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Some charming verses followed, concluding with this assurance, ‘Now, a’ that I desire or seek, Is just her company a week, To keep my spirits cheery: ‘Twad mak’ me happy, I declare, To corlie wi’ a lady fair, At e’en when I am weary.’ No librarian, then or now, could surely resist such an overture. ‘a book of book lists : a bibliophile’s compendium’ has emerged from the British Library since our last issue. At only 176pp, the author, Alex Johnson, has had to think carefully about the direction of travel. A compass might have been handy for it all seems a bit wacky. Books in space, books banned at Guantánamo, books most often abandoned in hotels are one thing but a Future Library, 100 books to be published in the year 2114, is hard to get one’s head round and harder still to collect. ‘The Making of The Wind in the Willows ’ just out from the Bodleian Library (to whom Grahame left his copyrights when he died in 1932) looks an easier read. Apparently, the word ‘willows’ appears nowhere in the book. in the same number of the TLS mentioned earlier (6017) is a letter from R.M. Healey of Royston, Herts, stating that the first English translation of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger was not published in 1921, as previously believed, but in 1899 by Mary Chavelita Dunne writing under the alias of George Egerton. The writer concludes, ‘I know this because my own copy of this book is inscribed by the translator.’ Now there’s a ‘point’ if ever there was one. eric korn anecdote coming up. Our correspondent from LA re- lates how she and her husband Bill were in a cab going to a book fair in New York sometime in the 1980s. With them were Roddy Brinckman of Monk Bretton Books and Roddy’s then wife Sheira who, by virtue of her birth and marriage, had superimposed a Ladyship on an Honship and as a result was sometimes touched by delusions of imperium. As the cab was waiting for the lights to change, Victoria saw Eric Korn walk past. ‘Look,’ she exclaimed, ‘there’s Eric, you know what, I
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