“His inventive genius and remarkable use of melodious English give an unusual pleasure to the appreciative reader.”
Peabody, Francis Greenwood.Jesus Christ and the Christian character. **$1.50. Macmillan.
“This is a companion volume to “Jesus Christ and the social question.” It examines the teaching of Jesus concerning personal life, and the applicability of the Christian type to the conditions of the modern world.”—Bib. World.
“It is a most valuable addition to the literature of Christian ethics. It is an immensely fruitful book for all; but it has peculiar eye-opening value for the student afflicted with academic theological myopia.” Herbert A. Youtz.
“Here is learning and wisdom and perception of human need, and the word spoken in season, made attractive and convincing and vital by association with the Supreme Person.” George Hodges.
“The book embodies a clear insight into the fundamentals of the method and of the subject-matter of Christian ethics. And when to this high scholarly value one adds its extraordinary practical suggestiveness in the concrete problems of modern life, it is evident that the book is one which every pastor and teacher should read.” G. B. S.
“The thinking is strong and clear, but somewhat conservative.” W. Jones Davies.
“The lectures are full of power and present a study of Christian ethics which is truly inspiring.”
“The foot notes show a wide reading in modern studies upon the character of Jesus Christ. The body of the book shows large familiarity with the character and teaching of Jesus Christ.”
“Scholarly and yet simply phrased treatise.”
Pearse, Mark Guy.Pretty ways o’ Providence. *$1. Meth. bk.
A group of thirteen stories, simple possible tales, all bearing testimony to the kindly rift that lets the light of heaven thru. How definite good guided Henry Craze in his love-making, saved shy Man’el Hodge from his baneful love-coaching, and touched the heart of a hardened drunkard to transform his dreary cottage into a place fit for the home-coming of his little maid, are among the “pretty ways o’ Providence.”
“These are pretty little stories of excellent moral tone, a little over-sentimental and pious in a Methodist fashion, but pleasantly and simply written with appreciation of country atmosphere and rustic ways.”
Peck, Ellen Brainerd.Songs by the sedges. $1. Badger, R: G.
“Miss Peck has a pretty fancy and a light touch, which are just the qualities needed for this sort of reminiscent verse.” Wm. M. Payne
Peck, Rev. George Clarke.Vision and task. $1. Meth. bk.
Fifteen sermons in which the task of Christian living is expressed in terms of life to-day, and is brought home with the force of current comparison. The titles include: The passing of mystery; The plain heroic breed; A vision for the wilderness; A lesson for the street; The biography of a back-slider; Doing good by proxy; The hindering God; The thorn as an asset; The paramount duty; and The divine dependence.
“These are strenuous sermons, clearly conceived, and delivered in clear and forcible English.” Edward Braislin.
“This is a collection of sermons eminently good. Their vision is clear.”
Peck, Harry Thurston.William Hickling Prescott. **75c. Macmillan.
“If this were the only existing life of Prescott it would leave much to be desired; taken in connection with the lives by Ticknor and Mr. Rollo Ogden it will serve a genuinely useful purpose.” M. A. De Wolfe Howe.
Peckham, George Williams, and Peckham, Elizabeth Gifford.Wasps, social and solitary; with an introd. by John Burroughs. **$1.50. Houghton.
“The book of the Peckhams is valuable as a whole because it gives us an accurate description of the types of behavior of many different genera and species of wasps.” J. B. W.
Peixotto, Ernest Clifford.By Italian seas; il. by the author. **$2.50. Scribner.
“The interest of the book lies, of course, in the pictures rather than the text, altho the latter satisfactorily fills its function of supplying a running descriptive commentary enlivened by picturesque anecdotes and observations of peasant life on all sides of the Mediterranean. For the author fortunately interprets his title, liberally, and includes not only the overwritten Riviera, but Dalmatia, Malta and Tunis, which are still pervaded by Italian influences.”—Ind.
“Pleasant and informing book.” Wallace Rice.
“The sketches of the Austrian coast of the Adriatic are especially interesting, for strangely enough, it is rarely visited by the tourist. But the numerous pen drawings and half tones of this handsomely printed book will do something toward removing this ignorance, for after we have read it and looked at the pictures we shall know more about it than many who have been there.”
“Mr. Peixotto’s style is always clear, picturesque and mellow, and often poetic, and he draws his word-pictures with the same dexterous touch with which he sketches his pen-and-ink pictures of church spires, tall cypresses, or ruined monasteries.”
“In publishing another edition of Mr. Peixotto’s book a few misspelt Italian and French words should be corrected, but in the present edition one hardly notices these rare errors in the enjoyment of the author’s straightforward, wholesome style whether he gives us a word-picture or an etching.”
