd, "was the poetry written in the age of Shelley, when the ordinary Englishman looked on a poet as a kind of half-wit! In such an atmosphere it is .only the genuine poets who persist."

Several books dealing with the sea have been added recently, reports the Librarian of the Canterbury Public. Library. "A notable novel, "In Hazard," by Richard Hughes, is the story of a merchant vessel struck by. a great hurricane. James Hanley, another fine novelist of the sea, has written a volume of short stories, "Half-an-Eye," and Robert Prechtl'has linked authentic happenings with imaginary ones in his book "Titanic," an excellent story of the tragic wreck of 1912.

Non-fiction volumes added include "Divers in Deep Seas," by David Masters, who describes salvage work of exceptional difficulty and importance carried out in recent years, and E. F. Knight's handy little volume, "Sailing."