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The place of the paper-back reprint edition in modern iterature has given most established publishers a headache and he headache is no doubt one reason why the Australian com >any, Angus and Robertson Ltd., is having a little each way in ts new series, Sirius Books.

lESE reprints, of what might be regarded as Australian classics, be had in either hard cover or er-bound. What it means in hard i, for the same literary content, hat you pay from 7/6 to 10/- •e if you insist on having a bound k and a simple dust-jacket.

I any criticism can be made of publishing scheme, it might be the relatively high cost of the er-back versions These may be irded as Australian classics; none ess 16/- and 17/- is a pretty stiff e for a book with a paper cover, imongst the first of the series were issued were the following: APRICORNIA by Xavier Herbert, bert is an Australian who has a most things from pharmacist pearl diver, but now gives his apation as writer. He wrote Cap rnia while he was living in a garret .ondon in the depression years of early 1930’5, being kept in food a Jewish woman who befriended i its original version it ran into ; a million words and although was persuaded to cut over half them, it apparently was still too nidable a proposition for London lishers The novel finally saw

With Judy Tudor

print in Australia in 1937, after Her bert had returned to that country; it won the Sesqui-centenary Prize in 1938 and the Australian Literature Society’s medal in 1939. Since then it has run through three editions and nine reprintings and now appears in Sirius Books.

In it he presents the Australian North as he sees it—or saw it, be fore 1930. Its theme is the half caste problem, as it then was; and the extraordinary characters who made up the Territory types gives it colour, humour, pathos and char acter.

Herbert has written nothing like Capricornia since. In fact, he has written no more than a couple of novels in the intervening 30 years, and eccentric is probably the most exact way to describe them.

In a hard cover, this edition of Capricornia is 25/-; in the paper cover, 16/-.

Australian Spiders By

Keith McKeown. This book was first published in 1936 and the author

is now dead, but Australian spiders remain the same as when, as As sistant Curator of Insects at the Australian Museum, he first wrote about them. McKeown had an in formal way of writing scientific fact and his book has been of great interest to amateur naturalists. Il lustrated by photographs and draw ings.

The bound version is 27/6 and the paper cover 17/6.

Flying-Fox And Drifting

SAND by Francis Ratcliffe is an other naturalist book, written even before Australian Spiders. But the author is still alive and wrote a pre face to the Sirius edition, from Can berra.

After graduation from Oxford, Ratcliffe became an economic biolo gist and one of his first assignments was the investigation, in Australia, of the depredations of the giant fruit-eating bat, called in Australia the flying-fox. This work engaged him from 1929 to 1931 when he re turned to the United Kingdom; but he was soon back in Australia again, for the CSIRO, investigating the problem of soil drift or wind ero sion, in the back country. The merit of his book, as reading material, should be judged from its sub-title ( The Adventures of a Bio logist in Australia ) rather than by

FOR PORT MORESBY: This is an artist's impression of a new build ing to be built in Port Moresby as a production centre for the Depart ment of Information and Extension Services. The purpose of the build ing is to supply the P-NG Adminis tration's requirements for instruc tional and educational films, record ings, graphic displays, posters, texts, etc., in any of the numerous languages of the area. A P-NG firm, Territorial Building Construc tions, has been awarded a con tract for £129,345 to erect the building.

the scientific nature of his project, as this is a very human and per sonal story of a young man doing a scientific job in the Australian countryside. One interesting aspect of reading this book now and not at the time it was first published, is to reflect on how Australian country life has changed more in the last 25 years than in the 100 that went before. Illustrated.

Price of the bound edition is 27/6; paper bound it is 16/-.

SUCH IS LIFE by Tom Collins was first published by the Sydney Bulletin in 1903 but was not success ful; an abridged edition was pub lished in London in 1937; but it did not come into its own until repub lished, in its original version, by Angus and Robertson Ltd., in Aus tralia, in 1944. The book purported to be from the diary of a mythical Tom Collins but was written, about 1897, by Joseph Furphy, whose more usual occupation was bullock-driver.

Furphy was typical of the Bulletin era. when men had not yet sold their souls to canned entertainment. Al though most of them engaged in manual labour of some sort, their minds frequently were given to lite rary aspirations. Furphy’s book is regarded as a “great slab of Austra lian earth” capturing as few others ever did, the true spirit of the period.

Bound edition is 25/-; paper edi tion, 16/-.

POEMS by Kenneth Slessor. The author of this collection is still very much of the contemporary scene— journalist, editor, leader-writer, war correspondent. He is also regarded as perhaps Australia’s most gifted living poet. All moods, all things and the entire world form the back ground for his verse, which ranges from the serious to the flippant. He probably had newspaper barons and their products in mind when he wrote this one (called Cannibal Street ): “Buy, who’ll buy,” the pedlar sings, “Bones of beggars, loins of kings, Ribs of murder, haunch of hate, And Beauty’s head on a butcher’s plate.”

“Buy, who’ll buy,” the pedlar begs, “Angel wings and lady-legs, Tender bits and dainty parts— Buy, who’ll buy my skewered hearts?”

Buy, who’ll buy? The cleavers fall, The dead men creak, the live men call, And I (God save me) bargained there, Paid my pennies and ate my share. (Our copies from Angus and Robertson Ltd., Sydney.)