Among the Literati

Some weeks ago there appeared in these columns an item conceming the books for the coming Spring on which publishers had based their hopes to meet those printing bills and royalty statements. It was my idea that you might be intrested in following the success or failure of these publications. Since then have learned that many titles should be added to that list of hopefuls and I am setting down some of the most outstanding ot them for your perusal. The books mentioned below are leaders, each will be exteusively advertised, publicized and ballyhooed. Let us wait and see how the indererminable public will greet them?

The big book on the Appleton-Century list is “The World is yours.” This is a story of the Yurs.” This is a story of the Yukon by is a story of the author of the successful “Pageant.” Another A-C book from which much is hoped is the late Robert W.Chambers’ “Secret Service Operator” At Coward, McCann, MacKinla” Kantor’s “Long Remember,” novel due in February, Remember,” novel due in February, will receive the bulk of the advertising budget Vicki Baum’s latest, “Falling Star,” will be used by Doubleday, Doran to regam some of the popularity that German lady has lost,. Over at Dutton’s “More or Less About Myself,” the autobiography of Margot Asquith, will be the leading non fiction title while Anne- Green’s “Fools Rush In” will head the fiction list.

Harcourt, Brce, one of the shrewder firms, will capitalize on the success of Gertrude Stein’s autobiography by trying to put over the difficult earlier Stein book called “The Making of Americans”. I warn you right now that Joyce is as simple as a primer compared to this. J.E.Neale’s “Qtong’s “Village Tale” will also be featured by the same firm. Harper’s are all ready to overwhelm the rabbis of Americawith advance information on Ludwig Lewisohn’s” An Altar in the Field” One of the Harper non-fiction lead ers will be “The American Diplomatic Game” by Drew Pearson who was one of the co-authors of “Washington Merry-Go-Round”. Louis Bromfield will, of course, not be neglected when his “Here Today and Gone Tomorrow” is issued and neither will E. M. Delafield and her “The Provincial Lady in America.”

In staid Boston where Houghton Mifflin publish messages from above and sundry other points, “Private Worlds”, Phyllis Bottome novel will start off with an advertising appropriation of a mere $5,000. Two other novels, “The Gorgcous Hussy,” by Samuel Hopkins Adams,and “David and Destiny,” by lan Hay, will also be treated in the proper H-M manner. Katherine Mayo’s expose of the bonus marchers, called “Soldiers What Next,” will receive special at tention. From Philadelphia, where J. B. Lippincott holds sway, the leading book will be a “Louis XV and His Times” by Pierre Gaxotte Claude Kendall is all excited over a novel by Howard Stepenson, a Toledo book critic, called “Glass” while Mr. Alfred Knopf has hopes that “Trumpeter Sound,” by D. L. Murray, a novel of Victorian Eng land, will find an apprecrative audieuce. The Nobel Prize winner, Thomas Mann, will also be represented on the list with his “Joseph and His Brothers.”

Longmans, Green’s best bet is “Who Rules America” by James McConaughy. This is a non-frction attempt to point out how the invisible rulers of our country rule.