Page images
PDF
EPUB

interesting biographical books, Samuel Spewack's "Presenting-Morris Gest", and Rabbi Stephen Wise's "My Thirty Years' Battle". "Ulysses Returns" by Roselle Mercier Montgomery is a collection of verses by a balladist well known to newspaper and magazine readers.

In the Thirties, too, are the publication offices of THE BOOKMAN, modest cubbyholes in the firm of George H. Doran Company. Offices and bookrooms are ranged around an airy, open space in a building in the old Murray Hill section of New York. Two works from Sir Philip Gibbs will be contributed to the season's outlay of fine English books: his novel "The Reckless Lady" (reviewed in this number), and his extraordinary postwar volume "Ten Years After". W. Somerset Maugham's novel "The Painted Veil", Michael Arlen's "May Fair" and the new popular edition of "The Green Hat", and Aldous Huxley's "Those Barren Leaves" (also reviewed in this number) make an unusual group of novels from young Englishmen. One of the few real novels of real newspaper life, by a man who should certainly know of what he writes, is Irvin Cobb's "Alias Ben Alibi". Cyril Hume, whose "Wife of the Centaur" was a sensational first novel, gives us "Cruel Fellowship". "Everyman's Life of Jesus" will be published coincidentally with the second volume of Dr. James Moffatt's new translation of the Old Testament. In it he has told one of the greatest of stories simply, yet dramatically. "The Diary of Lord Bertie of Thame 1914-1918" is a revealing book concerning the war, for Lord Bertie was ambassador from Great Britain to France during most of the conflict. It is edited by Lady Algernon Gordon-Lenox. Another piquant and unusual narrative is "The Last

[ocr errors]

of a Race" by Princesse de Montglyon.

Farther downtown, this time in Greenwich Village, I found the comparatively new firm of Albert and Charles Boni, established over bright teashops and antique dealers but nevertheless neat, trim, and businesslike. They are rejoicing in the phenomenal success of Will Rogers's "Illiterate Digest". A first novel for which they give preliminary cheers is "Schooling" by Paul Selver, the story, apparently, of a young schoolmaster. Laurence Housman's "Trimblerigg" is an audacious and thinly veiled portrait of a famous Englishman. There is the luxurious reprint of the famous "Yellow Book" on this list, also "The Mental Agility Book" by Ralph Albertson, an encyclopædia of educational puzzles containing over two thousand games of the wits.

On lower Fifth Avenue, not so many blocks distant from Washington Square, is the Macmillan building, with its staid bookshop, its dignified waiting room. On this fiction list is a new collection of short stories by James Lane Allen, the author of “The Choir Invisible". There are fresh products, too, from May Sinclair and Alice Brown, two stories by Eden Phillpotts, two books by the author of "Maria Chapdelaine", and a new novel "Rosalie" by Charles Major, author of "Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall". (From all accounts he died in 1913; this is apparently a posthumous story.)

The first volume of Sir Sidney Lee's biography of Edward VII is ready. It deals presumably with his life and experiences as Prince of Wales. H. G. Wells sets forth more of his opinions in "A Year of Prophesying". of poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson opens with an anti-prohibition piece from which the book takes its

A book

title, "Dionysus in Doubt". Two volumes of collected poetry, James Stephens's and Vachel Lindsay's, will make valuable library additions, particularly the latter, with the author's own odd illustrations. "Playwrights of the New American Theatre" should prove interesting, coming as it does from Thomas H. Dickinson, and representing therefore somewhat middle ground in viewpoint. Two travel books of note, Stefansson's "The Adventure of Wrangel Island" and Stella Benson's "The Little World", are only a few titles of this always huge list.

Appropriately near Macmillan's and other houses dealing in textbooks, is the home of Longmans, Green and Company. This venerable establishment has just celebrated the two hundredth anniversary of its founding in London. I was fascinated to learn that the first edition of "Robinson Crusoe" (1719) was issued by the publisher from whose business evolved the present firm. Compared to Longmans, Green, the Thomas Y. Crowell Company is a mere stripling, for it has not yet quite reached the century mark. Recently the Crowells moved from their old quarters on West Broadway up to Twenty Seventh Street and Fourth Avenue, so as to be nearer the rest of the fraternity. This firm publishes, in addition to fiction and general books, numerous reference works, among them "Roget's Thesaurus", whose popularity has been greatly increased by the cross word epidemic.

