The sun. [volume], October 05, 1919, Section 6 Books and the Book World, Page 7, Image 71

About The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1916-1920

Image provided by: The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation

                
Bcoka and the Hook World of The Sun, October 5, 1919.
7
What the English Publishers Promise
THERE was, in the old Academy
newspaper of about twenty
years ago, a delightful game pliryed
just abont this time every September.
It consisted in giving lists of the pub
lishers' autumn announcements and
asking the readers of the paper' to
name the'rwo books that promised to
be to them the most interesting. I
was a child of tender years twenty
years ago, but my father took the
Academy and I used to watch for
that competition. I loved "Lists"
then and I love "Lists" still. A pub
lisher's announcement list is the most
exciting thing in the world rave only
a second-hand'Bbokshop List.
The-books that arc "announced to
appear" have a kind of shimmery
glory about them. After all, .who
knows that the masterpiece of the
century is not concealed under the
modest announcement: Tt Patience: a
Novel by Miss White"? Was there
not once a publisher's list with the
simple text Pride and Prejudice
and did any .one in the world expect
wKatvvas so wonderfully given!
Moreover in an announcsment list
there is great fun over the old hands.
"So and So's at it again," we ob
serve. "Same old thing, T suppose."
Perhaps there is ilr. George Moore
round the corner witli a privately
printed bundle of amorous confes
sions, or Eudyard Kipling with a
volume of tin-brass poems, or Sir
Rider Haggard with the thirty-second,
history of Allan Quatcrmain? Where
would we be without these homely
and familiar things?
With, most of the publishers' An
nouncements for the Autumn of 1919
in front of me I can 'make my choice.
I can ask myself delightful questions
like What will be the autumn book
that will be to myself most thrilling?
What will be my favorite new novel t
What novel is likely at the same time
to be the Best Seller and enrage the
AthenaeumT Will there be any real
contribution to English Literature!
What entirely ttnexnecied success is
A London Letter From
Hugh Walpole
Copyright, 1919. All rights reserved.
The English - Speaking
Brotherhood and the
League of Nations
By Sir Charles Walston, M A., Lift. D.
Author of "Aristodemocraq". ''Patriot
ism, National and International," etc.
IZmo, doth, pp. xxiii224. $1.60 net
-A timely volume which treats in
its several chapters of Nationality and
Hyphenism; The Expansion of West
em Ideals and the World's Peace; The
English-Speaking Brotherhood; The
Next War Wilson ism and Anti
Wilsonism; League of Dreams or
League of Realities.
The book, which has a direct bear
ing upon the affairs of the day, is the
work of a practical idealist and should
exercise a sane and helpful influence
in 'the formation of public and private
opinion.
Colombia University Press
LcnxJto & Euechner, Agents
30-32 East 20th St., New York City
BOOK
NONSENSE
A Collection
of Limericks
Illustrated by Susan Hals
There wm a young lady of rftnjtham,
Mads bucket to "pay for her gingham.
Ilcr bonnet aba tossod on ,
To take them to Boston,
Oaue there irerun't any mon-folks to bring 'em
- Thirty-five funny poems
Thirty-fivo funnier drawings:
It's a scream i
$1.50 Net
MARSHALL ' JONES COMPANY
there likely to bef Last night Joe
Becketfknocked out Eddie McGoorty.
Will next month Compton MeKenzie
knock out W. L. -George! . . .
And so on.
' I don't know that the Autumn
Lists promise at first sight tremen
dous excitement. ,The book that will
be to myself by far the most thrilling
will be The Letters of Henry James,
edited by Percy Lubbock and pub
lished by -Wacmillan. I have seen a
great many of these letters and I say
without hesitation that I believe them
to be the greatest exposition of the
literary Art that there has been since
the publication of thedetters of Flau
bert. Especially interesting are the
letters tp Tfobert Louis Stevenson;
there are also during the last years
some wonderful letters to H. G. Wellsi
Through them all breathes the spirit
of one of the finest, noblest and
bravest gentlemen the modern world
has known.
A wonderful contrast to this vol
ume will be the Letters of Anton
Tchekov that Chatto & Windus are
giving us. Most remarkable is
Tchekov 's artistic honesty," his utter
sincerity, his modesty and his hu
mor. It is a strange coincidence that
his Letters should appear at the same
time as Henry James's. I do not
think they would have .cared for one
another's art, and yet they had many
points in common. Their aim was the
same the aim of truth to life as they
saw it absolutely but they attained
that aim from exactly -opposite di
rections. In History wc arc to have two im
portant books: Ludendorff's Memoirs,
now running, in Land and Water
and a fascinating psychological reve
lation both of the man and his coun
try it is and Lord Kitchener's Life.
The second of these should stir almost
as much criticism as; Lord French's
book. One hopes that it will be writ
ten with more care than- the other.
As to fiction, which is the novel that
I personally look forward to with thc
most interest! As Conrad's Arrow
of Gold appeared in the summer I
haye no hesitation in saying that
Swinncrton's September is the novel
of the autumn for me. Conrad,
Wells, Bennett, Moore, Kipling, are