“The book is really good reading, a capital record of travel for the stay-at-home, observant of the picturesque, appreciative of historical associations as of artistic beauties, and as for the illustrations, Mr. Peixotto long since passed the stage in his career where praise of his work was necessary.”
“Mr. Peixotto’s descriptions of his wanderings through Italy and across the Adriatic have the fascination of a novel.”
Pemberton, Max.My sword for Lafayette; being the story of a great friendship; and of certain episodes in the wars waged for liberty, both in France and America, by one who took no mean part therein. †$1.50. Dodd.
Zaida Kay is a young American who after the battle of Yorktown follows Lafayette to France. “There is mutiny on the high seas; there is a miraculous escape; there is an idyllic sojourn in a quaint little village on the coast of England, and a romantic marriage with a young French girl in hiding there from enemies at home.” (N. Y. Times.) And before a return to America is accomplished the two are led thru a maze of happenings precipitated by Frenchmen fighting for liberty.
“The author has a certain facility of invention, but his style is without flexibility, and his figures are rarely anything more than puppets.” Wm. M. Payne.
“For the most part the episodes are trite, and without exception the characters are lifeless puppets. But it is perhaps in dialogue that Mr. Pemberton fails most signally.”
Pennell, Elizabeth Robins (Mrs. Joseph Pennell).Charles Godfrey Leland: a biography. 2v. **$5. Houghton.
“All who knew Charles Godfrey Leland knew that the man was stronger than his work. It is this man that Mrs. Pennell draws for us. From her pages radiates a personality that refreshes and rejoices, a vitality that heartens, and invigorates the reader. Not but that the biographer, proud of her brilliant uncle, does her best to give some account of what he achieved. And here she serves him truly.... The biography is mainly the work of Leland’s own pen. It consists almost entirely in transcripts from his memoranda, notes, and other papers, and of letters written to his family and to celebrities, American and English, with some of their replies. Mrs. Pennell furnishes the necessary links, transitions, and explanations, drawing upon her knowledge of the man and his ways, acquired during the period of her intimate companionship with him.... The illustrations consist of two frontispiece portraits of ‘the Rye,’ and facsimile reproductions of letters written to him by Lowell, Holmes, Tennyson, Browning, Bulwer-Lytton and many others.”—Nation.
“She has done ample justice to the fine traits in her uncle’s character, and has produced a biography which will be read with pleasure by all to whom his talents and achievements were known.”
“As a companion and supplement to the ‘Memoirs’ of 1839, it helps to furnish a full-length portrait of an unusually interesting man.” Percy F. Bicknell.
“A life absorbed in interests of so romantic a nature cannot fail to furnish a rich find to the biographer, and Mrs. Pennell has acquitted herself admirably of the task.”
“Is one of the really important books of the kind that have appeared this season.”
“This readable biography, permeated with the strong personality of its subject has the shortcomings that Leland’s versatility made practically avoidable.”
“This and other failings of his, Mrs. Pennell does not see; it is perhaps, not a part of her chosen task to see them. That she gives great charm to her record goes without saying; and that her estimate of her uncle as a person of importance is just, no reader will be disposed to deny.” H. W. Boynton.
“If the tone is rather more admiring than would be the case if it were not all in the family, is nevertheless an exceedingly readable book, full of letters and anecdotes of real intrinsic interest.”
“The life and character of Charles Geoffrey Leland [are] sympathetically interpreted by his niece.”
“Mrs. Pennell has very cleverly contrived in this way to make her brilliant uncle’s cheerful, enthusiastic personality pervade the book, and to give, at the same time, his own valuation of the different tasks to which his versatility applied itself during his long career.”
Pepper, Charles Melville.Panama to Patagonia: the Isthmian canal and the west coast countries of South America. **$2.50. McClurg.
The author, a member of the Permanent pan-American railway committee, dates his study from the year 1905. His lessons in physical and commercial geography show that the geographical sphere of the canal includes the Amazon basin, the Argentine wheat plains and the Andes treasure box of mines from Panama to Patagonia. The author analyzes the national tendencies, political history, governmental policies and the unfolding of industrial life among the inhabitants. He urges America to share in the opportunity which the canal enterprise has created for contributing to the civilization that comes thru the spread of commerce and industry.
“There are few matters treated in the volume which are of interest to the ordinary travelleror reader.”
“The book is timely, well written, and copiously equipped with maps and illustrations.”
“The book before us will be of value to every American who would keep in touch with our own commercial development; nor less does it deserve a place in the alcove devoted to books of travel.” Thomas H. MacBride.
“The book is a useful one for its descriptions of the countries and people which we ought to know much more about than we do and for the trade and industrial facts and figures it contains.”
“It embodies ... a serious and commendable effort to enlighten the American public as a matter of National concern.” George R. Bishop.
