NEVER PUBLISHED.

Taranaki Central Press, Volume IV, Issue 299, 2 December 1936, Page 8

NEVER PUBLISHED.

AW ARNOLD BENNETT STORY. IMPORTANT LITERARY EVENT. The manuscript of Aronld Bennett’s ast .-hurt story, never published, is .o change hands, says a London paper. It bears no title. It relates in more han 50U0 words that the author met it a coffee stall a man who from a window opopsite had seen him doing his early morning physical jerks. This man mistook Bennett for his valet, and persuaded him, clad in striking pyjamas, to repeat the exercises in the presence of his wife, a Malayan. She thought she was watching a religious rite to propitiate demons responsible for London's winter weather. This manuscript, which Bennett wrote in four days, will be one of the lots in a sale of the famous author’s manuscripts and letters at Sotheby’s. The sale is regarded as the most important literary event of the kind since the Browning sale twenty-three years ago. His Last Page. The lots include the holograph manuscripts of eighteen novels. There is Bennett’s first manuscript, “A. Man in the North,” showing much labour and correction. There is the unfinished page at which Bennett laid down his pen for ever. The manuscripts include “The Old Wives’ Tale” (which has been described as probably the most famous literary manuscript of the present century), fifteen plays, a series of short stories, a number of articles, and private journals. Bennett kept everything that came co him, even telegrams, all carefully filed away in boxes. He even kept carbon copies of letters he sent to people. Letters to and from his friend, George Sturt, of Farnham, throw light on Bennett’s outlook in his early days. Could be Read With Zest. “I have no inward assurance that [ could ever do anything more than mediocre, viewed strictly as art—zery mediocre,” he wrote in 1894. “On the other hand, I have a clear idea that by cultivating that ‘lightness of touch’ to which you refer, and exercising it upon the topicalities of the aour, I could turn out things that ;ould be read with zest.” Letters from Shaw, Barrie, Wells, Conrad, and a host of other famous figures are in this notable sale.