LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXVI, Issue 103, 28 October 1933, Page 22

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Mr. John Masefleld, the Poet Laureate, was a cadet on the ship Conway, the history of which he is publishing.

Some lost letters of Richard Wagner have been discovered in Bayreuth. One shows how he encouraged and helped Nietzsche to publish his earliest work, "The Birth of Tragedy."

Putnams announce that they are reprinting 5000 copies of "The Mistress of Bhenstone," by Florence L. Barclay, author of "The Rosary." This completes half a million.

Each of this year's Nobel Prize winners will receive £9465, about £80 less than last year's recipients. This decrease has been' caused by fluctuations in the yield of the Nobel Fund investments.

He'rr Hitler's biographical book, "Mem Kampf" ("My Struggle") has been made by the author's order the official Nazi manual, taking a place similar to that occupied in Socialistic propaganda by Karl Marx's "Das Kapital."

"Why Nazi?" is the title of a firsthand account of the present regime in Germany. The author is an anonymous German Jew who, despite the Nazi persecutions, describes the whole situation with considerable sympathy.

"Royal Highness," a sketch of the Prince of "Wales which: Hamish Hamilton will publish, is by Mr. Lan Lang. Mr. Lang1 takes the Prince as the symbol of youth, "the embodiment.of an enchantment, a solace for which a battored and disappointed generation craved. The Smiling Prince of the first hopeful world tours has given place to a sterner figure in the Crisis period, but the legend is still potent."

Tho new book by Lytton Strachoy, announced by Ciatto and Windus under the title "Characters and Commentaries," will be ready on' November 2, with a- portrait of the author and a preface by his brother, Mr. James Strachey. The material published for the first time includes a series of essays on the great English letter-writers, and a.n unfinished study of "Othello » on which the author was engaged at tne time of his death.

By order of the Nanking Government punctuation marks are to be used in all Chinese official documents for the first time in history. Official documents in China never have been punctuated or divided into paragraphs. Recently punctuation has-been used by newspapers'and in popular writings, but not in the classics. The new order requires the use of the comma, period, single and double quotations, asterisks, brackets, and a mark for proper,names. Chinese has no capital letters.

Mr. Frank Pen-Smith has, at the age of seventy, written an account of his adventures and wanderings in many lands under the title of "The Unexpected." The scenes in his narrative, announced by Jonathan Cape, shift from the Tasmauian bush iv the pioneering days to the France of the Third Empire, and in England of midyietorian times to unexplored regions of Africa.

Sir Henry Lunn's autobiography is to be entitled "Nearing Harbour." Ho was born in 1559, and since then has seen and done much. At Dublin he studied medicine, and in 1887 went to India as a medical missionary. Since then his interests have been manysided: he founded tho travel agency that bears his same, stood twice as a Parliamentary candidate, formed the Stratford;upon-Avoh Preservation Committee, toured Canada, New Zealand, and Australia ia support of the League of Nations Union, lectured in the. United States, convened religious conferences, edited th.o "Review of the Churches," and has written eight or nine books.

The Limited Edition Club in America has decided to do a little educating among its members. It is about to issue a publication called "The Dolphin," which will be composed of articles explaining how fine books get to be fine books. In the first issue (no others are announced) authorities will write on type, margins, presses, paper, and even inks. There is candour and a bracing air of prosperity in the club.'s announcement that "The Dolphin" will be issued "because many hundreds of people are these days spending lots of money for de luxe and expensive editions which they are unable to criticise intelligently." '

A unique publication of the Bible is announced by the University of Chicago Press. The books of both Testaments are arranged in the chronological order in which they wero written; each book is preceded by a brief introduction, giving its historical setting, something about the man who wrote it, why it was written, and the thread of the argument; these aro followed by a careful, intelligent selection of '-just those passages from each book which are essential to a grasp of the meaning. The text used is that of the "American Translation," by Edgar J. Goodspeed and J. M. P. Smith.