On West Sixteenth Street, in a fine old brownstone house, furnished quietly within, Robert M. McBride and Company greet the approaching scribe. Three of their novels look particularly interesting: Elmer Davis's "The Keys of the City", which is said to be more

romantic and less farcical than his other books; "Jonah" by Robert Nathan, one of the best of our young novelists; and "The Ninth of November" by a well known German, Bernhard Kellermann, which aims to show the breaking up of Germany as a result of the war. Since there is very little material to be found on shelves concerning Manchuria, Adachi Kinnosuke's book on that subject should prove useful. McBride's are adding several informal travel books to a list which is becoming their specialty. One of these, "Two Vagabonds in the Balkans" by Jan and Cora Gordon, sounds as if it would be a good companion to their "Two Vagabonds in Spain", which I remember as an excellent "escape" book.

Opposite the Washington Irving High School and Washington Irving's old house, B. W. Huebsch have taken up new quarters. "The Freeman Book", cream of the contents of the lamented weekly, which contained some of the best critical writing ever done in America, is an important book if you are interested in good criticism. "The Long Green Gaze" by Vincent Fuller, announced as "a cross word puzzle mystery novel", is a novelty which will probably amuse many, and Louis Levine's "The Women's Garment Workers" is said to be authoritative as a textbook on trade unionism.

In midtown, on Fortieth Street not far from the New York Public Library, is the building which lodges the Hearst magazine and publishing concerns. Luxurious offices, you may be sure. Here it is that many best sellers may be encountered in the halls. The spring list of the Cosmopolitan Book Corporation is small, and it contains some interesting items. Most of their authors are well known before Mr. Hearst adopts them, or rather, perhaps,

on the way to becoming best sellers. In the case of Harry Hervey, however, although he has done remarkably well with his novels and a travel book, "Where Strange Gods Call", his "Ethan Quest" makes no concessions to popularity and is said to be a combination of romance and realism, with an ending far from happy. Adela Rogers St. Johns, the lovely lady who writes about the movies, puts forth her first novel, "The Skyrocket". Bill Johnston, the jovial and humorous gentleman of the New York "World", writes knowingly of "These Women", and an Edison Marshall novel, "The Sleeper", makes a bid for best seller fame.

Above Fortieth Street, in what might almost be called the Main Street of the literary world, since it contains many of the clubs and most of the gossip of New York, are several of the most conservative and largest of our publishing houses. In the same building as Condé Nast and his decorative magazines is Henry Holt and Company. Here, one sees Henry Holt himself, tall, stately, white haired, and his sons, obviously like their father. By them will be published Mrs. Dawson Scott's "The Turn of a Day", a story in which all happenings take place within twenty four hours. After many announcements, the first volume of "Annette and Sylvie", translated from Romain Rolland's French by Ben Ray Redman, will appear. The promise of a new novel by Ralph Straus, to which a title has not yet been given, will please those who still find "The Unseemly Adventure" well worth joyful

remembrance. It is interesting to know that the respect for Burton E. Stevenson as anthologist is so great that not one of the 428 authors represented by 1,374 poems in his "Home Book of Modern Verse" charged him for the use of material. This book should be a good companion volume for "The Home Book of Verse".

On the next street- and one may reach it by going through an areaway

is Putnam's bookstore, and above it the offices of the publishers of innumerable outline books. With Robert Keable's arrival in this country, they announce his new story, fruit of travels in the South Seas, called "Numerous Treasure", which oddly enough is the name of its heroine. Meade Minnigerode's "Lives and Times", intimate biographies which stress the atmosphere of periods perhaps more than the characters considered, deals with Theodosia Burr, Citizen Genêt, William Eaton, and Stephen Jumel. James J. Corbett's "The Roar of the Crowd" (reviewed in this issue) adds to fighting literature. Why the brittle minded critic of the New York "Sun" should write a life of Irving Berlin, I don't quite know; but it can be certain that Alexander Woollcott will give a touch of quaintness and impudence to anything he undertakes. Three other personal narratives are found on the Putnam list: "My Jungle", completed by William Beebe as he leaves for the Sargasso Sea, "The School for Ambassadors" by M. Jules Jusserand, and "Adventures in Criticism" by by A. Quiller-Couch. —J. F.

(To be concluded in April)

FOREIGN NOTES AND COMMENT

Retrospect

N September, 1906, I found myself IN in a proverbial predicament: I was short of legal tender. Being then a graduate student at Columbia, I was forced to do something about it. In the language of Edmond About, I said to myself, for when I talk to myself I always use what grammarians term "the polite form of address": "Comment vous vous y prendrez?" Suddenly my skiff came in: I secured the position of teacher of French and German in a boys' school directly across the Hudson from Morningside Heights.

