Books of the Year
This week the 1940 publishing year draws to an end. It had not been a year replete with great books, but among 10,106 new titles published in the first eleven months was more than one of solid worth. There were 1,646 new novels, 603 new biographies and autobiographies, 284 geography and travel books; 1,434 books of poems, criticism or other belles-lettres. There were 1,570 books on politics, economics or current affairs, 794 juveniles and 3,775 technical and text books. Most notable was the year's flock of topical books, inspired by the war. Led by Rauschning's The Voice of Destruction, they swarmed informatively into the void once filled by pamphleteers.
Lacking a Gone With the Wind, the book trade still had two notable bestsellers, Kenneth Roberts' Oliver Wiswell and Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Besides, a Negro, Richard Wright, wrote a best-seller about a Negro, Native Son. Of first novels, the most promising seemed to be Carson McCullers' The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.
It was a year in which established writers like Lewis, Mann, Gather, Millay, Huxley, Caldwell, Faulkner, Werfel, Farrell, O'Hara continued to pour out their hearts and more especially their words. It was the year in which Thomas Wolfe's last work was published. His book seemed less like the new start he had hoped it was than an effort to clear his desk and brain for that new start.
The biographers and critics had a good year, led in interest by Van Wyck Brooks's New England: Indian Summer and in weight by Newman Ivey White's ten-pound, two-volume Shelley. It was the year of a posthumous volume by Mark Twain. The one volume of great poetry was not a new poet's, but the last work of W. B. Yeats.
Out of the year's heap of good books and bad, some 50 were outstanding. Some of these emerged because they were popular, some because they were soundly researched or written, a few because they may endure. The list.
NOVELS
SAPPHIRA AND THE SLAVE GIRL--Willa Gather--Knopf ($2.50).
MR. SKEFFINGTON -- Elizabeth -- Doubleday, Doran ($2.50).
SERGEANT LAMB'S AMERICA--Robert Graves--Random House ($2.50).
FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS--Irnes/ Hemingway--Scribner--($2.75).
THE BLAZE OF NOON--Rayner Heppenstall--Alliance ($2.50).
How GREEN WAS MY VALLEY--Richard Llewellyn--Macmillan ($2.75).
THE BELOVED RETURNS--Thomas Mann --Knopf ($2.50).
THE HEART Is A LONELY HUNTER--Carson McCullers--Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).
THE POOL OF VISHNU--L. H. Myers--Nelson ($3). VERDUN--Jules, Romains--Knopf ($3).
OLIVER WISWELL--Kennefh Roberts--Doubleday, Doran ($3).
LANDFALL -- Nevil Shute -- Morrow ($2.50).
WORLD'S END--Upton Sinclair--Viking ($3).
RIVER OF EARTH--James Still--Viking ($2.50).
EMBEZZLED HEAVEN--Franz Werfel--Viking ($2.50).
THE PILGRIM HAWK--Glenway Wes-cott--Harper ($1.50).
IN THE MONEY--William Carlos Williams--New Directions ($2.50).
You CAN'T Go HOME AGAIN--Thomas Wolfe--Harper ($3).
NATIVE SON--Richard Wright--Harper ($2.50).
SHORT STORIES
DAGO RED -- John Fante -- Viking ($2.50).
PAL JOEY -- John O'Hara--Duell, Sloan & Pierce ($2).
WHEN THE WHIPPOORWILL -- Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings -- Scribner ($2.50).
CURRENT AFFAIRS
WHY ENGLAND SLEPT--John F. Kennedy--Funk ($2).
THE STRATEGY OF TERROR--Edmond Taylor--Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).
THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION--Hermann Rauschning--Putnam ($2.75).
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?--Harold J. Laski--Viking ($1.75).
EUROPE IN THE SPRING--Clare Boothe --Knopf ($2.50).
THE AMERICAN STAKES--John Chamberlain--Carrick & Evans ($2.75).
BIOGRAPHY, AUTOBIOGRAPHY & LETTERS
TRELAWNY -- Margaret Armstrong --Macmillan ($3).
RICHELIEU--Carl J. Burckhardt--Oxford ($3.75).
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER--Allan Nevins --Scribner (2 vols.; $7.30).
