LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2498, 26 June 1915, Page 9

LIBER'S NOTE-BOOK

There are some interesting items in the May number of "The Bookman" (Hoddor and Stoughton), in particular an excellent article on the poetry of Alfred Noyes, whose "Drake" and "Told at the Mermaid Tavern" have gained such widespread popularity, not only in Great Britain, but in America. Tho subject of this month's "Bookman's Gallery" portrait is Mrs. Everard Cotes (Sara Jeanette Duncan), whose "Adventures of a Mem Sahib," "His Honour and a Lady," and "The Path of a Star" were such delightful novels. In common, 110 doubt, with many other readers, I had always imagined that Mrs. Cotes was an American lady, but it appears that she is Canadian-born, and before attempting fiction was a busy lady journalist in her native country, being at one time Parliamentary correspondent at Ottawa for the Montreal "Star." One of the best reviewed of recent English novels is "The Voyage Out," by Virginia Wolf. Mrs. Wolt is, it appears, a daughter of the late Sir Leslie Stephen, whose wife, so it is worth while recalling, was Thackeray's youngest daughter. If heredity counts for anything, there need be no surprise that Mrs. Wolf has scored a literary success. The complete works of Samuel Butler, of "Erewhon" fame, have now been published by Mr. Fifield. There are some fifteen volumes in all, but the trouble is that they are published in various bindings, whereas a uniform binding would have been much preferable. Clever Gilbert Cannan's monograph'on Butler (published by Seeker) U well reviewed in English papers, but it is too highly priced (7s. 6d. for 187 pages is far too stiff!) for many New Zealand admirers of Butler to add tha book to their shelves.

Mr. William Heinemann announces, I set, a new and complete edition of the works of Mrs. Aphra Behn, novelist, l>cet, and dramatist, who flourished in late Restoration times, and was.a predecessor, as a realistic novelist, of Defoe. Mrs'. Behn's works were reprinted some years ago by Pearson, a "West End bookseller, the edition now being scarce and costly. The new edition will not be cheap, but it is to be printed in six volumes,'at the Shakespeare Head Press, Stratford-on-Avon, and will be on hand-made paper. The price is £3 3s. It was of Aphra Behn (who used the pen-name of that Popo wrote: : ."The .stage'' how loosely does 'Astraea' ~ treadj" As a matter of fact tlie'ladly wSisJan extremely "naughty" writer, hoi'' plays especially . being accounted indecent in an age when naughtiness was the rule rather than the exception in' English literature. To her credit, however, be is recorded that she was the first English writer to attack the institution of slavery, which she did in her romance, "Orinooko."