"On A Chinese Screen"
1 tains personal accounts of the great! game, at home and over-sea, "s Mr. Jessop has known it, and his experience has been rich and varied.
Mr. Somerset Maugham has com plated a book quite unlike any other book he has yet written. "On Chinese Screen'? wil! contain some 30 to 40 sketches and stories, written by Mr. Maugham while actually in China. Only one European writer—Pierre Loti—has done what will be found in Mr. Maugham's new book. For "On Chinese Screen" not only gives in a series of word pictures the magnificence and squalor of China, but also more than one penetrating study of the Europeans to whom the country has become a second: homeland. Messrs. Heinemann will publish the book early this autumn, Mr. Luoyp Geonrce.
The report that My. Lloyd George has laid aside material for his memories has set all the publishers, in London and elsewhere, hustling to get them. They find, however, that there is no immediate possibility of the book, and that if it ever does materialise, it will be war-memories rather than a whole-life autobiography. So far, there have been various lives of the Premier, and they have only been moderately successful, no doubt because they Jacked his own personal touch.
An Epic oF rap War.
When are we to get the war memories of Colonel T. E. Lawrence, who figured so romantically in the Middle East campaign? "He has just resigned his official post at the Colonial Office, and someone suggests that he has done this in order to write his book. The fact is that it has been in manuscript for some The "Morming Post" acquired at the beginning of this year the manuscript of what may perhaps be described as the most voluminous, Pepysian, and agreeably gossipy old diary that has come out of Jumberrooms for many a day. This was the diany of Joseph Farington, Royal Academician, whose life-dates were 1747-1821. He was a landscape painter, and his engraved, usually aquatinted, landscapes and topographical views may be seen by chance in any second-hand bookseller's or art-dealer's' window in London to-day. Ye diarised with the industry of a mole, and the lapse of time has given an extraordinary interest to his curiously chippy, abbreviated, and often unexpected notes on his social life, which, although naturally it was mainly circumscribed by art, had many farther horizons. The Diary has now picked up Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Farington's account of him is curiously confirmative of some of the well-known impressions of Hazlitt' and Carlyle. The "Morning Post? is natursly interested in publishing these glimpses of S. T. C., who, 120 years ago, was. a contributor to its pages. Coleridge was but 30 years old when Faring-ton met him, but already he was a master of monologue. "The evening passed," says the diarist, "not in conversation, but in listening to a succession of opinions and explanations delivered by Coleridge to which I attended from a desire to form an opinion of his ability." That says a good deal. Coleridge spread himself on this occasion over time, and indeed much of it con-) Sculpture, pain painting, architecture, sists of journals-kept from day to}|novels, apparitions, and the poetry day. Colonel Lawrence hag never of Milton. Farington was more been anxious to publish his story,|listehing than impressed. "It was but it will be published, and the li," writes, "metaphysical, freonly question is when.
It-makes a|quently perplexing, certainly at sparkling and, in parts, thrilling}times without understanding his narrative, and Byron could have] Subject.
On going away I ex-fashioned an epic out of its rich] Pressed to Dance how much I was material. fatigued by that sort of confinement. we had been under. He sympathize A Grear CRICKETER. ed with it." In short, Farington Every English country house was, (to use an elegant' phrase), was once on a day, a school for readers] bored stiff by the author of "The who liked books of sport. The tra-} Ancient Mariner." dition so planted is still a strongly characteristic of our reading public, Tue Irish Porrrican Drama. and especially volumes of cricketing Mr. Shaw Desmond is an Irish-memories are popular.
We all re-man who has taken, an active part member Mr. Warner's book, which quickly went into several impres-hiss in Labour and in Irish politics. He has known most of the sions, and then into ai popular chief figures in both movements, and edition. Now we hear from Mr. he said what he had to say of one Gilbert Jessop that he has been setting down his memories, which jin "Labour: The Giant with the Feet of Clay." Now he is publish-will appear, before long, under the ing with Collins "The Drama of title "A Cricketer's Log." It con-
Sinn Fein," a volume in which ho endeavours to set forth with some intimacy the important but obscure events that happened between the tish Easter Rebellion and the sign. ing of the Irish Treaty. Mr. Shaw Desmond has recently spent ai long time in Ireland, interviewing the big men before and behind the scenes, and he has had access to important documents.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.