Are you not, dear reader, a little tired of what is called "Literary
Gossip"? Be frank. Aren't you? And have you not sometimes longed even
more to know what the industrious fellows were not writing than what
they were?
But suppose we could come across an authentic column like this?
Mr. KIPLING is putting the finishing touches to a new Jungle book.
The first and second Jungle books have waited too long for this new
companion; but it is now on its way. A friend of the author, who has
been privileged to see an early copy, says that it is full of all the
old enchantment.
* * * * *
Our Burwash correspondent informs us that, not content with the
re-incarnation of _Mowgli_, Mr. KIPLING has completed a new romance of
wandering life in India, not unlike _Kim_ in treatment, to be entitled
_The Great Trunk Road_.
* * * * *
An album has just come to light, the value of which is beyond
computation. On the faded leaves of this book, which once belonged to
Fanny Brawne, are inscribed three new poems in KEATS'S own hand. Not
mere album verses, but poems of the highest importance, equal to rank
to the Odes to the Grecian Urn and the Nightingale. The book itself
will be sold by auction next week, but meanwhile the poems are to be
issued in pamphlet form by Sir SIDNEY COLVIN.
* * * * *
An enterprising firm of publishers announces for immediate publication
a volume by President WILSON, entitled _From White House to Buckingham
Palace_. This work is in the form of a diary of singular frankness,
and it contains some vivid accounts of conversations as well as the
writer's honest opinion of some of the most prominent personages of
the moment.
* * * * *
Admirers of O. HENRY will be excited to hear that a bundle of MS.
stories in his best vein, some seventy-five all told (and how told!),
has been discovered in a cupboard in one of his old lodgings: much
as the manuscript of TENNYSON'S _In Memoriam_ was found in his
rooms in Mornington Crescent. How it happened that the historian
of the joys and sorrows, the comedies and tragedies, of little old
Baghdad-on-the-Subway neglected to send these tales to editors
we shall never know, but he was always erratic. The book will be
published at once, both in America and England.
* * * * *
After an interval of several years--far too many--Sir JAMES BARRIE has
finished a new novel. With his customary reticence he withholds both
the title and the subject; but the important thing is that the book is
at the binders.
Having read those announcements I succumbed to precedent and woke up.
* * * * *