6 AUGUST 1927, Page 18

What a thousand pities it is that P. T. Barnum

is no more, for what an advertisement that great master of reclame has missed in the two portly volumes of Autobiography (Knopf, 42s.) which Mr. Bryan edits, but which, however, are a collated reissue of the various autobiographical sketches which the peerless showman produced during his own life. From the purely British point of view, this bulky work is a little extravagant, but it remains a masterpiece and an object- lesson in the technique of publicity.