ROMANTIC REBEL, THE LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE SAND--Felizia Seyd--Viking ($3).
SHELLEY -- Newman Ivey White --Knopf (2 vols., $12.50).
CAROLINE OF ENGLAND--Peter Quennell-- Viking ($3.75).
WINSTON CHURCHILL--Rene Kraus--Lippincott ($3).
MARK TWAIN IN ERUPTION--Edited by Bernard DeVoto--Harper ($3.75).
HAPPY DAYS (1880-1892) -- H. L Mencken--Knopf ($2.75).
WARTIME LETTERS OF RAINER MARIA RILKE--Norton ($2.50).
A TREASURY OF THE WORLD'S GREAT LETTERS--Edited by M. Lincoln Schuster--Simon & Schuster ($3.75).
NEITHER PEST NOR PURITAN--E. Berry Wall--Dial Press ($3.50).
As I REMEMBER HIM--THE BIOGRAPHY OF R. S.--Hans Zinsser--Little, Brown ($2.75).
SCIENCE & MEDICINE A SURGEON EXPLAINS TO THE LAYMAN-- M. Benmosche--Simon & Schuster ($3).
LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS--H. Spencer Jones--Macmillan ($3).
FOLKWAYS (Centennial Edition)--William Graham Sumner--Ginn ($4).
MATHEMATICS AND THE IMAGINATION--Edward Kasner & James Newman--Simon & Schuster ($2.75).
HUGH YOUNG: A SURGEON'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY--Harcourt, Brace ($5).
ART
MICHELANGELO--2 vols., Sculpture; Paintings--Phaidon (each $3).
MODERN FRENCH PAINTERS--Reginald H. Wilenski--Reynal & Hitchcock ($6).
Music
GROVE'S DICTIONARY OF Music AND MUSICIANS (Supplementary Volume)--Editor, H. C. Colles--Mocm/V/on ($5).
A SMATTERING OF IGNORANCE--Oscar Levant--Doubleday, Doran ($2).
THE STATE OF Music--Virgil Thomson --Morrow ($2.75).
MISCELLANEOUS
A SOUTHERNER DISCOVERS NEW ENGLAND--Jonathan Daniels--Macmillan ($3).
LOVE IN THE WESTERN WORLD--Denis de Rougemont--Harcourt, Brace ($3).
FIGURES IN A LANDSCAPE--Paul Hor-gan--Harper ($2.50).
AUDUBON'S AMERICA--Edited by Donald Culross Peattie--Houghton MifFlin ($6).
STAGES ON LIFE'S WAY--50ren Kierkegaard--Princeton ($6).
AMERICAN FAITH--Ernest Sutherland Bates--Norton ($3.75).
To THE FINLAND STATION -- Edmund Wilson--Harcourt, Brace ($4).
POETRY
LAST POEMS & PLAYS-- W. B. Yeah--Macmillan ($1.75).
POLITICAL SELF-PORTRAIT--John Wheelwright--firuce Humphries ($2.50).
CRITICISM
How TO READ A BOOK--Mortimer J. Adler--Simon & Schuster ($2.50).
NEW ENGLAND: INDIAN SUMMER--Van Wyck Brooks--Dutton ($3.75).
THE EXPENSE OF GREATNESS--R. P. Blackmur--Arrow Editions ($3).
JUVENILES Ages 3-8
PAT THE BUNNY--Dorothy Kunhardt--Simon & Schuster ($1).
TOPSY TURVY CIRCUS--Georges Duplaix--Harper ($1.50).
HERCULES--Hardie Gramatky--Putnam's ($1.75).
Ages 8 & Older CHILDREN OF THE SEA--Wilfrid S. Bronson--Harcourt, Brace ($2).
BOYS AND GIRLS Quiz BOOK--Will
SMOKY HOUSE--Elizabeth Goudge--Coward-McCann ($2).
ALL AGES
DON'T BLAME ME!--Richard Hughes --Harper ($ 1.50).
ANTHOLOGY OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE --Edited by Edna Johnson & Carrie E. Scott--Houqhton Mifflin ($5).
HORTON HATCHES THE EGG--Dr. Seuss --Random House ($ 1.50).
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