Messrs. W. Heffer & Sons Ld., Publishers, Cambridge, have in the Press a new book by Professor Herbert A. Giles, Professor of Chinese in the University of Cambridge, entitled "Some Truths About Opium." The author traces for the first time the history of opium in China from the 6th century A. D. down to the present day, and arrives at some startling conclusions. Readers will be able to judge how far the drug was forced by Great Britain upon an unwilling people, as alleged, in the eighteenth century, Mr. Lewis May is back in London from a_ visit to Anatole France, made in connexion with a biography which he is writing of the great French author. Mr. May went to Tours where he spent several days in contact with the Master at La Bechellerie, his beautiful estate near there. No doubt a record of the talks will appear in the "Life," and meanwhile the English biographer says: "When I try to sum up my impression of Anatole France, I think the first things that come into my mind are his greatness and his simplicity."
Many books have been given us around Charles Lamb and_his writings, but even so, one which the Cambridge Press announces is on fresh lines. Its purpose is to illustrate Charles Lamb as a literary critic, and it has been complied by Mr. E. M. W. Tillyard. "The literary criticism of Charles Lamb," says he, "scattered as it is through the 'Essays of Elia,' the miscellaneous prose writings and the letters is perhaps less easy to get at than that of any other great English critic." It is just because of this that he has compiled his volume with the title, "Lamb's Criticism." of the racial problems of America, which he visited last autumn as including the three, Jews, Germans, and the Irish. He does not say that any of them is pressing, or that it will fail to bring its own solution, but the first one, anyhow, is getting attention in new books. An important one, which Heinemann will probably issue here, has the title, "The Jews in America," and the author is Mr. Burton J. Hendrick. It was he, as will be remembered, who wrote the biography of Ambassador Page, a work which has made the English and American peoples his debtors. ye Books on the art of flying grow with the perfecting of the art itself, and that is the natural way.' Major W. T. Blake, the Aviation Correspondent of the "Daily News," has written a manual on flying, and it will appear at once with Allen and Unwin. It includes chapters on learning to fly, on the construction of aircraft, and on other technical aspects of the great business. But it takes also a wider road, interesting to the general reader, and discusses all the sporting possibilities of flying. A chapter at the end should j attract the curious, for it bears the title, "Inventions Wanted."
There will be much interesting gossip about notables in a book by a Canadian professor, Dr. James Mayor, which Mr. Dent is publishing. "My Windows on the Street of the World." "There are two ways of knowing the world,"'* says Dr. Mayor: "one way is to go about it, and the other is to allow the world to revolve around a fixed point."" He has combined both, for he gives us essays done at home and papers gathered during travel. One of those has to do with Tolstoy at his famous residence in Russia, Yasnaya Polyana.
No doubt Mr. Steve Donoghue is. the best-known English jockey Mr. Herbert Jenkins, author and publisher, died recently in a of this time, and, some London nursing home. He was 47 say, the finest horseman judges years of age, and had been in Fred Archer. The publishing 7h dealt ill-health for some time. Mr. house of Hutchinson has just Was @ _many-sided issued a biography in_ which literary enthusiast. He wrote, a Archer's life-story is told long life of George Borrow, made a after his death. Now it promises; lid @ large amount of original close study of William Blaxe, and us Mr. Steve Donoghue's "Story of My Life" while he is fresh from winning his third Derby on Papyrus. He has ridden in so many difficult races that parts of it may read like the poetic struggle described in Campbell Rae town's "Kissing Cup's Race.""
Somewhere in his new book, Lord Shaw of Dunfermline speaks research on the artist-poet, started a publishing business in 1912, and created "'Bindle."'
Mr. Seton Gordon calls a forthcoming Cassell book, "Hebridean emeries."" We already know im for writings on Nature and her ways in the Scottish Highlands, and as a good photographer. His present volume deals with the lonely mist-swept places of the Outer Hebrides, and notably with the Island of South Uist, lying out in the Atlantic fifty miles from the Scottish mainland. There English is a foreign tongue, for the islanders only know their own Gaelic.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.