Perez, Isaac Loeb.Stories and pictures; tr. from the Yiddish by Helena Frank. $1.50. Jewish pub.
The translator makes note of the fact that fully to understand these sketches one needs to know intimately the life of the Russian Jews who figure here, and to be familiar with the love of the Talmud and the Kabbalah which color their talk. These stories are “intensely Jewish” but are told in the spirit of the author’s broad views and wide sympathies.
“The author possesses the master-power which enables him to impart to commonplace and even sordid happenings that deep human interest which lifts his work above the plane of mediocrity to that of genius.” Amy C. Rich.
“Ought to be of interest to any one, regardless of creed, to whom a sympathetic study in human nature is always precious.”
“They are short in form, depending in the main upon a dramatic perception of character, having no narrative interest, or very little. The various difficulties confronting the translator have not been entirely overcome; but to reproduce a local dialect is almost as impossible as to reproduce the subtle qualities of style.”
Perkins, Mrs. Lucy (Fitch).Goose girl: a mother’s lap book of rhymes and pictures. †$1.25. McClurg.
A book of verse and pictures for little people.
“The simple little rhymes are quaint and pleasing, and the full page and smaller pictures, in black and white, are done with cleverness and charm.”
“A folio volume with a ‘stunning’ cover, and with rhymes and pictures above the average in effectiveness and genuine wit.”
Perrigo, Charles Oscar Eugene.Machine shop construction, equipment and management. $5. Henley.
The author “attempts in this book to give a comprehensive didactic treatment of this subject. There are two main divisions of this subject which should be kept distinct; they discuss (1) The plant, or the producing implement, and (2) Operation, or the handling of this implement. They are just as separate and independent as are construction and operation in the case of railways: though inter-related at many points, they are the concern of different classes of men, based on wholly different sets of principles, and have to meet quite different conditions.” (Engin. N.)
“The work has much interest as a record, even though far from thorough or comprehensive, of the methods and object of laying out a machine shop and controlling its operation.”
Perry, Bliss.Walt Whitman: his life and work. **$1.50. Houghton.
“Confronted by a figure looming eccentrically large in its environment, as persistently and perversely suggestive of the picturesque as that of Carlyle, and equally rich in opportunities for misinterpretation, the author has set himself to depict it with much the thoroughness and anatomical accuracy shown by the old Dutch masters in the great period of Dutch painting.” (N. Y. Times.) “Mr. Perry’s work is modest in compass, but shows throughout that he has studied the documents with care and patience.... In general the narrative portions are well told and properly balanced.... Much the most important sections of the book deal with sources and here Mr. Perry has a field almost entirely his own.” (Nation.)
Reviewed by M. A. De Wolfe Howe.
“Mr. Perry’s critical judgment is calm, sane and discriminating. His attitude is friendly always, at times enthusiastic, although never that of an enthusiast: he never slips his moorings, critically.” W. E. Simonds.
“It is unusually well written. The materials for anything like a satisfactory estimate are wanting.”
“Altogether the volume will probably take its place as the sane and authoritative life of Whitman for many years to come.”
“His book throughout is a striking instance of the value of poise. No significant details are slurred over, no difficult passages are omitted, no grotesque features are softened, no preliminary effort has been considered superfluous, respect for ‘nature as she is’ reigns in the picture: yet the work complete is saved from any suspicion of the meticulous by a fusing glow of imaginative insight.” Elisabeth Luther Cary.
“Shunning partisanship as well as prejudice, Prof. Perry has been inclined to present a psychological rather than a material biography.”
“Mr. Perry has made the first successful attempt to bring within a book of moderate compass a complete biography and critical study of that unique personage in American literature, Walt Whitman.”
Perry, John G.Letters from a surgeon of the civil war; comp. by Martha Derby Perry; il. from photographs. **$1.75. Little.
Mrs. Perry has brought together her husband’s letters written during 1862–64 while he was serving as surgeon with the Twentieth Massachusetts volunteers. “His brief and modest letters, supplemented by a few editorial insertions, tell a story of hardship and danger, especially in the Wilderness campaign and before Petersburgh, that easily might have tempted another to essay a more ambitious style.” (Dial.)
“A new volume of considerable interest and some historical value.”
Perry, Ralph Barton.Approach to philosophy.**$1.50. Scribner.
To make the reader “more solicitously aware of the philosophy that is in him, or to provoke him to philosophy in his own interests” is the author’s aim in the present work. In the first part of the work the author establishes his approach to philosophy thru practical life, poetry, religion and science; the second part furnishes “‘the reader with a map of the country to which he has been led,’ to provide ‘a brief survey of the entire programme of philosophy.’” The third part “emphasizes the point of view, or the internal consistency that makes a system of philosophy out of certain answers to the special problems of philosophy.” (Philos. R.)
