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Publication date: 1 May 1934

CAMPBELL NAIRNE

“I have come to the conclusion,” a Scottish novelist told me recently, “that no novel is worth reading.” His wife heartily agreed with him. She was quite definite in her…

30

Abstract

“I have come to the conclusion,” a Scottish novelist told me recently, “that no novel is worth reading.” His wife heartily agreed with him. She was quite definite in her preference for a good biography.

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Library Review, vol. 4 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Publication date: 1 May 1956

CAMPBELL NAIRNE

The office of the literary paper that gave me my first job in London was hidden away in a Victorian building near Covent Garden market. You mounted a flight of Dickensian stairs…

16

Abstract

The office of the literary paper that gave me my first job in London was hidden away in a Victorian building near Covent Garden market. You mounted a flight of Dickensian stairs and off a dark little landing were three or four small rooms. I occupied a corner of one of them, close to a black fireplace from which smoke eddied on stormy days. The single window faced east, and the sun never came through its dusty panes, even at the height of summer. In my recollections of that room the season is always winter, and the time most often late afternoon, with a fire glowing in the ugly barred grate. Such offices still exist no doubt, but there cannot be many of them left. Literary journalists to‐day are likely to work in centrally heated rooms with walls that are all window. They do not climb stairs; they use “elevators.” Progress, progress; yet I sometimes wonder if they write any better than we did in the thirties, which now seem to belong to a vanished epoch. Certainly they fill far fewer columns.

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Library Review, vol. 15 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Publication date: 1 March 1963

CAMPBELL NAIRNE

To a literary lounger the most striking feature of the London scene at present is the ubiquity of paperbacks. They are displayed on revolving stands, like postcards; they litter…

11

Abstract

To a literary lounger the most striking feature of the London scene at present is the ubiquity of paperbacks. They are displayed on revolving stands, like postcards; they litter the counters of multiple stores; they tumble from automatic machines; they form gaudy pyramids in bookshop windows; they even jostle hard‐cover remainders in the bargain boxes.

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Library Review, vol. 19 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Article
Publication date: 1 August 1954

CAMPBELL NAIRNE

In some obscure corner of the offices of George Newnes, publishers of such thriving periodicals as Woman's Own and Tit‐Bits, the dust that settled four years ago on the files of…

35

Abstract

In some obscure corner of the offices of George Newnes, publishers of such thriving periodicals as Woman's Own and Tit‐Bits, the dust that settled four years ago on the files of the Strand must now be settling on the long rows of dark‐green volumes that preserve the pages of John o' London's Weekly. Within a twelvemonth—for the public memory is short—it will be as much a ghost as T.P.s, Cassell's, Everyman, and many other literary weeklies that have gone before it into oblivion.

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Library Review, vol. 14 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Article
Publication date: 1 February 1955

CAMPBELL NAIRNE

There are occasions, and they do not grow less frequent as titles multiply and turnover soars to new heights, when I wonder if what it pleases some of us to call the world of…

11

Abstract

There are occasions, and they do not grow less frequent as titles multiply and turnover soars to new heights, when I wonder if what it pleases some of us to call the world of books is more than just a parish, and a London parish at that.

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Library Review, vol. 15 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Publication date: 1 August 1954

Our Editorial in the Autumn number in which certain aspects of library educational policy were discussed, was based, as was indicated, on a Memorandum prepared by the…

30

Abstract

Our Editorial in the Autumn number in which certain aspects of library educational policy were discussed, was based, as was indicated, on a Memorandum prepared by the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee which received some notice in the press. The Memorandum appeared quite portentous, but now we are informed on authority that “the ‘Parliamentary and Scientific Committee’ is a quite unofficial body—a mixed group of Parliamentarians and scientists, who try, quite usefully, to promote the interests of science. There is, therefore, no question of Government ‘accepting’ their recommendations. The Committee does not report to the Government, but to the world at large. But it is unlikely that any Government would think of setting up 20 degree‐granting technical colleges. It is also true that the Government has announced its intention to make further grants to a considerable number of Universities and also to some technical colleges, in order to encourage the development of technical education”.

