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the mouth of the Loire. The Brieron peasants live by digging and selling peat. Aoustin, the dominant figure in this powerful story, is a dour, inflexible man, unloved and unloving uct of the relentless soil. The misfortunes which overtake him his son's marriage to a girl from hated Brittany, his wife and daughter's deceit owing to their terror of his harshness, the loss of his powerful position as "guard" of the district, and the tragedy of his daughter and her lover - culminate in a climax which for dramatic quality has few equals in modern literature. "La Brière" reminds one irresistibly of Thomas Hardy. The book will be published in England by Thornton Butterworth.

An admirable study of Shakespeare for Swedish readers has been produced by Dr. Brunius, who will be remembered as the author of a useful little book on modern English literature. The 150 pages of his book "William Shakespeare: Liv, Drama, Theater" (Bokforlaget Natur och Kultur: Stockholm) are tastefully illustrated. Dr. Brunius holds the view that Shakespeare deliberately obscured his own personality in his work.

Now that Louis Couperus is dead, Jo van Ammers-Kuller is entitled to be regarded as Holland's most distinguished living novelist. "The House of Joy" was her first novel to be translated. It met with considerable success when published in England recently by Philpot. Her visit recently to New York probably foreshadows the introduction of her work to American readers. The book on which she is now at work is to be a Dutch "Milestones", and tells the story of three Dutch

women in 1830, 1870, and the present day. Mevrouw van Ammers-Kuller is a charming woman who speaks English fluently.

Marjorie Bowen is so justly celebrated for her admirable historical romances and short stories that her keen interest in Holland and the Dutch people is apt to be overlooked. It will, however, find expression in the forthcoming publication of her book on the Netherlands, entitled "The Swimming Lion". The title of course has heraldic significance. "The Swimming Lion" has involved several years of research and should prove a valuable contribution to our knowledge of the country, its history and its people. It contains some exceptionally fine illustrations and will be published simultaneously in England and Holland.

A notable development is the increasing number of new magazines both illustrated and fiction which are now being issued in Germany. Hitherto, the fiction magazine in particular has never been excessively popular outside America and England, and Germany's suddenly awakened interest is rather surprising. When the German does anything, he does it thoroughly, and in respect of both material and production these new publications promise to rival the best English and American magazines.

The Norwegian translation rights of "The Passionate Flight" by Martha Ostenso - which won the $13,500 prize in the recent prize novel competition organized by "Pictorial Review", Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Company, and Famous Players-Lasky have

just been sold for a record sum. Miss Ostenso herself is a Norwegian by birth, but left her native country for America at the age of two. She is using part of her prize money in paying her first visit to England and in going to Norway. "The Passionate Flight" will be published this fall by Dodd, Mead, and by Hodder and Stoughton in England. It has been pronounced by critics who have read it to be as good as "Growth of the Soil". Miss Ostenso is an attractive twenty four year old school teacher from the northwest.

The French market for translated American and English books is moribund, if not actually dead. A firm of international literary agents declare that it is easier to sell a book in Hottentot than in France at the present time. The insularity of the French has never been more unfortunately demonstrated than in their publishers' reluctance and, frequently, blank refusal to consider the publication of the work of English and American authors. They politely but firmly point to the inevitable "better book" by a Frenchman when an English or American book on the same subject is suggested a curious repudiation of the essential cosmopolitanism of literature.

Germany, by way of contrast, has just bought the translation rights of all May Sinclair's novels. The first to be published is "Mr. Waddington of Wyck". Another author whose entire output has been contracted for is Peter B. Kyne this time by Spain.

Arpad Ferenczy, the clever Hungarian who wrote "The Ants of Anthony Thummel", a satire on the present condition of Europe, has now published a book called "Kunala", a collection of Indian tales. Mr. Ferenczy is an ardent misogynist, if we are to credit the main motif of the fifteen tales in this volume. Nevertheless, "Kunala" has what the film critics call "entertainment value".

Another Hungarian author who writes in English is Dr. Geza Roheim, the young anthropologist whose study of "Australian Totemism: A Psychoanalytic Study in Anthropology" is due for publication shortly.

