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Evening Star, Issue 23699, 5 October 1940, Page 4

NOTES

Alice Hegan Rice, author of ‘ Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch,’ has written net reminiscences, ‘ The Inky Way; A Literary Autobiography.’ Another autobiography announced is Jacs: Dempsey’s, which will be neatly titled ‘ Round by Round.’

Sir Hugh Walpole tells us that .ever since the war began he has read an act from a Shakespeare play every morning before getting up. That, he admits, sounds priggish enough, but in actual fact it has been a delightful and exciting experience, and he is never going to drop it

Arrangements have been completed for the opening of Bateman’s. Burwash, the old house and garden in East Susses which was Rudyard Kipling’s home for the last half of his life. Bateman’s, which was left by Mrs Kipling with an endowment of £5,000 to the NationalTrust, will open daily to the publio from 2 o’clock till sunset.

The thrilling story of the evacuation from Dunkirk is a theme that wilt doubtless appeal to many of our literarymen. If there is anyone who has, sn to speak, a prescriptive right,,not u» say duty, to write about it, it is surely the Poet Laureate. It is, therefore, not surprising that John Masefield is reported to be at work on a poem worthy of the occasion.

American detective stories, remarks the Edinburgh ‘ Scotsman,’ are generally more robust or more racy than the British. Perhaps it is the influence of Hollywood that makes for swift action, virile characters, and a flow of wisecracks. At its best American detective fiction is exciting and entertaining; at its worst it is crude.

‘ The Mixthre qg Before ’ —a title reminiscent of Somerset Maughan’s, early days as a medical practitioner—contains the last of his short stories. The time comes at last, he says, when a writer has fashioned all the stories he is capable of digging out of human nature, and he believes that for himself that, time has now arrived. He is 66 yearsof age, and in the 40 years of his authorship he has written between 80 and 90 short stories.

A year ago last month the Oxford Univarsitv Press published the first group of'their ‘ Oxford Pamphlets ni» World Affairs.’ These “ short studies of great subjects ” have been coming out steadily ever since, generally in groups of three or four, and* at intervals of about a month. The sales_ in English have already exceeded 1,750.000' and, with the numerous translations (the languages include French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, Serbo-Croatian, _ Finnish, Chinese, Japanese. Urdu Gujarati), tha total sales are now well over two million—a striking testimony of the intelligent interest taken by a very wido public in world affairs.

•Two volumes recently published are of sentimental interest to collectors of fine typography, for they probably mark the end of one of the greatest periods of English printing—the of the private presses that began with tha Daniel and William Morris’s * KelmKcott,’ and included the ‘ Doves,’ tha ‘ Vale.’ the ‘ Ashendene.’ and, more recently, the * Golden Cockerel,’ tha ‘ Gregynog,’ and the * to name but a few. These undertalking* were fathered by men with a passion for perfect printing, men whose paramount concern lay in securing excellence of design, superiority of craftsmanship; and the best of materials. Profits were secondary, which probably explains why so many of the presses did not liva longer- ” Among the last books to ha done in England in this great tradition are Voltaire’s ‘ Candide,’ with 20 love’v water-colours bv Svlvain Sauvage. ami fhoderlos de’ Laclos’s ‘Dangerous Acquaintances.’ Both are_ designed *'v Francis Meynell and published bv tha Nonesuch Press, and are_ the inituil volumes of a proposed series of fame"* French romances in English transin Unn —which now may never be completed-