New York in the year 2015 A. D. forms the setting for a story of love and adventure in which the hero is supposed to rediscover the use of firearms and electricity, the knowledge of which has been lost in a great catastrophe which wiped out our modern civilization ninety years earlier. But for the gaunt and partially destroyed skyscrapers and other remains of our own day the tale, with all its primitive human nature, might well be one of the far past and not of the future.
“In places the book is almost grotesque enough to be humourous; but if the author meant it for humour, he disguised his purpose too well. As it stands it is simply tedious and unprofitable.”
Suttner, Bertha, baroness von.“Ground arms:” “Die waffen nieder;” a romance of European war, tr. from the German by Alice Asbury Abbott. †$1.25. McClurg.
—Same. With title “Lay down your arms: the autobiography of Martha Von Tilling: authorized tr. by T. Holmes.” 75c. Longmans.
This book, which won the Nobel peace prize for 1905, is a powerful plea for universal disarmament. It is the autobiography of an Austrian countess born with true martial spirit, her only grief that she cannot win laurels on the field of battle. At seventeen she marries a dashing young lieutenant and one short year later, clasping her fatherless son to her heart she awakens to the real horrors of war. Her hatred of war and warfare is justified by the story of the thirty years that follow. She draws pictures of agony, disease and mutilation as seen in 1864, 1866, and again when she lost the love of her mature years at Paris, and she shows between these periods such happy years of peace that the reader shudders with her at the contrast.
“Regarded merely as a novel, the book has fine qualities—the reader’s interest never flags, and the realism is so vigorous that one who does not know the facts will continually feel inclined to suspect that the autobiography is fictitious only as far as the names of the personages are concerned.”
“This version ... is both idiomatic and exact.”
“Constructively it shows no literary genius, and its war pictures fall far short of those in Tolstoy’s ‘War and peace.’”
“The supreme grace of simplicity has been given her, and an exquisite tenderness whereby she holds the heart of her reader in the hollow of her hand.”
“The story is thoroughly German, in remarkable good English.”
“The story itself is of keen interest, but the argument is stronger than the story.”
“The greatest philanthropical novel of this generation.”
Suyematsu, K., baron.Risen sun. **$3. Dutton.
“Why, in the days of ‘The risen sun,’ when concealment of facts is no longer possible, should so frank a scholar, refined gentleman, true patriot, and man of the world as Baron Suyematsu is, and with so noble a recorded service, seek to imitate the uncanny fashion of his old-time literary brethren?”
Swayne, Christine Siebeneck (Mrs. Noah F. Swayne).Visionary and other poems. $1.25. Badger, R. G.
Three score little verses which sing much of love and something of nature.
Sweetser, Kate Dickinson.Boys and girls from George Eliot; pictures by George Alfred Williams. †$2. Fox.
Really a happy thought contribution to child literature. Aside from the pleasure and value of the stories to young readers it is hoped that interest will extend to the books from which these pictures of child life are taken. The little people who are introduced are Tom and Maggie Tulliver, Eppie, Tottie Poyser, the Garths, Little Lizzie, Jacob Cohen, Tina, “The little black-eyed monkey,” Job Tudge and Harry Transome.
“We question the advisability of such a volume, however; it gives a wrong impression of George Eliot, and adds a somber tone that will come later in life.”
“In these drawings Mr. Williams shows a mounting command and simplification.”
“The work is very well done.”
Swinburne, Algernon Charles.Love’s crosscurrents. $1.50. Harper.
“For all its slightness, the book leaves an impression. You have a far clearer vision of every person than of the elaborately explained Lady Kitty, in ‘William Ashe.’” Mary Moss.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles.Poems: selected and edited by Arthur Beatty. 35c. Crowell.
Uniform with the “Handy volume classics.” The poems have been carefully selected and annotated, and the volume is supplied with a prefatory note and an introduction, the latter briefly sketching Swinburne’s life.
