LITERARY I^OTES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 120, 22 May 1937, Page 26

LITERARY I^OTES

BOOKS AND AUTHORS

Mrs. Gertrude Atherton has chosen Rome jn the Augustan Age as the setting of her new -novel "Golden Peacock," in which most of the great figures of the period are introduced.

Mrs. Violet Trefusis, whose novel"is "Hunt : the Slipper," is probably the only contemporary woman writer to write bboks in both French and English. Her novel "Echo" was runner-up for a French literary prize in 1931..-

Charles Brown's life of Keats—whom he knew intimately—although it .has been drawn on by all the poet's later biographers, has hitherto remained in MS. Now, however, an edition is to be published by the Oxford University Press. >

Mr. Hugh'Walpole declares that "almost incontestably" the-three greatest novels produced since the Great War are James Joyce's "Ulysses,"' Thomas Mail's "The Magic Mountain," and Marcel Proust's "The Memories of Things. Past." -./

The indefatigable Sir James Frazer has another book' out from TMacmillan's —"Passages of the Bible," which is intended to show.the higher aspects.ybf the Hebrew,mind and is thus supplementary to his "Folk-lore, in the Old Testament," which'dealt^itK'.^i'mitive and often savage Hebrew beliefs.

- Mr. Tom Clarke has been round the world of late aptfhasjwritten;ay,book which Gb_layncz'"isiypublishing;y It promises to be a racy and intimate travel book; yaiscussing-'^peqple y.yand places. The new nationalisms, arid their consequences, iii Egypt, Ceylon, India, Australia, New .Zealand, and other .places, have suggested toNMr. Clarke ■ that England needs a new vision of Empire/ The book will be titled "Round- the World"vyith Tom Clarke."

*The idiosyncrasies of bookborrowers are dealt with: by a longsuffering librarian in one of the articles in the April issue of "Chambers's Journal," the writer' deploring, among other things, the'tendency of country borrowers to press plants, moths, and beetles within the pages of valuable .works. .

There is an old-fashioned touch about the title of the book, "The Life and Death of Edgar Wallace," which is promised by. his daughter-in-law. Most biographers of the past century have taken the. matter of death for granted on the title-page. Perhaps this is a reaction against the modern habit of autobiography .at,. any, age from. fifteen upwairdsv y- '■.'■ ■'""■'■ *

, : Miss .Gabrielle ,'Vallings, - \yhp ...has written a new .novel" called "Labour Leader," is a great-niece of Charles Kingsley. As a girl she was adopted by Kingsley's daughter, whom we know as "Lucas Malest": y- Since the war Miss Vallings has spent most of her time in Switzerland; where she is the neighbour and friendjof M. Romain Rolland, the- famous. FrenchySocialist writer.

Methuen's have published Dr. Emil Ludwig's plea for David Frankfurter, the Jewish medical student who shot a German Nazi agent at Davos last year and was subsequently sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. The book, entitled "The Davos Murder," and translated by Eden and Cedar Paul, is as-much a general indictment of the Naii system ai-. a defence of David Frankfurter. V..

. The ; "Sydney Morning Herald" commences 'a generally critical notice of a current work as follows:—One of the. minor consequences of the abdication was'the necessity which it cast upon Mr. Hector Bolitho, industrious eulogist- of Royalty, to recast the biography of Edward VIII, upon which we are informed, he had "long been engaged." To th« considerable task of revision, Mr. Bolitho appears to havtf applied himself with equanimity, not to say with relish. Here, obviously, was an opportunity, not often vouchsafed to a biographer, to be candid during the lifetime of his ftoyal subject, and to be wise' after the event, with a beneficial effect upon sales.