BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Otago Witness, Issue 4029, 2 June 1931, Page 69

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN

Lord Crewe has nearly completed his life of Lord Rosebery. It will fill'.two volumes, illustrated with photogravures. ¥ ¥ ¥ It is anounced at Oxford that this year’s subject of the Newdigate prize poem will be “ Vanity Fair.” ¥ ¥ ¥ “ The Development of Economic Doctrine: An Introductory Survey,” by Professor Alexander Gray, is announced. ¥ ¥ ¥ Miss L. Austen-Leigh, who has written a novel entitled “ The Incredible Crime,” is a great-grandniece of Jane Austen. * * * “ London for Everyman,” by William Kent, is promised, with coloured maps of old as well as modern London. ¥ ¥ ¥ A first edition of Fielding’s “ Tom Jones ” was sold for £94 at a recent London sale. A first edition of “ Pickwick Papers ” went for £4O. 3A Remarque’s new book, “ The Road Back,” is now on the market. Mr H. E. Bates, who has written a new novel entitled “ Charlotte’s Row,” has just bought a cottage in Kent. He is to be married shortly. * # Mr Eric Linklater, author of “ Juan in America,” gained the wide knowledge of the country which his book shows while taking advantage of a Commonwealth travelling fellowship. ¥ ¥ ¥ Mr Algernon Thomas Brinsley Sheridan, the Deputy-lieutenant for Dorset, who has died at the age of 84. was a grandson of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the famous playwright and politician. * * * The Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1930-31 has been awarded to Mr Richard Hughes for his novel, “ High Wind in Jamaica.” * * * A new book by F. J. Adkins, entitled “ How Europe Grew,” represents the study’ and teaching of over 30 years. * 4s # Mr Aldous Huxley, who lives near Toulon, was recently in London attending the rehearsals of his first play, “ The World of Light.” ¥ ¥ ¥ “ Danger! ” and “ The Maracot Eeep,” two of Conan Doyle’s popular collections of short stories are both being issued shortly in the well-known six-shilling uniform edition of this author’s work. ¥ ¥ ¥ Among the early books expected is a new life of “Hartley Coleridge: Poet’s Son and Poet,” by Herbert Hartman, a documented story illustrated with six plates. Many of Hartley Coleridge’s unpublished papers are quoted. ¥ ¥ ¥ Mr J. F. Hannay, who has just published a novel entitled “ The Thirteenth Floor,” is a son of Canon J. O. Hannay (“ George A. Birmingham ”). Last year Canon Hannay’s daughter, Mrs Hickey, issued her first book, “ The Corpse in the Church.”

The late Sir Everard Fraser, who had a long and distinguished career in his Majesty’s Consular Service in China, compiled an “ Index to the Tso Chuan.” This has been edited by Sir James Stewart Lockhart, and will shortly be published.

Another author who is to have a memorial is Anthony Trollope. This will take the form of a panel in the Speech Room at Harrow School. When Trollope was at Harrow he was described by the headmaster as “ the dirtiest boy he had ever met.” » ¥ ¥ ¥

Dame Millicent Fawcett expressed the wish that if her life ever came to be published it should be written by her friend and fellow-worker Mrs Olliver Strachey. That wish is being fulfilled in a memoir which has just appeared.

Lord Gorell’s new novel, “ Gauntlet,” is in a very different vein from those “ thrillers ” by which he had hitherto mostly been known. It is a fresh and charming romance of youth’s idealism and quick despair; two delightful imps of children run riot through the story, which has its full share of humour as well as of excitement.

Sir Malcolm Campbell, who has just published a hook called “My Greatest Adventure,” dealing with a search he made some years ago for buried treasure on Cocos Island, intends to fit out another expedition to the island shortly.

“ The Diary cf Peter Bussell: A Civilian Prisoner of War in France, 1806-1514,” is edited by his great-grand-son, G. A. Turner, and now’ published for the first time. The journal of his ex. periences is illustrated with a series of his own water-colours.

Celebrations of the bicentenary of the birth of 'William Cowper are to be held in June at Olney, Bucks, where the poet lived for many years. Mr John Masefield, the Poet Laureate., will be present, and Dean Inge is to preach at a service in the parish church.

A collection of Pepys relics came up for sale in London on April 1. It included a porringer, reputed to be a present from Charles 11, a gaming table presented to Pepys by James 11, a Nautical Almanack, dated 1500, which Pepys said belonged to Henry VIII, Knellqr’s portraits of Pepys and James 11, and a number of Pepys private papers.

Professor Ralph H. Lutz, director of the Hoover War Library at Stanford University, has prepared a history of Germany during the war, which is to he published under the title “ The Fall of the German Empire, 1914-18.”

Miss Jean Rhys, the author of a first novel called “After Leaving Mr Mackenzie,” is descended on her mother’s side from J. G. Lockhart, Walter Scott’s biographer. She was born in Dominica, in the British West Indies, but came to England when she was sixteen, and has lieen on the stage for a short time. Her husband, whom she married in 1919, is a Dutch poet. She has already published a volume of short stories, ‘ The Left Bank.”

“Life: Outlines of General Biology,” in which Sir J. Arthur Thomson has collaborated with Professor Patrick Geddas, fills two illustrated volumes, and gives special prominence to longstanding opposition between mechanistic and vitalistie ways of looking at life. Among other branches of the subject it discusses the relations of biology to other intellectual activities, and to the arts and human life.