“Is worth having, for it contains some of the finest poems of the century and is mercifully free from some of the more luxuriant passages of the great poet.”
Swinburne, Algernon Charles.Selected lyrical poems. $1.50. Harper.
Swinburne’s first published volume, Poems and ballads, is included in this edition together with many later poems that are best representative of the poet’s genius.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles.Tragedies. Collected lib. ed. 5 v. *$10. Harper.
A five volume edition of Swinburne’s “Tragedies” which with the six-volume edition of his “Poems” makes available in collected form the “entire poetical product of the greatest of living poets.” (Dial.) Volume 1 contains “The Queen mother” and “Rosamund;” Volume 2 contains “Chastelard,” and the first two acts of “Bothwell,” the remaining three acts of which constitute Volume 3; Volume 4 includes the drama “Mary Stuart” and essays on her life and character; and Volume 5 contains “Locrine,” “The sisters,” “Marino Faliero,” and “Rosamund, queen of the Lombards.”
Reviewed by George S. Hellman.
Symonds, E. M. (George Paston, pseud.).B. R. Haydon and his friends. **$3. Dutton.
“George Paston has admirably illustrated a fascinating subject.”
Reviewed by Royal Cortissoz.
“Is, for all its sorrow and tragedy, brightened by the record of many joyous days and hours, and is altogether a fascinating biography.”
Symons, Arthur.Spiritual adventures.**$2.50. Dutton.
“These stories, each of which deals with a separate personality, are studies of decadence. They explore the relation between life and art.” (Ath.) In each of the eight studies the author “is intent on reproducing a distinct temperamental type, or, to put it in another way, in each case he has isolated a temperament and assigned it to a person.” (Outlook.) “‘Esther Kahn’ is perhaps the most wholesome of these haunting stories, having a definite culmination in the creation of the artist through suffering. But on the whole, ‘The death of Peter Waydelin’ is the achievement of the book, in the tragedy and realistic horror of its setting.” (Critic.)
“They are all, as one would expect, stories of the better sort, not depending upon incident, but expounding some emotional situation. For the work of an author not accustomed to express himself in this medium, they are surprisingly well told, though they present some of the technical defects which the essayist who sets himself to write stories is seldom able to avoid.”
“It is Mr. Symons’s simple and forceful style, with its delicate psychic touches, combined with his really great gift for the vital story, which disarms our criticism of his philosophy.”
“His very cleverness and facility make it more to be regretted that he has wasted his time in portraiture, brilliant but without significance, of subjects that are hardly worthy of such distinction.”
“Evocations, these tales, if tales you can call them, will prove attractive for some to whom English fiction has become too material, too much a thing of bricks and mortar.” James Huneker.
“No matter how impersonal the reader tries to be, he will probably close this book with a sense of depression.”
“The work of a literary artist with an extraordinarily engaging and subtly morbid personality, they sometimes fascinate and sometimes disgust but always awaken interest and rivet attention.”
Syrett, Netta.Day’s journey. †$1.25. McClurg.
The “day’s journey” of a novelist and his wife from a state of infatuation to one of quiet affection carries them thru many stages. The young writer tires of a quiet country life and seeks emotional inspiration and sympathy from a frowsy artist of Greek robes and sandals who poses as a true Bohemian. He neglects his wife and to cover his latest “friendship” thrusts upon her the society of an old lover. This old lover inspires her to self assertion and she develops into a woman of character and talent who wins literary honors for herself, and turns from an admiring social world to find her husband once more at her feet.
“Miss Syrett has a charming style and a dramatic faculty for keeping what Besant called the ‘flat times’ of her characters out of the reader’s knowledge. Her limitations, so far at least as the present novel is concerned, are chiefly those of environment.”
“The whole story is told in a crisp style which never drags and which is always charming.” Wm. M. Payne.
“The story is written with considerable sense of humor and charm of manner.”
“Netta Syrett wields a clever pen and shows much wit in her society sketches.”
“The book is fairly written.”