... THE fourth volume of Mr. Sean O'Casey's memoirs is as rich and tempestuous read ing as its predecessors; reward ing, but a little headachey in the long run. INISHFALLEN FARE THEE WELL (Macmillan. 16s.) opens in Dublin in the days of the throubles and the Black and Tans, and ends with the author's leaving Ireland for England, where he has now lived for many years. It is a book whose quality ...

... THE romantic approach is used in fiction perhaps more often than strictly neces sary, and certainly this is true of that form of fiction, the historical novel, a dangerously vague term in itself. There seems to be something particu larly tempting in trying this kind of approach in writing of the late eighteenth century, and the very early nineteenth century. vvnetner it is tne iteign 01 terror ...

... THE POE CENTENARY The Anthology of a Tragic Genius A writer whose successors include Dorothy Sayers (creator of Lord Peter Wimsey), Jules Verne (exponent of the scientific romance) and Stephane Mallarmé (the French poet and leader of the Symbolists), was nothing if not versatile. Edgar Allan Poe, the centenary of whose death is recalled this month, was in his own day supreme as an inventor of ...

... THE divine Sarah is an excellent subject for a biography; volatile, uncon ventional, world-famous to this day and spectacular in her own. Sarah Bernhardt (Hurst and Blackett. 21s.) is her story as told by her granddaughter, and it is not only a record of her stage triumphs, but a fairly intimate account of her not very private life. Even as a child Bernhardt was tempestuous and was already ...

... THIS has been a rich week for novels and a busy one for women writers, who are respon sible for nine of the books under review. In the historical field, the stories range from a frontier town in the 90's to Israel in the ninth century B.C., and in the modern field they cover Italy, Africa, Assam and the west coast of Ireland, as well as the English countryside and our familiar London. To begin ...

... AS I write this, the evening newspaper are carrying staring headlines of the in vasion of Europe, and in front of me lies an orange-jacketed book proclaiming with equal emphasis that this is D-DAY (Hamish Hamilton. ios. 6d.). In point of fact, the D-Day (military term for the day set in advance for the opening of an onerationl to which Mr. John Gunther refers was the crucial date of the ...

... When John Drinkwater wrote A Man's House he took the climax of the New Testament story and, for two inspired acts, showed the impact of those events upon a middle-class household in Jerusalem. Employing this same method, but without Drinkwater's skill or discernment, C. M. Franzero has written THE MEMOIRS OF PON TIUS PILATE (Allen and Unwin. 10s. 6d.), and here again the climax is, of course, ...

... PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS-PAST and PRESENT ■By Vernon Fane Charles Graves Censored and Uncensored Ursula Bloom Looks Back From Victoria to the Blitz D. W. Rainer's American Adventures A[evil Shute's 1 Narrative Assurance Endeavour Sets Sail IT will be interesting to see whether OFF THE RECORD (Hutchinson. IOS. 6d.) will stimulate other writers, both amateurs and professionals, into keeping a ...

... THE ESSAY-- A LOST TECHNIQUE A Fictionised Biography of Charles Lamb, the Master Essayist --By Vernon Fane THE art of the essay having lain in the doldrums for so long, it is not surprising that there should be a genera tion at large which knows little of and cares less for Charles Lamb; allowing itself to be unshaken by the fact that its elder brothers were Eliaphobes almost to a man, ...

... PHILIP PAGE on the Behind ihe Schemes at the Shaftesbury A Farce on Nudism at the Comedy DO the public like to he introduced, for entertainment purposes, to the inner workings of certain professions and to see the wheels go round? The answer is that obviously they do, particularly in the case of (i) the theatre and (ii) the newspaper world. It is true that few, if any, plays, except ...

... THE current fashion for Trollope continues and is ably reinforced and represented by an American biography, THE TROLLOPES (Secker and Warburg. 30s.). This volume is the combined work of a scholarly mother and son, Mrs. Lucy Poate Stebbins and Richard Poate Stebbins, who together have written this chronicle of a writing family, drawing on the results of immense research. The book is presented ...

... MEMORIES AND MERCHANDISE --By Vernon Fane Compton Mackenzie's Islands; Vicki Baum's Department Store and Some Melodrama MRS. COMPTON MACKENZIE'S first volume of autobiography ended with the year 1918. The second volume, MORE THAN I SHOULD (Collins. 12s. 6d.), takes up the story at the Casa Solitaria, Capri (Too-- too-- oh, beloved Solitaria ), where Mr. Mackenzie was recupe rating from ...