“Dr. Perry has compressed a wonderful amount of information into a short space. Nevertheless we are sorry for the beginner who approaches philosophy by way of such a wilderness of -isms.”
“One closes the book with the conviction of having enjoyed and profited by a gracefully written, a skillfully planned, and well-sustained discussion of the vital relationship of philosophy to practical interests, its inevitableness, its characteristic problems, and its representative systems. The non-technical will doubtless find this approach well designed to lead to intimacy.” Albert Lefevre.
“Dr Perry possesses the power of writing English that is lucid and distinguished—a rare gift in a philosopher—and this fact, combined with an extremely wide range of reading, enables him to display the historic field of philosophy in a manner that, so far as we are aware, has no precedent other than the famous work of Dean Mansel. This admirable work should be in the hands of every thinker.”
Perry, Thomas Sergeant.John Fiske. **75c. Small.
A late “Beacon biography” which presents the life of this worthy historian in summary form, comprehensively viewing the man’s life and labors, “and because the theme was a man of letters rather than affairs, the qualities of an extended essay are more conspicuous than those of biographical narrative.” (Atlan.)
“This brief biography cannot be commended for accuracy, abundance of information, discriminating judgment, or literary merit.” F. G. D.
“One feels in the spirit and outlook which form the background of the little book the peculiar qualifications of Mr. Perry for undertaking what he has performed so well.”
“One turns from it with the feeling that the picture is drawn in bold, strong lines, regretting only that fuller detail was not attempted.”
“Is one of the best, if not the best in the series.”
“This little biographical essay would make an excellent preface to the collected works of John Fiske. There is a great deal in it.” Montgomery Schuyler.
“He is, indeed inclined to be over-eulogistic, and his portrayal suffers from awkward phraseology. But in spite of this he contrives to convey a good idea of Mr. Fiske both as man and as writer.”
“A very excellent biography of John Fiske.”
Peters, Madison Clinton.Jews in America: a short story of their part in the building of the republic; commemorating the 250th anniversary of their settlement. $1. Winston.
“The results are so interesting that one cannot but wish that the work had been more thoroughly done.” Frederic Austin Ogg.
Petrie, William Matthew Flinders.History of Egypt from the XIXth to the XXXth dynasties. (History of Egypt, v. 3.) *$2.25. Scribner.
“It is rather a series of citations from original sources than a history in the modern sense of the term.”
“May be said to be almost a model of a presentative history as distinguished from a philosophical one.” L. H. Gray.
“It is not history in the popular sense of that term, but it is rather a chronological arrangement of the materials out of which a running narrative could be constructed. As a compendium, it is invaluable to the scholar.” Ira Maurice Price.
“He has made a book for students and for specialists, a book which enables us to say that the best and most inclusive history of Egypt is in English; but it is not one that can be read with ease or possesses literary merit.”
Petrie, William Matthew Flinders.Researches in Sinai. **$6. Dutton.
Dr. Petrie’s researches in the desert region to which Sinai belongs offer large returns to the student of archaeology. “On the way he picked up a few unconsidered trifles in the way of ancient remains; but his main work lay at Maghareh, where the turquois had been mined, and at neighboring Serabít, where was erected the temple to Hathor, the Lady of the Turquois. This temple Mr. Petrie’s party planned and excavated, with the results that, considering the remoteness of the region from Nilotic civilization and the frequency with which the spot has been researched, are truly amazing.” (N. Y. Times.)
“Its ingredients are excellent, stamped with the hall-mark of the author’s original and independent mind. We only sigh for a little more art in the concoction of them, a little more sense of the difference between a book and the rough notes for several books.”
Pfleiderer, Otto.Christian origins. *$1.75. Huebsch.
This book has grown out of a series of lectures delivered by the author at the University of Berlin, during the past winter. The viewpoint from which he treats the origin of Christianity is historical, and a complete interpretation of the meaning of his method with its relation to other methods is furnished in the introduction.The two main divisions of his study are Preparation and foundation of Christianity, and The evolution of early Christianity into the church.
“This volume is in our judgment the most important religious work that has appeared during the past year.”
“Brilliant though it is, needs to be corrected and restrained in its most important positions before it can be taken as a scientifically reliable narrative of the origins of the Christian faith.”
“The work is condensed and devoid of technicalities, and has been rendered into excellent English.” T. D. A. Cockerell.
“The work of this great scholar will be widely accepted as conclusive. It presents a serious challenge to the Church. To answer it effectively will require, besides equal genius, preparedness to make some concessions.”
Phelps, Albert.Louisiana; a record of expansion. *$1.10. Houghton.