An interesting list could be made of foreign authors who have written in English in preference to their mother tongues. Pride of place must of course be given to Joseph Conrad. Other names which at once suggest themselves include Paul Selver, the Czech author of "Schooling" (published by A. & C. Boni), that satirical novel of English school life, and the translator of the famous Capek plays "R. U. R." and “The World We Live In"; Odette Keun, author of "My Adventures in Bolshevik Russia", an anonymous novel which created a sensation in England, and now "Prince Tariel", a vivid and memorable novel of Georgia; and, of course, that brilliant Armenian, Dikran Kouyoumdjian, better known on both sides of the ocean as Michael Arlen.

MICHAEL JOSEPH

DEAR EDITOR:

IN THE BOOKMAN'S MAIL

MY DSince I live where all good things

from the States come late, I have only now had the opportunity to read Mr. McFee's piquant article in the March BooKMAN anent "The Lady and the Carpet". The remoteness of the date, I hope, will not rule my comments out of court.

I am surprised that a man of Mr. McFee's own cultural attainments can view any attempt to acquire culture, however superficial, as less than laudable. The milieu in which the average life is passed is so preponderantly commercial and acquisitive that any sign of dissatisfaction in that milieu ought to be heralded abroad with joy instead of ridiculed by the superior ones who inhabit a higher plane.

But the main theme really seems to be a disgruntled feeling toward women as a class. That is probably to be accounted for by the age old, instinctive war between the sexes of which we hear less and less in these psychoanalyzed times. However, let me call Mr. McFee's attention to a few masculine types who are always among those present on every ship that sails the seas. Opposites ever prove excellent foil. Possibly with this little reminder he may be able to revise his pronunciamento regarding the worthlessness of the feminine pursuit of culture overseas when he has compared it with the persiflage and dalliance per se which seem to be the chief reason why men travel.

Who has not observed the Adonis-like married man off for a holiday alone, his successful efforts to convince a soulful but guileless young woman that he is a fancy free young bachelor longing to be appropriated, his careful avoidance of all conversation which would incriminate himself with reference to wife and children? Then on the last day but one before landing someone's inconvenient memory wrecks the foundations of the castle built by his suppressions; the end is disillusionment and estrangement, if nothing more.

One's sporting spirit is less outraged only by the spectacle of the insouciant young blood of much means and no scruples whose one ambition is to add to his belt the heart of every personable woman aboard, only to toss aside the cumbersome load for the beautiful houri who waits on the dock. What gnashing of teeth and bitter enmities are left behind him!

Just one more example out of the myriads which might be cited that of the fatuous and luxury loving bachelor no longer young

who never could induce a rich woman to take him seriously, but who still has hopes. It is tragic to see him staying up over-late at night, pathetically determined that even the least comely of the reputed young heiresses shall not escape him. But even these heartlessly and mockingly leave him for younger fortune hunters, and he is obliged to plod the deck alone, wearily trying to puzzle out how he may continue to make ends meet and still live like a king.

Can anyone honestly say that these masculine types are more worthy than the women who frankly and avowedly desire culture and who go after it? Truly yours,

B. B. L.

SIR: In your issue for June "The Lon

doner" quotes a letter of mine to the London "Daily News" regarding Jane Austen's "Sanditon", calls me, among other things, a literary "protectionist", and counsels me to patience.

I am amazed to find this kind of viewpoint not only being exported to America but getting reproduced there as representative of English literary thought. Far from welcoming the resurrection of fourth rate "classical" oddments, the average English author, like the average English reader, most probably deplores such ill considered enterprise, and would be prepared to admit, in his more candid moments at least, the shrewdness of a definition once propounded by your own deep thinker, Mark Twain himself a good, honest, wholesome hater of humbug in general and Jane-Austenism in particular to the effect that “a classic is a book everybody praises and nobody reads".

"The Londoner" further observes that in England every book has the circulation it deserves. The English public had already returned its verdict on "Sanditon" by according the book an extremely cool reception. But that was not enough for the Jane-Austenists. One of them filled an entire literary column of the London "Daily News" with an attempt to flog up interest in this inferior fragment which the public so evidently didn't want, and no doubt several living writers had their hard work crowded out of the public notice in consequence. Hence my protest.

I suggest that it is the Jane-Austenists

who are for "protection", not we, the younger generation of present day authors. All we ask is a fair field and no favor, every book to be judged on its intrinsic merits, a resurrected" 'classical" oddment not to benefit by all the cant-praise that may have been lavished on its author since he or she died. And when "The Londoner" advises me to possess my soul in patience, I can only quote Kipling to him:

The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road

Preaches contentment to that toad.

