Library Review

BRIDIE, JAMES

1951 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012158

We all seem to be a good deal worried about what to do with our poets. How are they to earn a living Is poetry a wholetime job And, on an all together higher level, what ought to be their environment and what influences should be allowed to play upon them

LOWNDES, WILLIAM

1951 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012159

The Public Library was a grim, unattractivelooking building. Smokeblackened and austere, it stood at the junction of two busy thoroughfares, with no outward manifestation of its identity apart from the almost obscured and somehow distasteful words Free Library, carved in stone over its portals. It was a repulsive structure, and for a moment or two I was conscious of the forbidding atmosphere which it seemed to radiate. But the town, which I was visiting for business reasons, offered few other attractions. I had dealt halfheartedly with an unimaginative meal, and had a little time to spare. A postprandial browse among books seemed to be the only consolation available. Shaking off a feeling of repugnance, I stepped through the swing doors into the dim fastnesses of the interior.

OWEN, EDITH M.; HAVARDWILLIAMS, P.

1951 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012160

The purpose of the present article is to ask questions, rather than to answer them. The recent discussions in the University and Research Section of the Library Association have brought the question of professional qualifications for university librarians once more to the fore but they have included little consideration of the more fundamental aspects of the problem. While the majority would agree that professional qualifications are essential, few university librarians appear to be satisfied with the examination syllabuses now in operation.

SNAITH, CLIFFORD

1951 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012161

I don't claim to know anything about art, said Mr. Cox, putting his tankard down with some asperity and gazing askance at his outspread Lilliput but I think these are a bit off. This crushing judgement referred to two nudesreproductions of works by celebrated artists. A bit off was, of course, a delicate euphemism for a bit 'ot. Our art critics are apt to be finicky in their terminology.

CORRESPONDENT, A

1951 Library Review

doi: 10.1108/eb012162

A correspondent writesThe interesting first stave of the Clyde River Anthology in the Library Review reminds one that there are several librarian bards and, occasionally, the library itself has been a subject for the poet. This is natural enough association with books begets books and, in prose, it is possible that, many as are the library journals now published, they are not spacious enough to hold all the writings of librarians. But poets are another matter they are fewer they work in a field which only a few cultivate with any ardour or seriousness. We have them, nevertheless. You have already at times drawn some attention to them, but I cannot remember any sufficient notice of some of them. For example, James Ormerod, who passed from us only a year or so ago, when he was 44 published a collection, Tristram's Tomb Elkin Mathews, containing poems written over the years from 1903. It is a good volume, traditional in form, the themes, Caedmon, Cuchulain, the other Arthurian legend suggested by the title and some more than ordinary lyrics and sonnets. Twenty years later, in 1948, he published a slim volume of three plays, two of them, a somewhat violent classical story, Periander and Cormac, and a northern legend, Steengard, are in firm and effective blank verse, the third and title story being the Burmese Wife, a sort of Madame Butterfly tragedy in prose Mitre Press. They read well their theatre possibilities I am unable to assess.