18 NOVEMBER 1949, Page 62

Revived and Collected

RE:assoss, revisions, revivals, collections of verse and prose, and series of elegant " library editions " have been pouring from the publishers' offices in such numbers that it is possible here only to note one or two of them as they hurry to take their places in the shops (if there is room for them) in time for Christmas. The signs of over-production are as obvious in this field as in that of new literature. There is redundancy on every side. I am glad to welcome Hamish Hamilton's edition of Pride and Prejudice (6s.) which completes the set of Jane Austen in the excellent "Novel Library," but even lovers of Miss Austen might wish some of the other new editions away. (Who is going to buy them all, and has not the craze been greatly overdone ?) It is the same with Trollope, whose The Warden appears in a new edition illustrated by Phyllis Harrap (Harrap. 21s.). Her drawings look like clever, rather capricious designs for a Barsetshire ballet, and I am doubtful whether an expensive quarto makes the best introduction to this least pretentious of short novels.

We are perhaps on safer ground, in our search for usefulness, when we turn to the products of scholarship. Ernest Benn have again made available Volume I of George Saintsbury's edition of Dryden and Volume I of J. St. Loe Strachey's edition of Beaumont and Fletcher (poor paper but good value in words at 8s. 6d. each). More important, as an entirely new production, is The Collected Poems of Christopher Smart, edited by Norman Callan (Routledge and Kegan Paul. 2 vols., 255. the set). Mr. Callan has done his job very well ; his main achievement is that he at last draws public attention away from the remarkable " Song of David " and towards the rest of Smart's verse, which has so long been undervalued but which can be enjoyed for its versatility and for the range of its versification. Mr. Callan also adds an interesting section of com- ments on Smart by critics ancient and modern ; and a similar feature is included in Kenneth Muir's excellent Collected Poems of Thomas Wyatt which comes from the same publishers at ros. 6d.. Mr. Muir fairly sets out the inconclusive evidence concerning Wyatt's relations with Anne Boleyn and shows him a better poet than Surrey.

Mr. Peter Quennell's selections from the poetry, letters and journal of Byron, running to nearly nine hundred pages (Nonesuch Press. 2rs.), is an admirable addition to a series which already includes selections from Swift, Whitman and Hazlitt, as well as the complete works of Lewis Carroll. Mr. Quennell has found room for all of Byron's verse that is worth reading ; indeed, he could have cut even deeper into the longer poems without any complaint from me. Whatever the personal reaction to Byron and his poetry, Mr. Quennell's book should be on the shelf of anyone interested in the nineteenth century. The letters and journals arc worth many pages of catchpenny biography, for they show the man himself—and despite his long exposure to authors Byron can still afford us surprises. He was, as Mr. Quennell says, " an exceptionally interest- ing and unusually ill-fated human being "—though not, I think, either so interesting or so ill-fated as John Keats, whom Byron despised, and whose biography by Dorothy Hewlett, first published in zor, is now re-issued in a revised and enlarged edition (Hurst and Blackett. 25s.). Miss Hewlett tells the tragic and essentially noble story of Keats in a book that is sympathetic, sensible and comprehensive.

From two contrasted men to two contrasted women, a century later. Miss Cornelia Otis Skinner, whose entertaining sketches are now collected into an omnibus volume, is a humorist in the tradition of Leacock and Benchley, but not, in my opinion, one who seriously shakes those little masters on their pedestals. She is skilful observer of the female predicament, however, and I can well believe that, like many women writers, she is best appreciated by her own sex, thousands of whom will be able to echo the title of

her book, That's Me All Over (Constable. sos.). Katherine Mans- field, whose collected stories have appeared in a new cheap edition (Constable. 'cis. 6d.), is a writer of such superior calibre that she really ought not to be mentioned in the same paragraph. As with Miss Skinner, her strength lies in observation and feminine intui-

tion, but she had the pen of a poet and used it to explore the whole range of human emotion. Working on a small scale, she shows something of the grave artistry of the Russian novelists combined with the intensity and fidelity to detail of Flaubert. Katherine Mansfield's influence on the short story has been so profound that it is difficult, twenty-five years after her death, to appreciate

her originality ; she has had many imitators, but her subtle studies of mood and temperament are still unique and unrivalled. I shall end by recommending some books that seem to me to have practical possibilities as Christmas presents. First, there is a new edition of Cassell's New English Dictionary—a useful possession reasonably priced at 17s. 6d. for 1,696 pages. Next there are the first four volumes of the revised edition of Dent's Everyman's Encyclopaedia (12s. each), the remaining eight volumes of which will be published next year, two at a time, at intervals of two months. No other encyclopaedia covers so much ground in such a small space. Then there is a third edition of In and Out of Doors (Routledge and Kegan Paul. ros. 6d.) " by Susan Charlotte and Christoper and their parents Amabel and Clough Williams-Ellis." This miscellany, primarily but not exclusively for the young, is full of all sorts of instruction and entertainment, from wild flowers to photography and from poetry to games and conjuring. Finally, I welcome a cheap edition of Daisy Ashford's masterpiece The Young Visiters (Zodiac Books. 2s.). The disappearance of Barrie's preface need not be unduly regretted, but I feel it is a mistake not to have included, by way of introduction, some account of the book and its

history. The text remains a joy. DEREK HUDSON.