Book Notes
THE latest of the Contact Books, those excellent five-shilling surveys of contemporary life being produced by Contact Publications Ltd., is appearing next week. Called World Off Duty, it is devoted to the singularly topical subject of holiday amusements and travel. Con- tact, Ltd., have already established a high standard of originality, both in contents and production, with their previous volumes ; World Off Duty will certainly sustain their growing reputation. Contributors include Salvador Madariaga, V. Sackville-West, C. M. Bowra, Alan Moorehead and Osbert Lancaster ; every aspect of foreign travel is discussed, as well as the possibilities for holidays at home. There is hardly a dull or uninformed article in World Off Duty and the illustrations are extremely good while the price re-
mains moderate. World Off Duty follows the Contact survey of public opinion, The Public's Progress, and a further book in the series, The Changing Nation, is announced for September, and World of Neighbcurs, an enquiry into Britain's position in the world today, for November.
A new book on the part played by personal relationships in the early history of the Oxford Movement is to be published by the Oxford University Press next October. Called Newman and Bloxam : an Oxford Friendship, this book has been written by Mr. R. D. Middleton from unpublished papers at the Oratory, Birmingham and at Magdalen College, Oxford. The book gives a new and intimate picture of Newman during the period of his spiritual conflict in the late 'thirties and early 'forties of the last century, at St. Mary's, Oxford, and later in the monastic seclusion of Littlemore.
* * * *
Messrs. Faber and Faber have commissioned a new series of books of great consequence to collectors and amateurs of ceramica. The Faber Monographs on Pottery and Porcelain have been designed to provide reliable, up-to-date information on the ceramic art of every country, oriental and occidental, and are under the general editor- ship of the Keeper of the Department of Ceramics at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mr. William Honey. The first book in the series will be Mr. Honey's own German Porcelain, and future titles include works by such recognised experts on their subjects as Mr. William King, Mr. Basil Gray and Mr. Arthur Lane. Mr. Honey's book on German china will be published on September 1st, and will
COSI 2I S.
* * * * It is fifty years this September since Mr. Somerset Mauagham's first novel, Liza of Lambeth, appeared. Mr. Maugham's publishers, Messrs. William Heinemann, are celebrating this jubilee by bringing out a new limited edition of this novel, with a fresh preface by the author. Heinemann's autumn list also promises a memoir of J. L. Garvin by his daughter Katharine Garvin, and a new novel by John Masefield, Badon Parchments, in which the Poet Laureate pre- sents a picture of English life in the first quarter of the sixth century.
* * * *
Christopher Isherwood has produced a new translation of the Bhagavad Gita in collaboration with Swami Prabhavandi, partly in prose and partly in verse. The translators' aim has been to produce a version which can be readily understood by any western man or woman ; a long introduction has been written for the volume by Mr. Aldous Huxley. Publication date is given by Phoenix House as the end of September.
* * * *
Mr. Winston Churchill's Marlborough : His Life and Times, will shortly be available again in a new two-volume edition, announced by his publishers, Messrs. Harrap. The publishers and printers have performed the formidable task of reducing the original fat four volumes of this work to two, without making any deletions from the text, and while retaining every map and plan of the original edition.
J. P. H.
Previous page
