Forthcoming Books
PERHAPS the most important book, at least from a historian's point of view, to be published this autumn will be the new volume of the
Dictionary of National Biography, 1931-1940, edited by L. G.
Wickham Legg, which is announced by the Oxford University Press for November. Kipling and Barrie will require to be noticed in it, and so will an unusually large number of distinguished composers, among them Elgar, Delius, Hoist and German. The Oxford University Press is also about to publish the first volume in the Oxford History of English Art edited by T. S. R. Boase ; this is actually Volume V, covering the years 1307-1461, and the author is Dr. Joan Evans ; Professor David Knowles will review Dr. Evans's book in an early issue of the Spectator.
Collins have announced for early publication The Unbroken Thread, in which Lord Templewood writes of the long and con- tinuing traditions of his family ; John Ruskin : The Portrait of a Prophet, by Peter Quennell ; and the third and penultimate volume of Arthur Bryant's biography of Pepys—The Saviour of the Navy. The first volume of James Pope-Hennessy's biography of Richard Monckton Mines, Lord Houghton, entitled Manckton Milnes : The
Years of Promise, is to come from Constable, who will also publish Michael Sadleir's memoir of his father Sir Michael Sadler. Mac- millan hope to have ready in November A History of England in
one volume, up to 1918, by Professor Keith Felling, and The Crooked Corridor by Elizabeth Stevenson, a critical study of Henry James. Among the many books of artistic interest will be Landscape into Art, by Sir Kenneth Clark, and Self-Portrait of an Artist, compiled from the diaries and memoirs of Lady Kennet (both from John Murray), Outline, an autobiography by Paul Nash, The Lascaux Cave Paintings by Fernand Windels, and Degas Dancers, Lillian Browse's important study of Degas as a master of ballet. The three last will be published by Faber and Faber.
Methuen have announced Sir Alan Herbert's book of parliamentary memoirs, University Member, while The Essential Samuel Butler, edited with an introduction by G. D. H. Cole, and a life of the poet Skelton by H. L. R. Edwards are due from Cape.
Hamish Hamilton promise a book by a nun who has returned to the world after 28 years in a convent, I Leap over the Wall, which
should provide an interesting contrast with Thomas Merton's account of a leap in the other direction, Elected Silence. Two promising items in Harrap's list are Age Cannot Wither, the story of Eleanora Duse and Gabricic D'Annunzio, by Bertita Harding, and Alan St. H. Brock's A History of Fireworks (appropriately arranged for publication in November). Heinemann announce a biography of Sir Stafford Cripps by Eric Estorick, an autobiography by Francis Toye, and Cases in Court, in which Sir Patrick Hastings will tell the stories of his most interesting trials. Somerset Maugham's A Writer's Notebook will be published by Heinemann on October 3rd ; it will be reviewed by Mr. Charles Morgan in next
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