MACMILLAN’S COLONIAL LIBRARY

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 459, 2 April 1890, Page 3

MACMILLAN’S COLONIAL LIBRARY

Messrs Macmillan & Co. are determined that their Colonial Library shall become the leading purveyor of first-class English literature in India and the colonies. It is an immense boon in countries where circulating libraries are few in number and illfurnished with new books, to be able to procure the recent works of authors of the first rank, at little more than magazine prices ; and we have no doubt that in many places the sphere of the “ magazine club ” will be extended to embrace the issues of the “Colonial Library.” We know of no better series for keeping readers in touch with the very best literature of the day. Many colonists, however, have nob yet realised the advantages they enjoy in being able to procure books like Marion Crawford’s “ Sant Ilavio ” at half-a-crown, while only high-priced editions are current in the United Kingdom. Some people, however, are much more wide-awake, arid not a few copies, we imagine, find their way back from the colonies by post, as most acceptable presents to friends in England. Up to date there have been 103 works issued in this series, comprising books by William Black, David Christie Murray, Thomas Hardy, Hugh Conway, J. H. •Shorthouse, F. Marion Crawford, Bret Harfce, T. Hughes, John Morley, Matthew Arnold, Mrs Oliphanb, C. M. Yonge, Mrs Humphrey Ward, J. Fothergill, and many other authors whose works were heretofore procurable only at prices thac were practically prohibitory ip districts where the libraries are unable to make even a decent

attempt to keep paco with the stream ot high-class books which flows without cessation from the English press. One of the most notable departures in connection with this library is the introduction of works of a scientific, religious, and philosophical character. Westcott’s “ Gospel of the Resurrection,” Bamerton’s “Intellectual Life,” and Alfred Russell Wallace’s “ Darwinism,’’ form numbers 95, 96, and 102, of the series, a succession that appears to indicate a determination on the part of the publishers to intersperse the fiction very freely with books of more solid character.

The edition of “Darwinism ” is, indeed, a very remarkable of its kind, giving the original plates, thirty-Eeven in number, together with an exhaustive index, from which it may be inferred that the publishers judge—and rightly—that even the paper edition will not be treated wholly as though the works issued through the “Colonial Library” were an ephemeral thing to be destroyed m the using. _ The cheapness and excellence of the edition in boards and cloth will, however, doubtless make that edition the favourite with book collectors and others to whom their trim and well-stocked library shelves are a soustce of perennial joy. Notes upon most of the works in connection with this library have already been published in our columns at the time of their appearance, bub the library itself is now attaining proportions which entitle it to general notice, as having more than fulfilled expectations that were formed respecting it and the promises of the eminent firm of publishers by whom it was projected. Macmillan’s sixpenny edition of Kingsley’s works, with which they have forestalled the expiration of the copyright, js the most- mutvellous thing in book publishing of the present season. The superior quality of the paper and typography place this edition in advance of all the other sixpenny ventures that have preceded it. The wonder is how, even allowing for very long numbers, books of such bulk can be issued in such a style at the price.