Platform library

A fine haul at the Raynes Park platform library today, in the margins of an expedition to be noticed in due course.

Clockwise from top right, we start with a reading copy of 'Anna Karenina', in a translation by the wife of the chap noticed at reference 1. My parents' copy was retired some time ago but I have been reminded by Clarissa of the merits of books with pages made of paper.

Next up, a novel by Pearl S. Buck, a name I remember because I inherited a book of hers called 'Good Earth' from my parents. I think I read it once, although I cannot now remember what it was about and I am fairly sure I have not owned if for a good few years now.

Refreshing my memory at reference 2, I learn that she had a complicated life, a fair bit of it in China and produced a large number of novels, with the 'Good Earth' being an early one, one which may have got her the Nobel Prize. Maybe I will now read this novel.

Next up, four romances from Elinor Glyn, a rather battered book from George Newnes of Southampton Street, near the Strand, possibly published in 1916. One of these M&B type romances, 'Three Weeks', I already own, a chance purchase from a table outside the lifeboat station at Bembridge, on the Isle of Wight, recently mentioned at reference 5. On the strength of which I bought a biography of the lady by one Joan Hardwick, it turning out that she was rather a strange bird. Good at working her way , not to say worming her way, into the lives of her potential subjects. Both these books still have a prominent place in the study in which I type, although neither has been opened for some years now. The fourth of the present romances is printed in two column format, perhaps lifted on the cheap from the type set up for a magazine, 1916 being well before the electronic era. Not something I have seen in a book before.

I had been meaning to notice Glyn for some time, but never got beyond a glancing mention at reference 3 and an entirely casual mention at reference 4. Maybe I am prompted to do better.

While last and not least we have a book of more or less salacious sketches of statues - high end seaside poster humour - the sort of thing which some middle aged men of my parents' generation used to titter over - by one George Molnar, not to be confused with the chap at reference 6. Probably not the chap at reference 7 either. But the book is well known to Bing and is available from places like eBay for a tenner or so. Published, as it happens, in 1954 by Phoenix House Ltd, of William IV street. The place that houses the wine house Terroirs, often mentioned in these pages.

Reference 8 looks more promising, but more digging is indicated.

PS 1: dead end. It seems that the statue Molnar was a Catholic who emigrated from Nagyvárad in Hungary to Australia in 1939. While the philosopher Molnar was the son of one Imre (Hungarian for Jim) Molnar who abandoned his middle class, Jewish family in Budapest for a new life with his secretary in Australia in 1939. The son he left behind somehow survived the war and made it to Australia in 1951, where he became the philosopher. I can only suppose that Molnar is a fairly common name among Hungarians.

PS 2: the following morning, still nibbling away. Nagyvárad appears to be the name of a tube station in Budapest, a little way out of the centre, say Clapham in London speak. The name of various streets in other places in Hungary. The former name of a city now called Oradea, in Romania, just over the border from (eastern) Hungary. In the past a very mixed city, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, but which wound up in Romania after the second world war. A bit like the Breslau I notice from time to time, mosst recently at reference 11. Maybe it was all the chopping and changing which propelled the statue Molnar to Australia. Maybe all the street names are there to remind Hungarians of how it ought to be.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/01/midwife.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_S._Buck.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/08/guelph.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-case-of-literary-genre.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/up-lifeboat.html.

Reference 6: https://www.georgemolnar.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Molnar_(philosopher).

Reference 8: https://www.original-political-cartoon.com/cartoon-gallery/artists/molnar-george-1910-1998/.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Molnar. A rather basic entry.

Reference 10: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradea.

Reference 11: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/breslau-drain-covers.html.