“The book as a whole, shows careful study of the sources, and its accuracy is commendable. There are, however, some errors, due partly to a failure to examine recently discovered documents and partly to other causes.” John R. Ficklen.
“The volume is among the most scholarly of the extensive literature called forth by the recent centennial anniversary of the acquisition of this vast territory.”
“The work bears the stamp of originality, not that it offers any fresh facts to the student, but rather because of the appreciations which it gives of many events and movements.”
“The account of the Reconstruction, though brief, is the first satisfactory treatment of that tumultuous epoch in Louisiana history.”
“In accurate scholarship and depth of research it ranks well also, but the last third of the book,—concerning the Civil war, its cause and results—is unfortunately written in a controversial vein with strong Southern sympathies.”
“A narrative exhibiting unity and coherence, and dealing with large events in a large way. One of the best of the ‘Commonwealths’ histories.”
Phelps, Idelle.Your health. **75c. Jacobs.
The colored drawings by Helen Alden Knipe which illustrate this little volume of toasts add much to its attractions. The toasts themselves are not wholly new but cover a broad field extending from “the world” to “babies,” and from “the Garden of Eden” to “a bird, a bottle and an open-work stocking.”
“Something of the champagne flavor belongs to the collection of toasts.”
Philippi, Adolf.Florence; tr. from the German by P. G. Konody. *$1.50. Scribner.
“This is an excellent compendium of the art and, on the whole, of the history of Florence. Misprints are, unfortunately, rather numerous.”
Phillipps, L. March.In the desert. $4.20. Longmans.
“This interesting volume is a triumph of impressions.” (Ath.) “It is concerned with two unrelated topics; the French scheme of colonization in Algiers, and the influence of the Sahara desert on Arab life, architecture, religion, poetry, and philosophy.... In his thesis that the Arab character is the outcome of the influence of the desert, Mr. Phillipps gives us a sketch of the effect of the desert life on himself, and applies his experience to that of the Arab.” (Dial.)
“A vivid, plausible, and spirited piece of word-painting, which may safely be commended to all save the real student and the practised traveller in Africa.”
“The author has made an entertaining contribution to our knowledge of Arab life and art.” H. E. Coblentz.
“Would that Mr. Phillipps had never thought it his mission to simplify history! That omitted, he had written a very charming book.”
“The book is interesting and suggestive, though the style is at times somewhat discursive and it is a little difficult to follow the author’s train of thought.”
Phillips, David Graham.Deluge.†$1.50. Bobbs.
“It must rank as a conservative under-statement of conditions as they are now known to exist. As a romance this novel compares favorably with ‘The cost’ in human and love interest while as a section taken from present-day public life it is equal to ‘The plum-tree.’”
“His strongest piece of work up to the present time.” Frederic Taber Cooper.
Phillips, David Graham.Fortune hunter; il. by E. M. Ashe. †$1.25. Bobbs.
The fortune hunter of the title of Mr. Phillips’ latest story is an actor who spends his days in making love to girls of wealthy parents. In ever choosing, in going out of his way, in fact, for the course of least resistance he comes to well deserved grief. And the hearts that are broken do mend.
“The story ... has little plot, but is deeply interesting from cover to cover; and the closing half of the volume is especially admirable.”
“Mr. Phillips tantalizes us with the richness of his material and provokes us by the comparatively meagre use that he has made of it.” H. T. P.
“Rather clever is this sketch of this type of social nuisance.”
“The author of ‘The fortune hunter’ has added too much realism to his romantic compound.”
“Is but a slight tale, and one rather grudges its author’s very real powers to such ephemeral productions as are coming from his pen.”
Phillips, David Graham.Plum tree.†$1.50. Bobbs.
“Story, in a sense, there is none; style, in a literary sense, there is none; merely a serviceable prose, straightforward and energetic.” Mary Moss.
Phillips, David Graham.Social secretary.†$1.50. Bobbs.
“An entertaining, breezy story.”
Phillips, Henry Wallace.Mr. Scraggs: introduced by “Red Saunders.” †$1.25. Grafton press.
Ezekiel George Washington Scraggs is introduced by his friend Red Saunders. The incidents in his strenuous matrimonial career—eighteen marriages all told—are recounted with a humor that “has a suggestion of the slapstick, but like the slapstick it never fails to get a hand, and mixed with it now and then a little genuine wit and more than a little shrewd, practical frontier wisdom.” (Pub. Opin.)
“The stories are by no means dull and if they were not so obviously intended to be funny, if our smiles were not literally held up and challenged on every page, they could be read with real enjoyment.” Mary K. Ford.
“There are seven stories in the book, and it would be hard to decide which is the funniest. The tales are not nearly as funny as the man who tells them, and his way of telling them.”
