BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
THERE are not so many.books this week—one or two political books, a biography or so, and a couple of rather interesting- looking novels. The first part of An Ambassador's Memoirs, by M. Maurice Paleologue, the last French Ambassador at the Russian Court (Hutchinson), might well be a book of great interest. There is a faculty for discrimination in the French mind which may support us to some further understanding of the Russian tragedy. The book is very well illustrated. As we look at the remarkable photograph of Rasputin, with his fanatical, sensual, politic face, and at the drawing of the bubbles of the Kremlin's domes, we feel that there will be something interesting as well as piquant in the spectacle of a French mind brought face to face with this exquisite, bar. barons phantasmagoria. The book on Mr. Sanderson (Bander• son of Oundle : Chatto and Windus), the great head-master who died so suddenly last June, should prove one of extraordinary interest. It is to be published on Wednesday. I hope that it is not a book of high lights alone, and that It will tell of Mr. Sanderson's wonderful progress, of how he made his own character during his years of head-mastership as visibly as he made the school, and that it will give an account of the undeveloped, tentative, fiery man of the late 'nineties as well as of the civilized and satisfied personality who reached spiritual as well as worldly success. Mr. St. gohn Ervine has written his impressions of several living writers—Mr. Chesterton, Mr. Bernard Shaw, and Mr. H. G. Wells among thein—(Some Impressions of My Elders : George Allen and Unwin). A first glance reveals it as a pleasant., sensible book, and I expect that further reading will show it as both trenchant and amusing. Mrs. Sanger, in a book introduced by Mr. H. G. Wells, writes on birth control from the point of view of the community—( The Pivot of Civilisation Jonathan Cape). Mr. G. Lowes Dickinson writes " for the plain man " on War : Its Nature, Cause and Cure (George Allen and Unwin). Mr. D. H. Robertson's book on The Control of Industry (Nisbet and Co.) is one of Mr. Maynard Keynes's series devoted to a systematic exposition of eco- nomics from the present-day standpoint. The Cambridge University Press publish a charmingly illustrated book on Grass-Making in England, by H. J. Powell. There is a volume of Selected Poems by Robert Frost, the American poet (Heinemann). Miss Ellen. Thorneycroft Fowler has written another novel, The Lower Pool (Hutchinson), and Messrs. Jonathan Cape publish a translation of a navel from the Dutch of Messrs. E. and M. Scharten Antink, A House Full of People.
One or two people have written to me saying that surely such or such a book noticed in this column deserved more than a passing glance and three words. Among these writers was Mr. Gordon Craig about Continental Stagecraft, which is reviewed in this number. May I therefore for their benefit explain once more that these notes are written after the merest turning over of the new books as they pass through my hands to our reviewers, and is designed to give the reader immediate news. Mention here almost always implies that the book is thought interesting enough for a considered review. ." Surely to give such a book the ' cursory glance' that you speak of is an insult," writes one correspondent. I often dwell upon the fact that my glance has been " cursory " because many of the books included in this column come in for review on the morning when I write it. I am therefore necessarily always ready to reconsider my first impression of these books, or to have it quashed by the reviewer to whose careful consideration I am consigning it. May I therefore beg my readers to consider this. column as literary stop-press, designed to help them in buying new books or in compiling a library list, and to remember that I give them here hasty impressions to which they will try in vain to hold me. I hereby reserve the right as far as this column is concerned to be wrong. Readers have an average of fifteen columns a week in which to enjoy the sport of catching me out. As to the contents of all these I will defend myself and our reviewers to the death.
Tan LITERARY EDITOR.
Previous page
