Books: The Editors Like

THE LAST OF BRITAINby Meriol Trevor. (St. Martin’s Press, $3.75.) The decadent remains of Roman Britain collapse before the barbarous Saxons in a sad novel full of amusing talk. An odd pitch, but interesting.

QUEEN OF THE EASTby Alexander Baron. (Ives Washburn, $3,95.) Zenobia of Palmyra was an Oriental queen who gave the Roman Empire a brief and memorable jolt. This novel about her is suitably romantic, but also plausible and backed with solid research.

THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEAREby Hammond Innes. (Knopf, $3.75.) Ripsnorting marine mystery, vaguely recalling the Marie Celeste affair, but more satisfactory since the skulduggery is, after prodigies of exertion, revealed.

THE MIRROR IN THE ROADWAYby Frank O’ Connor. (Knopf, $4.50.) Mr. O’Connor’s deceptively casual comments on a number of novelists gradually reveal his theories about the purpose and practice of novel writing. His ideas are sound, thoughtprovoking, and as always most elegantly expressed.

D. H. LAWRENC9E:Selected Literary Criticism, edited by Anthony Beal. (Viking, $5.00.) Sometimes wise, sometimes absurd, Lawrence as a critic was never dull, nor is it necessary to agree with him to enjoy his exuberant enthusiasms and vituperative enmities.

THE LETTERS OF THOMAS WOLFE,selected and edited by Elizabeth Nowell. (Scribner, $10.00.) A tornado of letters, an earthquake, an inundation. Wolfe wrote about practically everything sooner or later, and while not every word is gold, the nuggets lie thick.

RICHARD THE THIRDby Paul Murray Kendall. (Norton, $5.95.) This thorough, judicious, well-written life of a much maligned monarch does wonders toward elucidating that vast muddle called the Wars of the Roses.

THE EARLY CHURCHILLSby A. L. Rowse. (Harper, $6.50.) Brilliant, greedy, and ruthless, the founders of the Churchill family are hardly a lovable group, but they are highly interesting, and Mr. Rowse describes their world with conviction.

MR. VESSEY OF ENGLAND,edited by Brian Waters. (Putnam, $2.95.) John Henry Vessey visited the UCnited States in 1859 and kept a journal, now published. The book is full of information on farming and transport and the habits of hotel managements, these being Vessey’s particular interests. Pleasant little historical sidelight.

OF CARRIAGES AND KINGSby Frederick John Gorst with Beth Andrews. (Crowell, $4.00.) Reminiscences of a juvenile career as footman to Edwardian royalty. It’s the things he doesn’t appear to know he’s telling that make Mr. Gorst’s book engaging.