New and Forthcoming Books
THE Stevenson centenary is causing a revival of interest in-the man and his work. Chapman and Hall have published Stevenson anti Edinburgh, by Moray McLaren, which contains glimpses of the town for the last centitry linked with Stevenson's biography. There are two new volumes of the poems—Collected Poems edited by Janet Adam Smith (Rupert Hart-Davis) and' selected poems with an introduction by G. B. Stern (Grey Walls Press). G. B. Stern has also edited R. L. S.: An Omnibus (Cassell). An edition of the letters, selected by Walter Allen, is published by the Grey Walls Press. The stories and essays are being republished in two separate volumes, and there is a biographical study, The Strange Case of Robert Louis Stevenson, by Malcolm Elwin (all Macdonald).
Another commemorative volume is Australia (Sidgwick and Jackson) which marks the Golden Jubilee of the Commonwealth to be celebrated next year. His Majesty the King writes a foreword to this book and the Prime Minister of the Commonwealth an intro- duction; there are more than 350 illustrations, and the volume is claimed to be a notable example of Australian book-production.
Many memoirs and autobiographies are appearing. Sir Charles • Petrie's memoirs, Chapters of Life, cover half a century. Adolphe Menjou's It Took Nine Tailors (Sampson Low) is an autobiography with a description. of Hollywood. A picture of the social and political life of Italy at the end of the war is given by Croce, The King and the Allies, a translation by Sylvia Sprigge of exlracts from Croce's diary of 1943-4 (Allen and Unwin).
Among the studies of foreign countries are several books on South Africa. Gollancz announces White Man Boss by " Adam- astor," a pseudonym for one of South Africa's leading writers, which is a well-documented indictment of the apartheid policy. Sarah Gertrude Malin has written The People of South Africa (Constable), in an attempt to bring up to date her previous study, The South African's. A warning of the dangers inherent in the present Allied policy in Japan is contained in Japan, Enemy or Ally (Cassell), by W. Macpherson Ball, British Commonwealth member of the four-Powered Allied Council at Tokyo ; and from the same publisher comes an-account of present-day life in Japan, Time of Fallen Blossoms by Alan Clifton, who went out as an interpreter after the 'war. Sir Osbert Sitwell has collected his writings about Mediterranean art and travel, and publishes these with a new pre- face and sixteen plates under the title:Winters of ,Content (Duck- worth).
Biographies also range widely. R. F Harrod has written John Maynard Keynes (Macmillan), which covers life at Eton at the turn of the century and at Cambridge and in London, and also Lord Keynes's management of British external finance in the two wars. The same firm publishes the fourth volume (1901-3) of the life of Joseph Chamberlain, which was left unfinished by J. L. Garvin when he died in 1947 and has been completed by Julian Amery. The Chekhov literature of the last months will be increased by a biography (Allen and Unwin) by Ronald Hingley, lecturer at the School of Slavonic Studies of London University, and in a life of Pushkin (Gollaircz) by Henri Troyat, there are several unpublished letters, including material about Pushkin's duel with his wife's lover who killed him.
Mr. Churchill writes a foreword to a selection of speeches by John G. Winant (Hodder and Stoughton) under the title Our Greatest Harvest. Among historical studies will be The England of Elizabeth by A. L. Rowse, which deals with the. Elizabethan social structure, and is to be followed 'by another volume summing up the achieve- ments of the age. The Episcopal Colleagues of Archbishop Thomas Becket (Cambridge University Press), the Ford Lectures given last year by Professor David Knowles, show the bishops' part in the struggle with Henry II, which most historians have represented as a personal quarrel. Oxford University Press 'is publishing the first of fifty volumes, edited by Julian P. Boyd, of all the papers, including State papers and letters, of Thomas Jefferson.
Among philosophical and religious books is E N. Mozley's The Theology of Albert Schweitzer (A. and C. Black), which was announced three years ago but has been waiting for a statement from Dr. Schweitzer, now supplied, on his matured conclusions forty years after The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Routledge and Kegan Paul are beginning publication Of the first complete edition of the works of Professor Jung, and Jung is also collaborating with C. Kerenyi in an Introduction to a Science of Mythology from the
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