“It cannot be denied that the travesty is lively and entertaining in a high degree.”
Phillips, Stephen.Nero.**$1.25. Macmillan.
In this latest play of Mr. Phillips “the world is a picture, not a stage, and all the men and women not players, but talkers.” (Lond. Times.) “It is a play, because it shows a will conflict—the struggle between Nero and Agrippina, between natural affection and lust for power—but it is even more a spectacle, illustrating polychromatically the successive stages of Nero’s madness. It has fine poetic passages—appropriately ‘purple’—as we shall see; it has vivid studies of bed-rock character and fierce elemental passions. It blends the fragrance of rose-leaves with the scent of blood. It sates the eye with splendid pictures and the ear with voluptuous music of both verse and orchestra. At the end of it all one gasps and is a little dizzy, in short, it is a tremendous production.” (Lond. Times.)
“It is to be feared that Mr. Stephen Phillips will add little to his reputation by the latest of his dramatic poems.”
“The action of the play does little but show us the different phases of character, but that it does with ingenuity and sufficiency.” Edward Everett Hale.
“It is a poor descent of the talents, from which one can only wish the author a speedy return upon himself to the promise of six years ago.” Arthur Waugh.
“Artifice and rhetoric seem to be the chief ingredients of the work. The decline from ‘Paolo and Francesca,’ and ‘Ulysses’ is discouragingly marked.” Wm. M. Payne.
“It contains a number of fine passages. But as a vision of life in action, it is feeble and ineffective. And the failing is not merely executive, it is fundamental; the piece is not conceived dramatically, but pictorially and emotionally.”
“The defect of ‘Nero’ is the defect of all its author’s plays. Throughout it we are on the surface of things, never inside them.”
“It proves him more conclusively than his previous plays did a talented writer of elegiac verse, and expert composer of cycloramic spectacle, who thinks habitually rather in terms of poetic phrase than, as has been the way of the true dramatist, in terms of character, of concerted situation, of human destiny as it is shaped from the clashing, fatal actions of men.”
“‘Nero.’ one judges, will not add to the author’s claims as a regenerator of the contemporary English-speaking stage. But it will not deprive him of his laurels as one of the very few contemporary English-writing poets.” Montgomery Schuyler.
Reviewed by Louise Collier Willcox.
“The whole play has the air of being written for the stage with the effect of the stage accompaniments always before the writer’s mind. The versification has the grave fault of a lack of organic strength.”
Phillips, Stephen.Sin of David. **$1.25. Macmillan.
Reviewed by Louise Collier Willcox.
Phillips, Thomas W.Church of Christ, by a layman. *$1. Funk.
“The writer has little conception of the inwardness of religion, or the historic continuity and development of Judaism and Christianity. The book ‘fails to convince’ largely because the real issues are not touched.” Elbert Russell.
“The volume is well worth reading, though based, as we believe on exaggerated views of the evils of denominationalism, and of failure to appreciate the importance of the philosophical and systematic presentation of the underlying principles of the gospel plan of salvation.”
Phillpotts, Eden.Knock at a venture. †$1.50. Macmillan.
Reviewed by Mary Moss.
Phillpotts, Eden.Portreeve. †$1.50. Macmillan.
“Mr. Phillpotts has placed the spirit of the Greek Fate in the breast of the daughter of a Dartmoor farmer. Because the man whom she has tricked into making a half-proposal of marriage to her, married the woman he loved, she pursues him through life inexorably and without mercy, finally working his death.” (Pub. Opin.) “Fiendish pertinacity, fiendish coolness, fiendish ingenuity are hers. She is miasmatic ice with a heart of malignant fire. She gives her victim law; he climbs; she strikes ... leaving him once again a little further from his ideal and from happiness. Finally, all but robbed of his livelihood, robbed of his hopes of children, robbed of the simple faith of God that was his dearest possession, he breaks. A raving lunatic, he all but murders the woman’s foolish husband, and dies a horrible death in an attempt to murder the woman herself.” (Acad.)
“When all is said, this is a powerful, almost a great book. A full, wise and glowing piece of work.”
“‘The portreeve’ is full of interesting material. But the composition seems to be sometimes at the sacrifice of verisimilitude.”
“It lacks the grim tensity of ‘The secret woman,’ the lyric enthusiasm of ‘Children of the mist;’ but on the other hand, it has a more even strength, a greater dignity that comes from reserve force.” Frederic Taber Cooper.
“One lays down ‘The portreeve’ in astonishment at the inventiveness and ability that can use the same scenes and the same class of people so often, yet with increasing interest.” Charlotte Harwood.
