New-York tribune., 1920-01-03
BY Rebecca Drucker

Sir Ernest Holder William, Of the
English publishing house of Holder G.
Stoughton, the represent natives in Lon
don Of George n. Doran & Co., has
arrived in this country with some inter-
esting information about the ENGLISH
literary field.
He says it is in the same phenome-
nally fourishing condition as is the
American market. The war seems to
nave broken down the Englishman's
prejudice against reading, as a rather
dlsrespectful form of idling. Reading
was practically the only diversion left
people through LoAdon's dark days, and
the men returning from service have
brought back the reading habit acquired
through long waits in trenches and bill
lets. IN addition, whole new book buy
ing public has arisen. chiefly made up of
made prosperous.
These people, working men and
women. curiously enough, have stimu-
lated the sale of classics in cheap edi-
tons. The Everyman and similar libra
res OF classics report a livelier sale of
Shakespeare, Thackeray, Dickens, Jane
Austen, the Brontes and other English
classics than ever before. The only Eng
lish writer who does not share in the re-
vived interest is Carlyle. Whether it is
because Of his Teutonic point of view,
or whether because his fashion of writ
ing is not that of the present genera
tion, he has been losing ground steadily.
Besides the classics this new public
buys certain kinds of two-shilling popu-
lar novels in great quantities. This sort
OF novel is, IN the literary scale, perhaps
cut above Charles Garvice Berta Ruck
and Ethel Dell, who wrote "The Way
of an Eagle" are the chief writer's of
two-shilling best sellers. Our American
school Of outdoor fiction, notably that of
Zane Gray, Rex Beach and Peter B.
lish readers. Harold Bell Wright has,
however, only a small sale in England.
The wave of spiritualism, which is an
English reaction from the war, has
brought about a large body of fiction
dealing with communications from the
spirit world and the life hereafter. The
two most conspicuously successful exam
Piles of this school (Which publishers
regard as a sort of freak fashion) are
the two latest books by Conan Doyle,
"The Vital Message" and "The New
Revelation" These have had tremen-
dous sale. A great number of other
read, but these are considered to have
more lasting qualities than the others.
The reactions from the war are very
pronounced in English literature, but
there, as here, anything bearing directly
on the war-journalistic reports, per-
sonal experiences, "reminiscences, ETC.
are drug upon the market. But the
correspondence and memoirs of men
prominent in the conduct of the war are
eagerly read. These meet with the live
liest interest, regarded as documents
The books by General French and Ad-
miral Jellicoe are having a wide sale.
Lord Fishers memoirs, in the first
three months of their appearance, sold
more than fifteen thousand copies at a
guinea copy-and this in frugal Eng
land is an astonishing sale. But the
book for which literary and political
England Is waiting, a-quiver with ex-
ctement, is that promised by Lady As
frank woman, and she has let it be
known that she has had inscribed on the
fyeaf: at is better to be hung for a
sheep than lamb" So that England is
holding its breath for the political and
social disclosures this book will contain.
Neither now nor at any time during
the war have any of the realistic war
books met with any response in Eng
land The nearest England has come
to making best sellers Of any war
novels, with the exception of Wells's
"Mr. Britling Sees 1t Through" and
"Joan and Peter" was to accept, whole
heartedly, the spy romance of John
Buchan. Blasco Ibanez's "The Four
Horsemen Of the Apocalypse" which
sold to the extent of a quarter of a
million in this country, was not pub
lished in England until last Spring,
and then the small edition of four
thousand was absorbed very slowly.
Save for the -Four Horsemen," Ibanez
is unknown to England. About twelve
of his books have been translated into