ROSALIE DAVIS was just one of a thousand girls working in Simpson's Big Store. Pretty, neat, well dressed and likeable-but Rosalie, very white and slim and innocent, lifted herself out of a drab existence into the golden land of love and romance of which every girl dreams.

DODD MEAD

DODD MEAD

EARLY JANUARY PUBLICATIONS

ASTROLOGY: Your Place in the Sun
By Evangeline Adams

Author of "The Bowl of Heaven"

A practical handbook on astrology and horoscope reading by the
world famous astrologer whom thousands of people, including
many noted personages, consult yearly. The book presents the
necessary information whereby a person may interpret his own
horoscope. With many charts and diagrams.
$2.50

THE ELLINGTON BRAT
By Berthe K. Mellett

Lively in tempo, with sharp bold characterization. The Ellington Brat is a vivid drama of youth pitted against a social structure older and stronger than itself.

THE LAST
LAST TRAP

By Sinclair Gluck

$2.00

A startling surprise awaits the most experienced reader of detective stories in the final chapters of this novel. $2.00

IF YOU GO TO SOUTH AMERICA

By Harry L. Foster

A Handbook for the Traveler

A chatty informative volume. The only one of its type on South America. Contains many suggestions for the traveler who would sometimes enjoy leaving the beaten track. Maps and illustrations.

THE MYSTERY OF THE DOWNS

By Arthur J. Rees, and J. R. Watson

$3.00

The story of two ex-detectives of Scotland Yard. Doubly thrilling for it contains mystery within mystery.

$2.00

The BEST FRENCH SHORT STORIES of 1927
Edited by R. B. Eaton

The only translation of many of the best French short stories and
a complete Year Book on the progress of short story writing in
France.
$2.50

PICTORIAL GOLF
By H. B. Martin

A pictorial guide in the preparation of which the author has had
the assistance of Walter Hagen. Each one of H. B. Martin's golf
pictures is worth a dozen pages of wordy explanation. All phases
of the game are covered; no problem or situation has been over-
looked.

$2.00

BJUDA STYMNE ASMONS

USE A MASING. DEAS THE
GRUB ALONG AFTER THE
IMPACT MARING sure
THAT THE LEFT OF THE
CLUB THROWS THE BALL
OVER THE STYL

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY, 449 Fourth Avenue, New York 215 Victoria St., Toronto

DODD MEAD

DODD MEAD

POWER is already bookselling history-its steady rise to sales which
are increasing every week, its overwhelming success in Germany,
England and America. THE UGLY DUCHESS, a new historical
romance in the manner of POWER, sold 130,000 copies in Germany.
Just published in England it is already a best-seller and has been
acclaimed a worthy successor to POWER. The advance sale is evidence
of the trade's confidence in this great book. To be published Janu-
ary 3rd. Wire your orders collect. $2.50

On the same date we will publish A FAIRY LEAPT UPON MY KNEE by
Bea Howe a novel in the best tradition of Lolly Willowes, Mr. Fortune's
Maggot, and Lady Into Fox. $2.00

30 Irving Place THE VIKING PRESS New York City

The PUBLISHERS' WEEKLY

THE AMERICAN BOOKTRADE JOURNAL

NEW YORK, DECEMBER 31, 1927

Intrigues at the College Bookshop

T

Professor William S. Knickerbocker

The Department of Literature, University of the South

HE Big Idea came to me first, I think, when I was a callow instructor in English at Dartmouth, and since then I have found it impossible to get inside the heads of college youth without it. The first form of this Big Idea was: "Your education doesn't begin until you take it into your own hands."

Then later, without material modification, it became fixed in a convenient slogan which I still boom away at before every one of my classes: "You take your choice: education as external compulsion-or education as internal propulsion. If you don't get the second you must get the first." And that's

66

alert, a more passionate experience; an imaginative invasion of what else tends swiftly to become mere vegetating.

THE college bookstore is the

this

potential market for books,"
writes one commentator on "Selling
Books in College Towns," the series
of articles by W. E. Pearce which
has been appearing in the Publishers'
Weekly
winter. Professor
Knickerbocker, who is a member of
the Literature Department in the
University of the South and Editor
of the Sewanee Review, now carries
on the discussion of the function of
the college bookstore.

that! What I mean is very simple, but tremendously effective. Now my principal. job is to get as many as possible of this naughty, and frank, and impudent younger generation to read books. For I know that reading books is not a substitute for life. It is life: vivid, compelling, intense. It's sucking the life-blood of a master spirit, and something more. That something more means a more profound, a more

It's easy enough to say seriously to a class: "Read Ludwig's Bismarck," or, "For collateral reading, you are required to read Mencken's Prejudices, second series," or "Those who do not read Lowe's The Road to Xanadu, or Farrington's Main Currents of American Thought, or JeanAudry's The Life and Letters of Joseph Conrad simply can't pass this course." That's easy, I say but fatuous. It requires no imagination, and it spells the death of any effective course. I am one of those who believe that courses in English to say nothing of other courses where a large reading experience is required (for instance, in economics, history, sociology, or philosophy) are doomed to sheer flop if one relies on the principle of exterior compulsion. You can compel a boy or girl to read a certain number of pages, but you can't force him to be interested in them, or to assimilate into the organic texture of his