“Mr. Phillpotts comes nearer than anyone else to being the legitimate successor of Mr. Hardy as a rustic realist, and he has a considerable measure of the imaginative power which can invest a simple passionate complication with the severe attributes of high tragedy.” Wm. M. Payne.
Reviewed by Mrs. L. H. Harris.
“A turgid dark tale ending in madness and death.”
“For all the strain it may put upon our belief, has in it much of its author’s sense of natural beauty and fine sense of sincerity of purpose, and a sympathy with the poor and the oppressed that is not exceeded by any living novelist.”
“‘The portreeve,’ far nearer the Hardy level than he has ever reached before, is undoubtedly the best work Mr. Phillpotts has done so far.”
“Mr. Phillpotts has never sketched the loveliness and majesty of the Dartmoor country with a surer hand. The motive is one of the most repellent within reach of the novelist, and is worked out with unsparing boldness.”
“It is a grim, hopeless tragedy woven out of the hard lives and plain, simple speech of the Dartmoor people.”
Phillpotts, Eden.Secret woman. $1.50. Macmillan.
“A striking example of fine character-drawing revealed through a highly trying medium.” Mary Moss.
Phin, John.Seven follies of science: a popular account of the most famous scientific impossibilities and the attempts which have been made to solve them, to which is added a small budget of interesting paradoxes, illusions, and marvels. *$1.25. Van Nostrand.
The seven follies discussed are squaring the circle, the duplication of the cube, the trisection of an angle, perpetual motion, the transmutation of metals—alchemy, the fixation of mercury, the universal medicine and the elixir of life.
“He writes for the man in the street, and we can give no higher praise than to say that the man in the street will understand him.” J. P.
“An absorbingly interesting discussion of a subject of no particular value.”
“His book is a very agreeable excursion into a forgotten but curious field of enquiry.”
Phythian, J. Ernest.Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood; a short biographical sketch by the author, and 56 full-page reproductions in hf.-tone and a photogravure front. *$1.25. Warne.
The latest issue in the “Newnes’ art library” “deals in a large way with the group of men among whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti made so distinct a name. The author covers his ground by chronicling the history of the movement with little or no personal comment.” (Critic.)
“Writes with a sober accuracy.” Ford Madox Hueffer.
Pickthall, Marmaduke.House of Islam. †$1.50. Appleton.
“An imaginative picture of the curious Mohammedan world on the fringe of the Sultan’s domain.... The benighted, barbaric, yet intensely human, house of Islam.... Mr. Pickthall’s plan has been to set a saintly, almost Biblical Sheykh in the midst of ambitious men, relying upon the vividness of this presentation and the conflict of character for the interest of his work. Plot there is, but it is unsymmetrical, unimportant. The important thing is that all the machinery of the East is set in motion and for a while the reader is transported to the desert and the mosque, to the wineshop and the bazar.”—Lond. Times.
“Mr. Pickthall rouses our interest and respect; he is as yet without that last touch of inspiration, which rouses enthusiastic conviction.”
“Our only objections are that Mr. Pickthall is at times too resolutely Oriental for the ordinary reader to follow him easily, and that he would gain occasionally by straightforward narrative where facts are conveyed by brief allusion only.”
“He has failed to breathe into his characters the breath of life.”
“‘Saïd the fisherman,’ it is true remains his masterpiece, but ‘The house of Islam’ has very great merits.”
“The geography, architecture, and figures are in admirable proportion: the characters stand out and live; the style is swift, pictorial, and amiably cynical, fitting its theme.”
“The strength of the book lies not so much in the story—although it is an extremely human one—but in the struggles and bloodshed of religious strife, the superstitions of the various sects, and the author’s delicate brush upon these things and upon picturesque Asia.”
“The author has excellent command of his subject, but he writes with little consideration for his hearers, never appealing to their experience with that instinctive sympathy which helps to bring home to them the episodes of so foreign a narrative. As a result the characters are peculiarly remote, and the story is difficult to follow; although a series of admirable pictures impresses itself upon the mind.”
Pidgin, Charles Felton.Corsican lovers; a story of the vendetta. $1.50. Dodge.
A Corsican vendetta forms the basis of this adventurous tale in which the fate of many people and two large estates, one Corsican and one English, are involved. The heroine, VivienneBatistilli wipes out the vendetta by marrying her family’s enemy, Bertha Renville, the heiress, marries the friend of her guardian’s son, and by this arrangement the good and bad receive their just deserts; but there are many wild adventures before all this is safely brought about, and there are many interesting characters involved, perhaps the most truly Corsican being Cromillian, the moral bandit.
“Is amusing (in its way).”
Pidgin, Charles Felton.Sarah Bernhardt Brown and what she did in a country town. $1.50. Waters.
