BOOKS-OLD AND NEW.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 203, 24 February 1912, Page 6

BOOKS-OLD AND NEW.

(By James Wortley).

THE BOOKMAN'S NOTE-BOOK. Recent numbers of the British Weekly to hand contain a quantity of hitherto unpublished matter dealing with Dickens and his friends. "Claudius Clear" is evidently a devoted worshipper at the great novelist's shrine.

Gordon and Gotch (Wellington) forward us a copy of the fifth edition of Bracken's works. It is paper covered and sold at Is Od. The day will come when the author of "Not Understood" will be "discovered" by the literary world. When that day arrives these early editions will be much sought after, and Thomas Bracken heralded as the pioneer of New Zealand's national literature.

A further fifty volumes have just been added to Dent's Everyman's Library, bringing this famous series of reprints to the magnificent total of five hundred and sixty-one volumes. It bids fair to soon surpass Bohn's standard library, which, by the way, we note, is still receiving additions.

Mr. Douglas wyi the January Bookman, is collaborating with Miss Humphries in a work on Adam Lindsay Gordon, the Australian poet, and asks us to say that he would be grateful if all those who have letters and reminiscences of Gordon and his friends which they would like to appear in the volume would kindly communicate with him at the Avenue House, Richmond, Surrey.

SOME RECKNT FICTION. "The Man in the Brown Derby," by Wells Hastings. Indianapolis: The Bobs-Merrill Company. Wellington: Gordon and Gotch—l9ll.

: The charmingly beautiful inscription, "To Elizabeth," which the title page bears would warrant the most sceptical reader in dipping into this new writer's work. Nor would he be, disappointed. The plot itself is an unlikely one, but it is so worked out, and introduces such a dainty little heroine that one reads to the last line with unabated interest. Mason Ellsworth, with fifty dollars and the hideous birth-mark of blood-red hands, finds himself without further prospect in New York in May. Answering an advertisement, which came casually to his notice, he enters into a contract to. marry right out of hand a young woman, who for a period of five years has been practically a prisoner in the house of her uncle. To his surprise, Nancy Bond, for such is her name, proves to be a young lady with qualities of mind and heart in every way desirable. He is further astonished that she should welcome him as her deliverer from the house'of bondage. Chivalry and love alike prompt him to relieve the lady of what he considers must be his detestable presence. The 6tory comes through a series of amazing adventure to an eminently satisfactory conclusion to all parties.

"Adrian Savage," by Lucas Malet, author of "Sir Richard Calmady." London: Hutchinson and Co—l9ll.

To be nine and twenty, the owner of a well-favored person, of admitted talent and business capacity, and to be honestly m love, is surely to be as happily circumstanced as mortal man can reasonably ask to be. That the course of true love should not run quite smooth, that tke beloved one be difficult of acecss, that obstacles should encumber the path of achievement " Such was Adrian Savage, man-about-town, journalist, art critic, etc., and it is the up and down, criss-eross pathway to love that this story treads. The scene opens in Paris, with Adrian Savage deeply in love with Madame Gabrielle St. Leger. Madame is widowed, and her previous experience of matrimony was not good. After half-a-dozen pages our hero is hurried across the Channel to take up his duties as an executor for * cousin, Mr. Smyrthwaite. In this he is joined by Julia Smyrthwaite, the elder of two sisters to whom the property is left. Julia is misanthropic. She has had no opportunity in her father's lifetime of meeting wholesome young men of Adrian's type. Unfortunately for her peace of mind, she comes to magnify the natural sympathy and courtesy of Adrian in her bereavement into a much deeper and more personal concern. Julia keeps a diary, and we are treated to a great deal of the morbid, unnatural introspection of an ill-balanced mind. Although the story, in respect to its two .principal characters, moves to an ultimately happy conclusion, we are asked to halt and examine en route the pen portraits of some hideous characters. Faithful they may be, but is it not much more helpful, healthy and entertaining to depict the beautiful and good than such distorted beings as M. Rene Dax and Julia Smyrthwaite, so shallow a girl as her sister, or such a calculating wretch as Joseph Challoner?

The Carpet from Bagdad," by Harold MacGrath. Indianapolis: The BobsMerrill Company—l9ll.

The wealthy young rug dealer, George Percival Algernon Jones, is a grand young man—very plain, very commonplace, very stout-hearted and innocent. In one of his business trips to the East he fa.Ha into the hands of a group of adventurers -who live by fleecing suck guileless ones as our hero. These "b9unders" are captained by a designing woman who has a daughter both beautiful and good. Our friend Jones is in search of adventure, and this is provided by the group selling him a sacred praying mat which had been stolen by them. The determined efforts of the Oriental* to recover this mat lead to a surprising Humber of adventures, and ultimately to the happy rescue by Jones of Fortune Chedsoye from the ugly -environments of her mother and thef other associates of the gang. The book i« pleasing and entertaining, while at the same tiuie it gives us a vivid picture of a least a section of those numerous body of adventurers that frequent the European residential quarters in Eastern lands.

(We are indebted to Messrs Brooker and Keig for copies of novels reviewed).