In the French course we took up Edmond About and read "Le Roi des Montagnes". It is a glorious account of cultured banditry in Greece, quite inoffensive to anyone unless it be a Greek of that time who was so literal minded that he was unable to penetrate the subtle difference between a good joke and a bad gibe. The boys liked the tale. And they all passed the Board Examinations. Consequently, I for one wish to express my appreciation to the publishers for bringing out this story in the esteemed translation of Miss Crewe-Jones. "The King of the Mountains" is as good a tale of its kind as I ever read. Old Hadji Stavros, leader of the bandits, is a real creation, while his confederates have what it is so difficult to give en masse each his own personality. The Englishmen, particularly the Englishwomen, they hold up are choice exemplars of those tourists who go abroad because they are not satisfied with the run of things at home but who, once abroad, stifle the foreigners with praise

of the land that gave them birth. that is always overlooked in connecMoreover, this novel brings out a fact tion with highway robbery: we condemn without reserve the practice, which is natural, but fail to admire the skill that wallet lifting exacts of those who engage in it. To be even a supernumerary in the employ of a Hadji Stavros requires an extraordinarily nimble brain. Such devils should be

given their due, especially when manip

ulated with the adroitness that was part and parcel of Edmond About.

This novel is found in the Library of West Virginia University in no fewer than nine different editions. On the library card of one of these editions Library shall be opened at least once a (1891) there are these words: "The week during the college year, at such time as may suit the convenience of the Librarian." The Library of the same institution is now open every day in the week including four hours on Sunlishers are reaching back and bringing day. No wonder that American pubout the masterpieces d'antan.

On the other hand, Zamiatin's "We" is published in this country though it has not yet seen the light that comes Russia. In this there is a measure of from the printing press in its native eminent propriety, for the book — it is hard to designate it more closely since nothing like it was ever seen in the United States before depicts life as it is to be in a thousand years from now. Well, if life is to be like this in 2025, I am personally grateful for the assurance that man lives but three score years and ten. I want none of this machine made love, life, birth and death, though

I am bound to say that for once the publisher's announcement is intelligent. That bit of selling talk uses the adjectives "amusing", "satirical", "bold", "powerful", "modern", and "cubist", in describing the book, and the terms are justified. This book should be read, if for no other reason, merely to see the extremes to which the human mind may go. But I am convinced that the publishers brought it out in order to show what Soviet Russia may be.

Of a

There are no name characters in it, and not many numbered ones. Its personages are so many prongs on the ratchet which, in revolving, sends this man up and that one down. There are forty chapters (they are termed "records"). I believe that Record XII is the best: it is on the delimitation of the infinite, angels and poetry. But however this may be, there are two similes in the book which I cordially recommend to Mr. Wilstach. certain young woman it is said that her normally alluring mouth, or lips, looked, in their pout, "like a crescent with the horns down". And of a certain man it is said that "his Adam's apple stuck out like a broken spring against the upholstery of a worn divan". Anyone who may wish to know why the Bolsheviks have forbidden the book up there should read Record XX on State rights and duties.

[blocks in formation]

pass up his solid academic record and remark that he is a man of notable boldness in that he essays to fix forever the value of creations that are not his. As it is we drop the issue, with this remark: There are two big differences between Lalou's method of procedure and that of a typical German historian of literature. The German would include his own novels in his history and would pass judgment on them; and the German would never try to explain his country's literature as a detached product. On the contrary, any German literary historian feels, indeed knows, that literature, and particularly "contemporary" literature, can neither be explained nor vindicated without a running comment on and appraisal of these additional factors in the æsthetic life of a nation: the press, science, politics, religion, history, criticism, art in all its forms-painting, music, sculpture, stage- and foreign influences. When M. Lalou takes this point of view and spends another fifteen years on his history, we shall be in a position to rank it high. At present, the most that can be said for it is that it would make an excellent manual for such college students as wished to orient themselves in the field.

For

M.

George Heyer has rendered, admirably though freely, François Villon's chefs-d'œuvre into English verse. this he is to be warmly thanked. Villon (1431-1484) did not write much; but he wrote that poem, or ballad, that closes with the question, Ou sont les neiges d'antan? probably the greatest verses ever written in French. Consequently, any individual who brings his works closer to the hearts of the English speaking people renders a magnanimous and magnificent service. The booklet is beautifully made, contains the original French on one page and the somewhat "original" English

« PreviousContinue »