Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 July 1895 — The Library Corner [ARTICLE]

T he Library Corner

Mme. Couvreur, better known as the clever novelist “Tasma,” has become the Brussels correspondent of the London Times. She has succeeded ber late husband in that office. Catulle Mendes, the French writer, recently fought a duel with a Parsian Journalist and got pinked in the forearm. The cause was an article stating that Mendes was a familiar friend of Oscar Wilde. i George Moore will lay the scene of bis next long novel In a nunnery. The scenario of this story is now complete; its writing will occupy Mr. Moore at least a couple of years. The cehtral Character is to be a prima donna, who, wearied of the garish day, seeks sanctuary in a convent, where, after a while, she takes the veil. The fact that the late Professor J. G. Romanes, who began his scientific career as a dogmatic atheist, ended his life in the communion of the Church of England, was made known at his untimely death. Fragments of a contemplated book explaining and defending this change of view were found among his papers, and have been printed under the title “Thoughts on Religion.” The letters from R. L. Stevenson to Sidney Colvin, written in Somoa, are described by the Athenaeum as “long journal letters, giving an almost daily account of the writer’s life and occupations in bis Island home during the last five years, and taking a place quite apart in his correspondence.” Mr. Colvin has been requested by the family and executors to undertake the ultimate biography of his friend, and asks for help “in the shape of reminiscences or correspondence from those friends of Mr. Stevenson with whom he may not be in private communication.” We find the following amusing paragraph in the Eureka (Gal.) Standard of recent date: “Apropos of man’s fallibility in most things, that excellent weekly journal, the Argonaut, carefully written by trained and Intelligent writers, whose business It is to know everything and write accurately on all subjects, makes the startling assertion In an editorial artlclff, eulogizing Robert Louis Stevenson and his works, that he Is the author of ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.’ Rider Haggard wrote that thrTT-“ ling work of unique fiction, and one would hardly expect a paper of the Arognaut’s literary imputation to appear with such an error in Its brilliant columns.”