The heroine of Mr. Pidgin’s new story is a poor girl of obscure family who achieves by sure and steady progress the lady bountiful plane. There are arrayed in the background no less than well to the fore a variety of characters drawn from rural New Hampshire. The plot itself, which travels from Dolby City, Montana, to Snickersville, New Hampshire, must of necessity lose force in transit. The story may be called a companion volume to “Quincy Adams Sawyer.”
“If Mr. Pidgin’s humor is very primitive his supply of talk and narrative (such as it is) is apparently limitless.”
“Combines a rather sensational plot with somewhat too extended and thinly drawn out descriptions of country character and rustic pranks.”
Pier, Arthur Stanwood.Ancient grudge. †$1.50. Houghton.
“While lacking the swing and vitality to animate large issues, he possesses, perhaps unknown to himself, a fine personal gift. This is a delicate sensitiveness to the feelings of very young people.” Mary Moss.
“It is a pleasure, occasionally, to take up a book written with the ability, the intelligent sympathy, the serious purpose that stamp the new volume by Arthur Stanwood Pier.” Frederic Taber Cooper.
“The book is an honest piece of work which one is the better for having read.”
Pierce, Rev. Charles Campbell.Hunger of the heart for faith, and other sermons. *$1. Young ch.
A series of sermons delivered at the Cathedral open-air services in Washington, D. C. There is an introduction by Bishop Satterlee.
Pierce, James O.Studies in constitutional history. *$1.50. Wilson, H. W.
Beginning with the spirit of ’76, these studies treat of American constitutional history in a clear concise manner which will appeal to both the student and the man of affairs. Such subjects as The United States a nation from the Declaration of independence, The beginnings of American institutions, The ethics of secession, The American and French revolutions compared, The beneficiaries of the federal constitution, Slavery in its constitutional relations, A century of the American constitution, Our unwritten constitution, America’s leadership, The American empire, Righteousness exalteth a nation, and America’s place in history are treated in the light of eighteen years of active lecture work upon kindred subjects.
“The lectures or addresses are pitched in a somewhat exalted key, and are calculated to stimulate patriotism and extol the progress of America. Judge Pierce has not always been careful in the use of authorities. On the whole we must conclude that the volume has no peculiar interest and makes no special appeal to the specialist, the student, or the general reader. The reviews and addresses on the whole well adapted for their purpose, do not make an indispensable volume for the library.”
“A series of studies of value to the careful delver into the facts of American constitutional history is to be found in Mr. Pierce’s book. It is typical of the lawyer mind that created it. Cautious, conservative, and never going beyond the evidence, but here and there is very suggestive.”
“We do not always agree with the views expressed, and occasionally we feel that where the views are sound (as they usually are) Mr. Pierce has failed to support them by the strongest arguments. But on the whole, there is remarkably little to criticise in his pages which convey in small compass a large amount of information useful alike to the student of constitutional history and the general reader anxious to improve his acquaintance with the circumstances attending the political, social, intellectual, and religious growth of the United States.”
Pierson, Arthur Tappan.Bible and spiritual criticism; being the second series of the Exeter Hall lectures on the Bible delivered in London, England, February, March, and April, 1904. **$1. Baker.
A companion volume to “God’s living oracles.” There are twelve lectures treating spiritual faculties, methods, organism, structure, progress, symmetry, types, wisdom, verdicts and verities. They are a defence of the inspiration and integrity of the Holy Scriptures—the discussion of which theme is “a solemn business,” says the author.
“Under the blinding influence of a false theory of inspiration this book presents a strange jumble of gold, silver, and precious stones with wood, hay, and stubble.”
Pierson, Delevan Leonard, ed. Pacific Islanders: from savages to saints; chapters from the life stories of famous missionaries and native converts. **$1. Funk.
The taming and Christianizing of cannibal tribes make a record of remarkable conquests for the churches. This narrative extols the fearless initiative of missionaries in entering these fields and arousing its people from a state of man-eating savagery. It records the history of missionary work, the resources of the islands, and future possibilities of the natives.
Pigafetta, Antonio.Magellan’s voyage around the world; the original text of the Ambrosian ms., with Eng. translation, notes, bibliography and index, by James Alexander Robertson; with portrait, and facsimiles of the original maps and plates. 2v. *$7.50. Clark, A. H.
An accurate transcription from the sixteenth-century Ambrosian manuscript of Milan appears in these volumes with a page-for-page translation into English. “Pigafetta is the best and fullest authority for Magellan’s voyage which is here completely presented in English for the first time.” (Ann. Am. Acad.)
“The most complete and accurate presentation of the Pigafetta manuscript and the data appertaining to it that has ever been made in any language. In the introduction and his excellentbibliography, Mr. Robertson has brought together the most complete array of data on the subject yet available.” James A. LeRoy.