Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933), Tuesday 14 August 1900, page 6


LITERARY GOSSIP.

Rider Haggard's book, " Black Heart and White Hean," which has jusc reached Aus-tralia, goeb back to his early love, Africa ; and it is perhaps needless to say that tlió change is a welcome one. With the ex-ception of " Dawn," " The Witch's Head,*' and " Beatrice," no books of his that havo not tlie environment of " She" and " Allan

Quartermaiu" havo been an unqualified sue- . cess. The book contains three storiesthe one which gives it tho title, " Elissa," and " The Wizard," the last ot which ap-peared a few years ago as " Arrowsmith's Christmas Annual." " Black Heart and White Hean" is a Zulu story, tho villain* of which is a white trader. In " Elissa" there is an attempt to recreate the life of the ancient Phoenician Zimbabwe, whose ruins still stand in Rhodesia, while the " Wizard" is the story of the life and death of a Christian missionary among a Central African nation of warriors. All three stories are spoken of as varied and ex-citing.

William Heinemann, to whom so much of the best fiction gravitates nowadays, has been writing m " Literature" on the ques-tion, " Doeb fashion influence the fate of novels '" Sir. Heinemann thinks that it has comparatively little to do with it, and that the only sure guide to success is the

consideration of freshness and novelty. / Aspirants to literary fame may be able to draw some hints from Mr. Heincmann's ex-pectations of fiction in the future. ' He säys, " lu the novel of to-morrow I would hope for excellence of character drawing, absorbing interest of plot, breadth in cover-ing the canvas, and style in painting de-tails, the conflict of fate and temperament, humour and pathos, despair and hope-in short, the whole gamut of human expe-rience." Mr. Heinemann's "specification" is rather difficult for young writers tq-take in hand, but if they adopt those ideals and endeavour to work up to them they cannot go far wrong in the production of a novel

that will " take."

George Moore, who has often been re-ferred to as the English Zola, is still en-gaged on " Sister Theresa," the novel whicn was announced as a sequel to " Evelyn innes." As a matter of fact the two books are really one, but were cut in two because Mr. Moore's fatal fondness for de-tail increased the story to a length of 300,000 words, and a novel of those dimen-sions was .deemed more than the most in-veterate reader of fiction in general, or George Moore in" particular, could stand. Mr. Moore' wishes, howewer, to bring the two books out together, and as soon as " Sister Theresa" is finished he will begin to rewrite " Evelyn Innes." The two,/wlll probably be published together in the early part of next year, and the prospect of hav-ing two novels 'by George Moore at the same time is decidedly something to look for-

ward to.

James Lane Allen's new novel, which has been promised for some time, was originally to -be called " The Hemp-break-er," and deals in part with the histoiy of the ill-fated University of Pennsylvania. As in many other instances, Tennyson has sup-plied the final title, tho keynote of tlie romance being taken from the oft-quoted lines In " Locksley Hall" :

" Yet I doubt not through the ages one' in-

creasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widened

with the process of the suns."

It (will remembered, foy the way, that that the Macmlllaus are about to issue a uniform complete edition of* this author's works, which will enable English and Aus-tralian readers to gauge more' fully, the artistic capabilities of the writer who has given us such charming 'books as " The Choir (Invisible" and " A Kentucky Car-

dinal."

There is no gainsaying the fact that a large proportion of the enterprise of the .Anglo-Saxon a*a<ee (has (been appropriated by our American cousins. It is customary-in all reading countries lx> a'bandon out-of-date imagazinís to the recesses of the '\this lot, 6d." box at. seonnd-'band bookshops« *But an A'merl-oan ibiô'okspllor in tNt<w York has vactly Improved on that plan. He recentjj: Ibought cheaply, of course, several thousand old American magazines, in the dusty pages oí which he found many valuable articles and essays. Whereupon, he loosed these írctm their wire fastenings, ¡bound them ia paper covers, with laibels giving the title of the article, and the author, and now he is doing a good trade in selling tQiem for more than the original cost of the maga-

zines, j An extension of this idea would be to collect and bind similarly all one writer's ephemeral contributions to magazines which were not covered ¡by copyright,.