he Collectors

wo Pieces For he Collectors

10 R collectors of literary pieces [ two new items in the Bodley iad Monograph series are now iilable: Andrew Lang, by Roger ncelyn Green; and Rosemary tcliff, by Margaret Meek.

Lang and Miss Sutcliff had this ich in common —children’s books but there the resemblance stops, tsemary Sutcliff was bom only 1920 and is still very much in the siness. Lang was a contemporary H. Rider Haggard with whom he laborated in The World’s Desire; 3 of Robert Louis Stevenson whom helped on his literary way.

Miss Sutcliff is best known for her torical stories for children ( The ronicles of Robin Hood, The mourer’s House, The Eagle of the nth, etc.), although she has also itten a couple of adult novels, r children’s books are all pub led by Oxford University Press i some consider that they are for her bookish children; however st youngsters enjoy them once y are introduced. The monograph, f course, as monographs are, is icerned with the person herself and n she writes as well as in what she les. \ndrew Lang in today’s world ght have become some sort of terior type newspaperman or fnalist. In his day—he was born [lB44 —being a man of letters was profession in its own right. He s born in the Scottish Border intry and early imbibed the old ends and the sense of “fey” that mnded in his own countryside, was this sense of being on the eshold of fairyland that probably ned him, in later life, to editing times of fairy stories for children 1 it was a sense that never left 1 even in his more adult writings essays and verse. dis path led from public school St. Andrews University and then Oxford. *rom there, says his monographist, mg soon established himself in literary London of the seventies”.

I became a literary adviser to the )lisher Charles Longman and t . was soon writing two or three rary leaders a week for the Daily and The Sunday Review”.

Hie gentle art of man of letters i its hey-day in the late Victorian ) although it did not entirely die \ with the new century and still gers in odd corners of the Old )rld.

Lang died in his native Scotland —in Aberdeen—in 1912 and was buried at St, Andrews. In his life he wrote 120 separate books and pamphlets and edited even more; there were several hundreds of his uncollected poems and no less than 5,000 essays, articles and reviews.

But he is perhaps now best remembered for collected editions of fairy tales, which he edited, and his writings about fairly-tales.

(Rosemary Sutcliff And Andrew

LANG. Published by Bodley Head.

Price 9/- ea.)