giving us nothing; so one must look
to the younger generation, and here I
think that Swinnerton is the most in
teresting and promising man. He is
as close to reality as any of then; and
at the same time - does not give us
chunks of propaganda as do "Caiman
and George and some of the younger
women. The interest of his books de
pends on the vitality of his charac
ters, which is what I think the vital
ity of a novel ought to-depend on.
Nocturne was surely a little master
piece. However, we will see.
That is of course a purely personal
predilection, The sheer "Modern
ists" of whom 1 do not pretend to be
one, will divide their interest, I sus
pect, between a book of Mis3 Romcr
Wilson's, the name of which 1 forget,
Dorothy "Richardson's Interim and
Virginia Woolf 's Nights and Days.
Of these three the. last should be
most interesting. T am not sure
whether The Voyage Out has been
published in America ; if not I recom
mend it to Mr. Knopf, or some other
eager searcher after new things. Mrs.
Woolf has genius her Kew Gardens
the other day was a little gem. Her
genius is erratic and at times" nnre
strauied and she seems to. be more
interested in the abnormal than the
normal. She is of that school in
whose eyes to be happy is the most in
artistic thing possible and to be orig
inal is of more importance than to be
true but she is greater than her
school and will assuredly not be
bound by its limitations.
And Best Sellers, what is the glo
rious prospect there! Three novels
have about equal chances I think
Stephen McKenna's Sonia Married,
Temple Thurston's World of Won
derful Reality, a sequel to The City
of Beautiful Nonsense; andxCompton
McKenzie's Poor Relations. Mc
Kenna will have a rather difficult task
the success of Sonia was due very
largely to the clover little summaries
of the political world during jlhe
years before the war. Sov.ia Married
plays, I understand,-in the war, and
we are all rather tired of those pres
entations of English life in war. time,
with full length portraits of pacifists,
bread queues and air raids. We have
had so many of them. Perhaps Mc
Kenna's picture will be different from
George's and Cannan's. It certainly
ought to be.
I have said nothing about any
joetjy because I don't sec the prom
ise of any. Munro's Monthly Chap
Book has made an interesting start,
and there has just appeared a beauti
ful little book by T. C. Squire, Ths
Birds. We are to have, I believe, Os
bert Sitwell's collected verse, which
is interesting, and there is sure to ba
something from Ezra Pound! Mean
while what would one give for a vol
ume from Robert Bridges ! He pro
duces very little these days. Mr.
Bottomry thinks apparently that ha
ought to write a poem with that same
regularity that produces leaders in
John BulL
Bridges, however, happens 1o. be a
great poet a strange bird of whoso
habits Mr. Bottomly can ""naturally
know nothing. Hruii Walpole.
-"Our Casualty"
HOW the war came to the Irish and
to Ireland in. many phases is the
chief burden of fourteen of the sixteen
stories that go to make np Our Casualty,
written by thatwitty Irish clergyman who
calls himself on the title pages of hh
books G. A Birmingham. The opening
tale, from which the book takes its name,
is devoted to the adventures of what we
caljed a Home Guard and its oldest mem
ber, an Irish youth of seventy whom tho
commandant of the organization tried to
protect from his own impetuousity by declaring-
him a casualty in a night relief
operation in the home trenches. Getting
Even relates how a medical officer of an
Gvcrdrilled battalion balanced 'the score
against his Colonel by declaring 'all the
fake casualties sent back from the manoeu
vres front to keep the medical officer busj"
to be dead and therefore not in need of a
surgeon's attention. A Matter of ZKseV
pline is a characteristically Irish bit of
padre's wit in ragging a medical officer.
And Journey's End is a very amusing love
story. Civilized War, a Sinn Fein epi
sode, is such a military episode as Bernard
Shaw might have written if he could be
continent in the use of words, for it is ia
the vein of The Deril's Disciple so far aa.
the military viewpoint ii concerned. Ia
the two final tales we have Irish story
telling of another day, The Mermaid being
charged with folk talc atmosphere and
An Upright Jutfge that of the familiar
shrewdly witty Irish peasant. Here is a
book rich in cheer and Immor and de
lightful story telling art.
OTJB CASUALTY. Bv G- A. BiBirrsoHAH;
George H. Doran Company.
I tefmi
IT
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GENTLEMflN
AMP Tf?3tS5
TTSHERE other fiction writers
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Abdullah has dared. He probes
the depths and brings forth
from the. brooding segment of "Old China, set
down in the heart of a" world metropolis, the
silent, soft-footed, sinister Oriental and strips
him to his very soul.
His characters live, love and pass on within the
narrow precincts of Pell Street. A word from a
painted balcony sets forces in motion that cul
minate in a typhoon of tragedy; a soft-spoken
Chinese poet becomes a Lochinvar; an Oriental
soothsayer upholds the honor of his house by
methods, that furnish one of the most baffling
murder mysteries in the annals of crime.
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS At all tot,.
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