Those two eccentric ladies of west Cork who put hunting on the literary map with their Irish R.M. stories, Edith Somerville and Violet Ross, are to be republished for the first time by an Irish publisher. A & A Farmar will be bringing out new editions of The Real Charlotte and The Big House of Inver, with introductions by academic Gifford Lewis, at the end of this month.
"When we were going through the text of The Real Charlotte, we discovered that one of the minor characters - who appears sailing up and down the lake in chapter three - reappeared on the lake in chapter nine with a different name," says Tony Farmar, with a hint of glee in his voice.
"We went back to the original manuscript in Trinity to check it, and the mistake was clearly there. Somerville and Ross wrote the book together over a few years, so one of them must have forgotten what name the other had given to this character and, amazingly, no editor ever seems to have picked it up."
A & A Farmar has left the error in to entertain a new generation of readers. So, look out for your man in the sail-boat in chapters three and nine.
The remarkable Misha Glenny whose new book on the Balkans is reviewed on these pages this week will be in Dublin next week, Sadbh hears. Glenny, born in 1959, has lived and worked all over the Balkans - including a stint as the BBC World Service's central Europe correspondent - which has provided the source material for his acclaimed books.
Author of The Fall of Yugoslavia and The Rebirth of History, Glenny will be here to read from and discuss his latest work, The Balkans 1804-1999. It's a project he's glad to have finally delivered: now he can spend more time with his three children whose company he missed as he beavered away on the Balkans.
Waterstone's of Dawson Street, where he will be at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday, seems to be replacing the pub as the late 20th-century venue for literary events, although presumably the discussion will continue elsewhere afterwards.
The Poetry Book Society has announced the shortlist for the 1999 T. S. Eliot Prize for the best book of poems published this year. Eliot, whose royalties from Cats kept his publisher, Faber and Faber, afloat for many a year, would be pleased to see three of the 10 candidates are from the Faber list - Irish poet Tom Paulin with his book The Wind Dog, as well as Hugo Williams, and Michael Hofmann.
There are two other Irish poets on the list: Bernard O'Donoghue for Here Nor There and Paul Durcan for Greetings to our Friends in Brazil. Eliot's legendary widow, the redoubtable Valerie, will present the £5,000 prize on January 17th in the British Library.
This month Belfast-based publisher Appletree Press is celebrating its quarter century with a clever little marketing wheeze. It is republishing Faces of the Past, an illustration of local life between 1880 and 1914, which drew on the work of contemporary photographers and writers.
The book, the first one Appletree ever published, will be sold at its original 1974 price of £3.95. Sadbh wonders if you turn up at a bookshop with 1970s notes, would booksellers accept it as legal currency. If anyone tries, let her know.
Across the uisce, big guns publisher Weidenfeld & Nicolson has just celebrated 50 years in the business. To mark it, it has brought out a showcase anthology of its writers: Fifty Years of Weidenfeld & Nicolson Publishing, edited by John Curtis.
In 1959, W & F was the first British publisher to take Nabokov's Lolita, which rewarded it by becoming its first major bestseller; in 1963, Margaret Drabble's A Summer Bird-Cage was found lurking in the slush pile. Among the Irish writers featured in the anthology are Christopher Nolan, Edna O'Brien, and Cyril Connolly.
Just as the book trade recovers from the Frankfurt Bookfair, the world's largest book scrum, its trans-Atlantic competitor, Book Expo America, looms into view. From June 2nd to 4th next year, Chicago will host what the advance publicity describes as the event serving the largest book market in the world.
Expected are legions of folk associated with publishing and book-selling: 21,114 "industry professionals" attended this year's Expo. Those planning on travelling to Chicago next summer would be advised to pack dancing shoes and a box of Gitanes - the brochure cover features one of Toulouse Lautrec's can-can dancing girls, high-kicking on a book-strew floor.