Press Revival

When United Feature Syndicate bought North and South American serial rights to Charles Dickens' The Life of Our Lord (TIME, March 12), many a newsman thought it had purchased a dead horse. But the pious story which Dickens wrote for his children proved to be an eminent success. It increased the circulation of newspapers using it by an aggregate 1,000,000. an average of 10% per paper. Manager Monte Bourjaily of United Feature hailed it as "the greatest circulation builder of all time," better even than the War photographs lately in vogue (TIME, Feb. 26).

As The Life of Our Lord entered its second run last week, United Feature had sold the work to more than 300 newspapers and hoped for 200 more. Calling The Life of Our Lord "the literary find of a century," Hearst papers in New York, Baltimore, Detroit, San Francisco & Boston launched it last Sunday in the first of three four-page, full-color supplements. And on the heels of this journalistic venture in piety followed others which led churchmen to wonder if the U. S. was entering a great religious revival.

King Features announced a 4O-installment version of The Short Bible, abbreviated, rearranged and done into modern English by Professors Edgar J. Goodspeed and J. M. P. Smith of the University of Chicago (TIME, Oct. 16).

United Feature released the first of 21 installments of Statesmanship and Religion, by Secretary of Agriculture Henry Agard Wallace, which is to be published next May in book form by Round Table Press.

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