... COLLECTING MODERN BOOKS Prices, pleasures and pitfalls in the first-edition hobby Modern First Editions Points and Values, by Gilbert Fabes. (Foyle, out of print.) Modern First Editions Points and Val ...

... WELLS OF WORDINESS. --After a fairly extensive reading of modern fiction, I have come to the conclusion that most novelists use too many words. Not that I object to the long novel as suc ...

... Poems for Children, by Walter de la Mare (Constable, 7s. 6d.). This is a delicate filigree of new and old rhymes, as much a bedside book for grown-ups as a bedtime book for child ...

... Our Qpt'°u$ Onc on CHELSEA FOLLIES (The Victoria Palace). THOUGH the expansive Victoria Palace is hardly adapted to intimate acting, it is exactly suited to the broad fun of Nervo and Knox, the knockabout comedians who dominate this revue from start to finish. Indeed, when they are off the stage the audience is inclined to sit awaiting their return, more in resignation during the interval ...

... THE author begins with a quotation from R. L. Stevenson I am told there are people who do not care for maps and I find it hard to believe. From the earliest maps, and particularly those covered with drawings of nymphs and strange monsters and with cryptic lettering as to the conditions found in far distant lands, down to the most modern plan ning of a garden city there is a charm to which ...

... CRITICISMS IN CAMEO. THE STAGE. By J. T. GRE1N. I WAS nine years old when I saw EAST LYNNE for the first time, in Amsterdam; people around me were crying, and I shed synchronic tears. Much later-- a budding critic in London-- I saw it again, and if the tears were not as copious, the sobs and sighs dimmed the other side of the stalls, especially when the boy died in tuberculosis and Lady ...

... . By IVOR BROWN. LIFE under the roofs of Paris is generally expected to be full of laughing poverty and love which sheds a tear. In SIXTH FLOOR, adapted by Mr. Rodney Ackland from the French, produced by Mr. Gilbert Miller for a few nights at the St. James's Theatre, we see those supposedly romantic roofs of Montmartre and observe the life which goes on under the tiles, and even, ...

... . By IVOR BROWN. THE snake in the grass is a very old friend. Indeed, he plays the villain in the oldest story of the world. The human serpent turns up in a curious form in THE IN TRUDER, at Wyndham's Theatre. This piece by M. Mauriac, translated by Basil Bartlett, was originally produced (and much liked) at the Gate Theatre under the title of Asmodée. Asr .odeus, as you certainly do not ...

... . By L. P. HARTLEY. NOVELS in which the narrative is sufficiently organised to be called a plot are more open to charges of improbability than those written on the slice-of-life system. If life is just one damned thing after another, we cannot challenge the logic of events; they may seem unlikely or unnatural in themselves, but not in virtue of their relationship to each other. But a fixed ...

... . THERE is a certain activity in the try out theatres on London's periphery, and for the zealous enthusiast seeking the interest of the unusual and the uncommon, there are the pioneer efforts of The Barn Theatre, at Shere, which has already a good record of successful seasons, and the Tewkesbury players; but in the magic circle of which Shaftesbury Avenue is the centre there are no London ...

... A MUSIC ARTICLE BY EDWIN EVANS. ONE of my re cent experi ences was that of presiding, in a television pro gramme, over the musical equivalent of the popular spell ing bee. The teams were equally divided between amateurs and professionals, and between the sexes. Some of the questions put to them were obviously intended to be a source of innocent merriment. Of the others, some were the musical ...

... Criticisms in Cameo. By J. T. Grein. i. THE SILENT WITNESS, AT THE COMEDY. JOLLY GOOD! said that great lawyer, Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett, in the lobby, and then he praised the substantial accuracy of the great trial-scene in which the father was pro secuted for the sin of his son-- the murder of his mistress. It was a scene as poignant as The Trial of Mary Dugan, and it was led up to as ...