EAR SIR:

DE

Faithfully yours,

GILBERT COLLINS.

In Mr. J. A. Steuart's recently published work "Robert Louis Stevenson", issued by Messrs. Little, Brown and Co. and reviewed in your January issue, an error occurs on page 275 of the second volume relative to the portrait of R. L. S. by Count Nerli.

The author says: "One such visitor was Signor Nerli, the Italian artist who painted Stevenson's portrait and was himself made the subject of a set of comic verses."

In a footnote he says: "The Nerli portrait came into the possession of Mr. J. R. Tyrell of Sydney who sold it to the late Sir Thomas Anderson Stuart." It

was recently sold at the Stuart sale in
Sydney.
It is now in the National
Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh."

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These extracts from Mr. Steuart's book are incorrect. The Nerli portrait of R. L. S. mentioned above was sold by the artist himself to Messrs. Angus and Robertson of Sydney some 25 years ago; it then passed into the possession of Prof. Sir Thomas Anderson Stuart of the Sydney University, from whose widow I purchased both portrait and the journal of the artist containing the verses written by R. L. S. about Nerli.

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In her description of life at the Karindehütte Miss Kennedy comes near achieving an impersonal attitude toward her characters, giving the reader's sympathies plenty of rope. You can like the Sanger group or not as you please. But the moment Florence who resembles the wife in "If Winter Comes" - enters, the author begins to tighten the cord inch by inch till by the time the group are fairly settled in England you are attached to the Sanger interests. You despise Millicent who is merely catty, and sympathize with Lewis who is so much a cad that any virile man would want to boot him for the good of his soul. He seems to be an emotional moron. He is represented as loving Tessa to the point of eloping with her, yet apparently feels no passion, and no tenderness beyond a few vague impulses.

The author is at great pains to depict all the cold discomfort of Florence's orderliness but fails even to suggest the flies and vermin and nauseating smells that are wont to attend upon such a ménage as the Sangers'

even among Alpine breezes.

Again, the author makes Florence's weaknesses seem unpardonable because of her superior environment, yet makes a similar environment an excuse for Lewis's early lapses. Miss Kennedy's rulings always seem to be in favor of the Sangers. And in the last of the book some of the situations seem rather constructed than inevitable. All this makes for a good yarn, but is it sincere art?

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and provide the advertising that sustains the magazines. I suppose in an ideal world, the people who write could sustain each other, much as the inhabitants of the Scilly Islands do, by taking in each other's washing, but till that golden age arrives I am afraid the contemned business man must be tolerated, and might be treated with kindness. After all, not every business man prefers Eddie Guest to Amy Lowell. But the sad thing is that no business men can admire each other with the unadulterated pride that young writers do. Yours very truly,

HARRY E. MAGEE.

ment of life true that only gives one half the truth, and leaves the uninformed with a false impression of the world war as a whole? Half truths have been ranked as worse than lies, as being harder to refute. Is anything a work of art that deals in half truths?

The acting in "They Knew What They Wanted", with Bennett in the leading rôle, was superb, but as before stated, we are weary of the exploitation of the drab experiences of the low life of near morons.

Give us something appetizing for a change, and stop feeding us husks, they are too strong for a steady diet.

MARIE TELLO PHILLIPS.

DEAR MR. FARRARticle in THE BOOKMAN called "Naughty Mr. Belasco" led the writer, when on a recent visit to New York, to see the three plays therein lauded ("Candida", "They Knew What They Wanted", and "What Price Glory?").

If these three plays are the best New York can offer, it is a sad commentary on New York. They all deal with illicit love, and while they may be true to the segment of life with which they deal, audiences must be weary of looking at these unpleasant segments microscopically delineated by the plays of today.

Do we not get enough of the sordid and commonplace in the newspapers and life generally? Why must we be compelled to grovel in it? This does not apply to "Candida", which like many of Bernard Shaw's plays is food for the intellect, appreciated better in the reading than on the stage. It is incongruous, as it is acted. The poet, who causes the minister-husband such anguish, in the play seemed crazy enough to be locked up, and too absolutely unattractive to ensnare any sane woman.

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We have heard What Price Glory?” mentioned as by far the best play in New York. All through it, we waited for something to lift it out of the purely sordid, to get a glimpse of the other side of the picture, but we left disappointed. There is another side to the picture. Is any detached seg

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