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Library Review, vol. 14 no. 8
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Article
Publication date: 1 April 1933

R.D. HILTON SMITH

IN his Books: their place in a democracy, which ought in course of time to become a kind of bible to all those concerned with the production and distribution of books and which…

36

Abstract

IN his Books: their place in a democracy, which ought in course of time to become a kind of bible to all those concerned with the production and distribution of books and which should give any young librarian a clearer conception of his job than a dozen formal textbooks, Charles L. Duffus usefully defines public libraries under two heads: the first, a mechanism for buying and circulating books; the second, a means of bringing individuals into touch with the good things which good books contain. To‐day, when a variety of causes has brought about a demand upon library resources which is at once the delight and despair of administrators, libraries are in the paradoxical condition that the more success they achieve as mechanisms for mass‐circulation, the less chance have they of performing their real task of getting the “right book to the right reader.” The proper relationship between these two functions of a library has been turned topsy‐turvy by overwhelming public pressure, and organizations whose main duty it is to establish a contact between live book and inevitable reader are in danger of becoming institutions for the mere dissemination of bundles of paper and print.

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Library Review, vol. 4 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Article
Publication date: 1 May 1934

J.A. RUSSELL

OUT of the chaos of war and the further burdens immediately “peace broke out” came at least one glorious birth—the German novel. 1870—the German nation; 1919—the German novel……

30

Abstract

OUT of the chaos of war and the further burdens immediately “peace broke out” came at least one glorious birth—the German novel. 1870—the German nation; 1919—the German novel…. Superficially, the antithesis is not without truth; at no time could it be said that pre‐war Germany kept pace with its Gallic and English neighbours in achieving great masterpieces of fiction: the pre‐war German novel, indeed, was popularly about as non‐existent as drama in Scotland or poetry in France. Nor, where it did exist, was its form other than merely plastic,—the conventional “novel of manners,” for instance, if it was really desired at all, seemed continually to be eluding Germany. Pre‐war novel writing Germany, in a word, was a complete paradox—Gilbertian and Chestertonian at the same time; for the very theories which might have been requisitioned to account for this strange phenomenon seem themselves of an almost contradictory nature.

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Library Review, vol. 4 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Article
Publication date: 1 May 1956

IVOR BROWN

Richard Church in the Spring (1955) Number of LIBRARY REVIEW, wrote “It is safer and cheaper to publish large numbers of a few books rather than small impressions of a lot of…

24

Abstract

Richard Church in the Spring (1955) Number of LIBRARY REVIEW, wrote “It is safer and cheaper to publish large numbers of a few books rather than small impressions of a lot of titles.” That is increasingly true of almost all commerce to‐day. Salesmanship, to be economic, must be concentrated. British Railways, for example, clip their small services in out‐of‐the‐way localities in a desperate effort to avoid further losses. This may be most inconvenient to the small‐town folk. But who cares about small‐towners? Or, rather, who can care even if they would? The “little man” is only a valuable market when he is one of a large mass of “little men.” I do not accuse the British Railways Executive of callousness; it is driven by the trend of the time. The Mass, the Great Majority of consumers, dictate solvency: the few and the lonely must muck along as best they can.

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Library Review, vol. 15 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Publication date: 1 May 1956

The suggestion that technical college libraries should be strengthened in order to meet the increased demands of technological education has been increasingly under discussion…

12

Abstract

The suggestion that technical college libraries should be strengthened in order to meet the increased demands of technological education has been increasingly under discussion. Now, with a view to helping to clarify opinion on the subject, we have arranged this symposium in which the proposal is discussed by a number of contributors, and from various angles. It will be agreed that the subject is one of considerable professional and technical importance. Librarians and other readers who have views to express are invited to contribute to the discussion which we hope to continue in our next number.

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Library Review, vol. 15 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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