... RECENT WAR I BOOKS The battle of bullets in South Africa is now being seriously complicated by a battle of books. Long before Long Tom had ceased to shell the besieged of Ladysmith our war correspondents had begun to bombard the be leaguered of London. In the slow old days of the Peninsula and the Crimea the chroniclers used to wait until the war was over before putting pen to paper, but ...

... London, June 13th, 1900. Mr. W. H. Wilkins may be congratulated upon his fascinating book, The Love of an Uncrowned Queen, which, although it has been issued a month or two, I have only just found time to read. It is passing strange when one thinks of it that the story of the Princess Sophie Dorothea of Celle has not been told at length for English readers before this. She had herself a most ...

... London. Tune 20th. iqoo. Shakspere's birthplace is to have a burst of new literary excitement during the next week or two- To-morrow the Whitefriars Club travels down in saloon carriages as far as Warwick, drives thence to Stratford, where, after visiting the Shakspere house, Anne Hathaway's cottage and other interesting associations, its members are to take tea with Miss Marie Corelli, who at ...

... London, June 27th, 1900. There has been a great deal of discussion at Broad stairs over the sale of that interesting curiosity, Bleak House. Every visitor to Broadstairs knows Bleak House well, standing as it does in a very isolated and conspicuous position within sight of all. It is said that £3,000 is wanted for the budding, and there has been talk of an enterprising American carrying it off ...

... |a literary LETTER j London, July nth, 1900. Mr. Edward Clodd is one of the best-known figures in the London literary life of to-day. He has written many books since he secured the regard of a large audience by the publication in 1872 of The Childhood of the World. Only a week or two ago there appeared from his pen a His- MR. EDWARD CLODC Mussel l I tory of the Alpha bet (Newnes), and a life ...

... t London, July i8th, 1900. I have paid two separate visits to Stratford-on-Avon during the last three or four weeks, one in the company of the Whitefriars Club and the other in that of the Johnson Club. On the first visit we went and returned in a single day, but it was a day's outing so perfectly organised that it did not give us one wearisome moment. Sir William Treloar was the president of ...

... London, July 25th, 1900. Everyone is reading Robert Orange at the moment. The book bears the pseudonym of John Oliver Hobbes, but all the world knows that this is the pen name of Mrs. Craigie, who first dazzled us some years ago by the brilliantly epigrammatical style of Some Emotions and a Moral. We have had many books from her since, one of them, The School for Saints, of which Robert ...

... London, August ist, 1900. Mrs. Robert Leighton, who under her signature of Marie Connor Leighton has written some very popular novels-- principally in the journals of the Messrs. Harmsworth-- is shortly to publish through Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton a romance bearing the title A Napoleon of Journalism. It will not be difficult, I imagine, to identify the hero of this story. TV /r r. Max ...

... A LITERARY LETTER Some Newly-Discovered Byron Correspondence. London. August 6th. 1000. A new letter of Byron's has been unearthed in the Peel Collection, and has come into the possession of Mr. W. Spencer, bookseller, of New Oxford Street, who courteously permits me to facsimile it. Mr. Spencer prices the letter at twelve guineas. The letter, which runs as follows, is not in Mr. Prothero's ...

... - -Concerning Robert Browning. London, August 15th, 1900. Two biographies of Robert Browning have long held a fair measure of popularity, although Browning belongs to that too small band of literary workers whose public have been rather content to read his works and perhaps to interpret them overmuch than to read about the writer. But neither Mrs. Sutherland Orr-- Lord Leighton's sister, and ...

... London, August 22nd, 1900. Although there is no possibility of ascertaining the real date of Chaucer's death, the date on the tomb in Westminster Abbey being merely traditional, it is quite sufficient for most of us to accept that date as a basis for commemorating the father of English poetry. Chaucer, we may be content to assume, died on October 25, 1400. On October 25, 1900, therefore --the ...

... London, August 29th, 1900. i Mr. T. T. Dahle, the editor of the Sun, has written in that journal an eloquent appeal to the citizens of London to restore the grave of Oliver Goldsmith. He suggests that it is incumbent upon the citizens of no mean city to erect some more stately memorial than that which at present commemorates the fact that Goldsmith lies buried somewhere in the neighbourhood ...