LITERARY FUSTIAN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 9004, 14 December 1907, Page 4

LITERARY FUSTIAN.

I "lo the making of books there is no-end." The quantity of "literature," good, bad and indifferent mostly indifferent v or bad—which emanates from'the British printing press is enormous, and the most omnivorous and assiduous reader could not hope- to cursorily scan a

thousandth part of the average year's output. Yet the output goes on in ever-increasing bulk, and rubbish continues to constitute the greater portion of it.. One of the latest additions to the literature of Great Britain is an autobiography of a girl of seventeen or eighteen—Miss Phyllis Dare—whose special claim to consideration is her beauty and the fact that she is the idol of picture postcard printers and collectors. Yet a London firm of publishers has induced this little-more-than-ehild to write her biography for the delectation of a brain-wearied community. The poor girl confesses in.her introductory remarks that she is unable to understand why so many members of the general public should take a keen interest in so insignificant a person, as herself, but she has set bravely about the task of writing about herself,, and her doings- I" a review of the publication, the following extract is quoted as a typical day's doings of the young lady:— "Three visits to rnv theatrical dressmaker;, two

visits to my own dressmaker; measured for theatrical shoes; measured: for private " footgear; six hours at Messrs Foul'-ham and Bar-field's, my theatrical photographers; four hours at rehearsals; signed over three hundred picture postcards, and replied personally to thirty-four letters." That such fustian as this should find a publisher is remarkable.; but that a publisher has sought for it may be accepted as a guarantee that the book will find a large number of purchasers—a. circumstance which is not creditable to even the- lowest form of human intelligence. The idea that such a work may find its' way to the biographical bookshelves u: libraries and be placed between the splendid memoirs of the great and noble women of the world is somewhat repulsive.. The daily round of hundreds of ladies in London "society" is doubtless of 'much the same character as that of the young autobiographist, but, thank heaven, the- record; of it is kept out of print—at any rate out of our libraries.. x