Book Notes
A GENEROUS offer of paper by Messrs. Allan Wingate has made pos- sible the publication of a very important survey in pamphlet form of the current book shortage and its causes: The Battle of the Books (Allan Wingate, 2s. 6d.). Each aspect of the shortage is examined by different contributors from different but professional points of view. Contributors include Sir Osbert Sitwell, Sir Stanley Unwin, 'a leader-writer in the New Statesman, Mr. A. D. Peter's and Mr. Henry Green. " The effect of the whole collection," writes its editor, Mr. Gerard Hopkins of the Oxford University- Press, •" is to present fairly and with vigour a statement of the very real danger to which the trade in books is now exposed." Everyone concerned at the prospects of English literature today should buy The Battle of the Books.
* * * * Twenty thousand English families, we are told, are taking their cars to France this summer. Some of them should be glad to know that one of the most discerning English books on France— scenery, architecture, feed, wine—is once more available. Messrs. B. T. Batsford have just produced a new edition of The Land of France by Ralph Dutton and Angus Holden. First published in 1939, this book has now been brought thoroughly (and sadly) up to date. It is now equipped with a tantalising and nostalgic foreword by that distinguished Frandophile, Mr. Raymond Mortimer. This is a really useftil book.
The numerous and excellent photographs in Byzantine Legacy, pubiished this week by George Allen and Unwin, remind us of the pictorial advantages which writers of modern travel-books enjoy over those of a century ago. Its author, Mr. Cecil Stewart, who was awarded a scholarship at the Edinburgh College of Art before the war, travelled to Constantinopk in 1936 and has now produced this illustrated travel journey. Mr. Stewart has visited many of the places described by Robert Curzon in his Monasteries of the Levant (published in 1849). They have changed little in zoo years.
* * * * It is a relief to know that some people still keep Commonplace Books. I thought it had died out. A Book of Quotations, which the Cresset Press are publishing in two weeks' time, comprises e selection from the Commonplace Books of Viscount Samuel. Lord Samuel has noted down anything memorable he has found while reading, and has arranged the quotations alphabetically under their subjects : Action, Anecdotes, Architecture, Aristocracy ; ending with a remark by Diana of the Crossways about Youth.
How many people know that that high-spirited novelist, Rhoda Broughton, was also a writer of eerie ghost stories? Herbert van Thal, a dilettante of Victorian fiction, has disinterred her volume of Twilight Stories (first published in 1873) and is republishing them in late August (Home and van Thal, 6s. net), with a jacket by the New Zealand painter Felix Kelly.
* * The Second International Exhibition of Book Design arranged by the National Book League opened in Albemarle Street last week. Eleven countries are showing books. Neither Italy nor Switzerland, which excel in book production, is represented, but France has sent a number of sumptuous editions of the classics—Theocritus, Vergil, Vitruvius—and French exhibits include Maria Alcoforado's Lettres Portugaises illustrated by Matisse. Dutch and Swedish books look very trim, while Russian and Czech books seem dowdy and undistinguished. English exhibits include a volume of Collins's beautiful New Naturalist series, Cape's stout and well-printed edition of Rose Macaulay's They Went to Portugal, the elegant Golden Cockerell First Crusade, Michael Joseph's issue of V. Sackville West's poem The Garden and the Phaidon Press catalogue of the Sandby
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