LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1934, Page 24

LITERARY NOTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Mrs. Lilian Dryden, who died recently at Neweastle-on-Tyne at the age of seventy-nine, was the last surviving child of Samuel Smiles, author of "Self Help."

Mr. S. I. Hsiung, author of the recently published,play, "Lady Precious Stream," appeared -on. ;the Chinese stage when he .was • fifteen, "and at eighteen translated, Benjamin Franklin 's autobiography into Chinese.

Mr. Grant: Richards, the publisher, has written .his reminiscences, which arc-to be published by Mr. Hamish Hamilton. Mr. Richards left school at fifteen, and. at seventeen was-working on "The Review of Reviews" under the late W. T. Stead.

Mr. Thorne Smith, the American author of a number of lightly farcical novels, haa died' at the age of fortytwo years. Several of his books have been published in London, and arrangements had been made to issue others there.

Thirty-five thousand copies of Isaak Dinesen's "Seven Gothic Tales" have been sold to the Book of the Month Club in America in addition to ordinary sales. The English edition is coming from Putnam's immediately.

Moro than one and a quarter million books-.were removed from the old building of the • Cambridge University Library and from other storage places to the new building. The transfer was made between June 1 and July 26. The books were packed in about twenty-four thousand cases.

The United States Appeal Court has decided that Mr. James Joyce's "Ulysses" is neither immoral nor obscene, and that it should not be banned in the United States. This decision upholds, against the appeal made by the Government, the ruling given by Judge Woolsey last December in the Federal Court.

A first edition of FitzGerald's translation of the "Eubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" was sold in London recently for £135. The translation was published by Messrs. Quaritch in 1859 at Is, but so few copies were sold that the edition was "remaindered" at 2d. The highest *price since paid for a copy is £1410. Another copy once fetched £890.

A signed manuscript copy of Baring Gould's famous hymn, "Onward, Christion Soldiers," given by the author to Miss Evelyn Healey on her birthday in 1921, was recently sold in London for £24. The original manuscript of this hymn appears to be lost. It was written in 1865 for the use of those attending the author's mission at Horbury Bridge, near Wakefield.

"The trouble with all amateur journalism is that it is an attempt to write literature, and that is hopeless," said a Birmingham journalist ■ in a recent lecture. "If Charles Dickens were writing articles today I doubt if they would be "accepted, except by a few papers. Method of expression changes, and the average reader of today is swaying in a bus or train while he reads. If the paragraphs are long, he won't get the gist of them."

Fresh light is thrown upon the later life and literary activities of Walter Savage Landor by his hitherto unpublished letters to Robert Browning, which have been edited and elucidated in a volume by H. C. Minehin. The book includes two "Imaginary Conversations" of singular beauty, also new to print, which cannot fail to delight the many admirers of an author everywhere recognised as one of the great masters of English prose style.

Mrs. Jack London, widow of the author of "White Fang," "The Call of the Wild," and other novels, is seriously ill as tho result of a fall from her horse On her estate in California. Mrs. London is herself tho author of several books, including "The Book of Jack London." Writing seems to be in the family. Mr. Charles Malamuth, Professor of Slavonic Languages at the University of California, in suing his wife, a daughter of-Jack London by his first marriage, for divorce, complained that she "would rather follow her father's footsteps and write than cook."