NOTES

Evening Star, Issue 20137, 30 March 1929, Page 21

NOTES

Sir Eider Haggard's vomnnce, 'Mary, of Marion s Isto, is just published by Hutchison. ‘ Power and the People’ a b , OO JL?f which Lord Hewart, the Lord Chiet Justice, has been engaged, lull appear with Ernest Benn. Mr H. M. Tomlinson is worfciiig on - a story which will include the Oiea., War, as he saw it when he was a newspaper correspondent m France. Edmund Blunden. the poet and biographer of Leigh Hunt, has wnttc a nook on the war, part of which is in prose and part in verse. Sir Hugh Clifford. Governor of the Malay States, passed the prools ot a new book consisting of Malayan tales based more or less upon his own experiences. Sir Hugh began his official career in the Malay Peninsula, and naturally it has been a satisfaction to him to return there as Governor.

Mrs M. Forest's novel ‘ White Witches,’ has been accepted by Hutchinson, London. This is the Australian writer’s fifth novel accepted in England. The novel is dedicated to Squad-ron-leader Kingsforcl Smith, who was passing along Queen street, Bnsbane, at the end of his transpacific flight, as Mrs Forrest was writing tpc > as t chapter in the ‘ Telegraph ’ building.

Dr Robert Bridges, the British Poet Laureate, is interesting himself m the work of F. C. Boden. a twenty-year-old miner, whose ‘ Pithead Poems have been published with an introduction by Sir A. Quiller-Couch. ‘ Beau Geste,’ the famous novel of the Foreign Legion by P. C. Wren, has attained all the honours to which a novel can aspire. It has been translated into most foreign languages, filmed, and it has also been dramatised.

At an auction sale in the Anderson Galleries, New' York, Air Charles bossier, book collector,_ paid £9,600 for an eight-page manuscript ot one ot Charles Lamb’s contributions to William Hone’s ‘Table Book’ (1827-28). The first edition of Charles and Mary Lamb’s ‘Poetry for Children’ (1809), of which only four copies went to Dr Roscnbach for £1,750.

The King, of Italy, who is an author, has just published the tenth volume of a great work on the coins of Italy, which ho has been engaged on for many years. This volume illustrates 5,000 specimens, 1,200 of which are sketched by the king himself. His personal collection of coins— the largest in the world —contains 100,000 specimens.

Lewis Lawes, governor of the famous Sing Sing Prison, New York, who has had more than 10,000 criminals through Ids hands, has just written a book called ‘ Life and Death in Sing Sing.

The Soviet Government is said to be preparing to publish JOO million volumes in the next five years, so great is the demand by the Russian peasants for simplified classics, text books, and romantic literature.

Professor Granville Bnntock’s musical setting of Runyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’ which was recently given in London. took less than four months compose. Begun on June 20, the sdo pages of the score were in the printer s hands by October 10.

Now’ that the use of the new script is being enforced in Turkey, the British and Foreign Bible Society are to issue portions of the Scripture in the modern form. On one side of the- page the text will be in Arabic, and on tl.e other in Roman characters.

Michael Arlen and his wife narrowly escaped serious injury recently when their car overturned on the way from their villa at Cannes to Paris. Mr Arlen, an Armenian by birth, whoso real name is Dikran Kcnyonmdjian, was made famous before ho was thirty by his novel, ‘The Green Hat.’

A hundred years ago n convict was transported to New South AVales for burglary. What he suffered, what such punishment meant to him and the thousands of others who suffered it, and how far-reaching an effect the transportation system had on the history of Australia is told in au extraordinary book, ‘The Story of Ralph Rashleigh.’ | John o’ London’s Weekly’ says that if ever a book deserved to be described as a human document it is this one, which, with an introduction by the Lari of Birkenhead, will be published by Jonathan Cape. Mr Guy Innes, i#, a letter to the ‘ Sunday Times,’ London, quotes an example of a zeugma from 0. Henry’s ‘Suite Homos .and Their Romance,’ and ‘'Whirligigs’;—“Their marriage had occurred on a wager, a ferry boat, and first acquaintance. ... In the morning Turpin would take brornoseltzer, his pocket change from under the clock, his hat, no breakfast, and his departure for the office. At noon Airs Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono, airs, and the water to boil for coffee.”

Tibet is a country of great economic possibilities, it would seem, from a, reading of Sir Charles Bell’s ‘The People of Tibet.’ The writer points out that the country does not lack land for cultivation, but lacks the men to till it. The population is decreasing steadily “ owing to polyandry, to venereal diseases, and to large numbers that live celibate lives in monasteries instead of rearing families.” The sight at a nation in decline is a melancholy one, and gives rise to interesting speculations. Unless some steps are taken to strengthen the breed, it must inevitably die out or be absorbed in process of time by the more virile neighbour, China.

The American * Bookman ’ of January gives the following list, of novels most in demand in the public libraries of the United States;—‘Old P.vbus,’ Warwick Deeping; ‘Swan Soup;,’ John Galsworthy; ‘ All Kneeling,’ Anne Parish; ‘The Bridge of San Luis Rev,’ Thornton Wilder; ‘The Children,’ Edith Wharton; ‘The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg,’ Louis Bromfield ; ‘The Island Within,’ Ludwig Lewisohn : ‘ Silver Slippers,’ Temple Bailey; ‘The Greene Murder Case,’ S. S. Van Dine; ‘ The Agenof Reason,’ Philip Gibbs; ‘The Foolish Virgin,’ Kathleen Norris; ‘ M intersmoon,’ Hugh Walpole.

Mr Undyard Kipling is one day older Ilian Mrs Kipling. On December 30 Mr Kipling attained bis sixty-third vear. Mirs Kipling was sixty-three on December 31. Both birthdays were quietly observed, Mr Kipling spending most of the two last days of 1928 in looting round his farm at Burwash. London newspapers wrote a few personal paragraphs on the occasion. Readers have been informed that Mr Kipling takes his fanning seriously, and tourists in tiie Burwash neighbourhood are interested to see carts and harrows 'marked “R._ Kipling/’ Generally on the farm ancient custom is preserved, and there is*jo telephone connection. Nevertheless, an American electric plough has been put into use on the farm. It finds no favour with the people of the neighbourhood, who are averse from agricultural innovations, and have little affections for changes of any kind.