BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2248, 7 September 1914, Page 8

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

BY "LIBER." For Boxers and Athletes. Two little shilling books which make ' special appeal to amateur boxers and to athletes generally, are published by Ewart Seymour and Co. One is "Ring Strategy and Tactics," by tho editor, of "Boxing." The other, "Scientific Massage for Athletes," is by H. J. Fay, a leading Australian authority on the subject. Both handbooks will no doubt be found useful by those i for whom they are intended. The former contains illustrations, reproduced from photographs, of such celebrities of the ring as -'Packey" M'Parland, Tommy Burns, who, by the way, is sarcastically alluded to as the "Oliampion Tongue Strategist," "Tho Dixie Kid/' and "Digger" Bowkc'r, gentlemen of eminence, no .doubt, in the boxing world, but with whose particular achievements I regret I am not personally acquainted. Mr. Fay's book contains photograps and diagrams which serve to cnhanco tho practical value of the advicegiven in the text.

An Early Novel by Vrank Norrls. The late Frank Norris'j file clever young American novelist, whose poweriulstories, "The Octopus" and "The Pit," were so much admired, left behind him, it appears, an ; unpublished novel, bearing the curious titlo "Vandoverand Brute." The novel had fiomo strange advontures, narrowly escaping destruction in the fire which followed tho San Francisco earthquake, but at last it has found its way into print, Heinemann being the publisher of the English edition. Tho mithor, so it is stated, in a.foreword contributed by Charles E. Norris, could not,, in .1890, find a publisher for the story ivhich was one of his earliest efforts iii .fiction and was'written shortly after lie had graduated at tho University of California. Norris was at that time strongly under the influence of Zola, an influence which, I amy .say, is more than slightly noticeablo in "The Octopus," and tho publishers no doubt considered the treatment of his theme— "the terrible lonely, secret tragedy, of a young man's losing fight against , the baser part of his nature to the gradual atrophy of all his best instincts" too strong to be'likely 'to'be. palatable to a reading public which, in 1890, was a good deal more squqamish than it is to-day. English reviews .clearly indicate that ,the storv is not for "the young person," one journal recommending' the suppression, by Nome's literary executors, of the first edition,, and thesubstitution of another, in which certain objectionable matter might bo omitted. The inevitable result of such, well-meant, but mistaken, advice, will be, I venture to predict, that the first edition will s)>eedily run out of print. So far the novel has nSt appeared in Heinemann's Colonial Library. Apropos to .Vorris's work, I notice that John Lano has published a new edition of the author's book "The- Third Circle," a collection of short, but grimly powerful, stories of the grimy underworld of San Francisco. Some Cheap French Boohs. To those New Zealanders who can read French with a fair degree of facility, and there are, I know, many such, the cheap editions of French authors, old and new, published by Nelson's and Dent's, must be very useful. What better way of. "keeping up" or improving one's French than to read, says. Gyp's amusing story "Bijou," which gives such interesting pictures of country life in France. Or, again, take - tho welcome , reprint of Pierre Lote's "Jerusalem," which is described by the author as—l give a rough translation—''the journal of a month out of my life, written in a spirit of all sincerity." Loto may occasionally offend English readers by his curious Anglophobia—he has modified it a little in some of his'latest books—but ho is a superb master of style. Then,, yet again, if you want to study GallicParisian homour at its lightest and brightest, what better means can be found than to peruse some of Eugene Labiche's witty comedies, a second volume of which, containing that famous play, "La Cagnotte," has just been added to Nelson's Collection Francaise(hfteenpence). In the same publishers' qiassiques Francais" (the. English price of which is only tenpence) you can sample such classics as La Fontaine. Corneille, aud Chateaubriand. Personally, I frankly prefer the nwdonis. Woman and Labour. _All who are interested in the problem or woman labour, so many-sided, eo difficult to solve, should note tho appearance of a cheap ■ edition (2s. 6d.) of Olive Schreiner's "Woman and Labour," first published in 1911. It is a book which will "give furiously to Hunk," not only to women but to men. Mrs. Cromvright's- main argument is that "the Lady" must die before the "Woman" is born. She does not mean the woman with good manners, but what the author of "The Story of a South African Farm" bluntly calls "tho parasite." That there are men "parasites" is a fact upon which Mrs. Pankhurst and her friends have been quite hysterically eloquorit. But what of the woman "parasite"? Well, upon that . subject Olivo Schreiner has much to say.